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Showing posts with the label though experiment

Was Einstein a Genius?

It is almost foolish to speculate on why or how someone like Albert Einstein was a genius.   People like Einstein and Newton are essentially off the scale of human intelligence.   Yet, they live among us, make very human errors, and act in very human ways. So, we take them for humans, albeit just really smart specimens. As to Einstein, he told us his formula for discovery. That was through the thought experiment , wherein he would conceive of a physical situation such as what would happen as he looked in a mirror as both were accelerating toward the speed of light. This was, for Einstein, the beginning of relativity.   But what for you and I, had we been given this experiment? The implication is that Einstein dwelled on the problem endlessly until some ideas emerged.   Then, by sheer strength of will he managed those ideas into the beginnings of a theory.   Finally, it became a fait de complet. What is not mentioned is that Einstein also had an intense proclivity to indepen