The art and beauty of general relativity

One hundred years ago this month, an obscure German physicist named Albert Einstein presented to the Prussian Academy of Science his General Theory of Relativity. Nothing prior had prepared scientists for such a radical re-envisioning of the foundations of reality.


Encoded in a set of neat compact equations was the idea that our universe is constructed from a sort of magical mesh, now known as "spacetime". According to the theory, the structure of this mesh would be revealed in the bending of light around distant stars.

To everyone at the time, this seemed implausible, for physicists had long known that light travels in straight lines. Yet in 1919 observations of a solar eclipse revealed that on a cosmic scale light does bend, and overnight Einstein became a superstar.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-art-beauty-relativity.html#jCp

 

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"beauty is truth, and truth beauty".
Paul Dirac:

In relation to Einstein's rather nonchalant reply to a reporter telling him his theory had beed verified, he replied: "I would have felt sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct."

 

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Einstein's achievement???? Disaster for science i.e. back to Aristotelian metaphysics - the overthrow of 2,200+ years of development in philosophy & physics from Democritus - who asserted the ontological distinction between matter & space in order to refute Parmenides.

Einstein's refutation of Democritus is rarely if ever noted by commentators. Sir Karl Popper did so backhandedly though: in his Unended Quest (chapter 28), when he met Einstein for the first time, he called him 'Parmenides'!

So here's hoping paddoboy doesn't reply by asking something corny like "Who is Democritus when he's at home?" or "Who's Karl Popper?"

FOLZONI

 

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This is the sort of pop-science journalism which I despise, and which persuades me to compare science journalists with usual journalists (a defamation for every reasonable person to be compared with these professional liars, also named presstitutes).

Albert Einstein was in 1915 a well-known and widely acknowledged scientist. Full professor since 1911, paid member of the Prussian Academy of Science 1913, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics 1914, professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin with the right, but without obligation to lecture 1914, so they were happy to have to pay him for nothing but his name being associated with the Berlin university, and this at a time when Germany was a leading nation in science. So, in 1915 he was already at the top of established science.

The basic ideas of his theory have been published already before, what was missing were the final equations for the gravitational field. So, of course, one was prepared that, after some time, he will present these equations. IOW, each sentence a lie.

 

You have a rather inferior comprehension of Einstein and Aristotelian metaphysics.

 

Ha! Really, Spellbound! You'll have to be more specific than that before you can call Folzoni false and a phoney!

FOLZONI

 

Einstein believed in something big. That relativity and Quantum theory could be reconciled (which, as a string theory supporter I agree with). Hence your closed mindedness, jealousy and perhaps fear? of genius, which he was. Aristotelian metaphysics is universal, so it covers Einstein and more.

3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being

The Categories leads us to expect that the study of being in general (being qua being) will crucially involve the study of substance, and when we turn to the Metaphysics we are not disappointed. First, in Metaphysics Γ Aristotle argues in a new way for the ontological priority of substance; and then, in Books Ζ, Η, and Θ, he wrestles with the problem of what it is to be a substance. We will begin with Γ’s account of the central place of substance in the study of being qua being.

As we noted above, metaphysics (or, first philosophy) is the science which studies being qua being. In this respect it is unlike the specialized or departmental sciences, which study only part of being (only some of the things that exist) or study beings only in a specialized way (e.g., only in so far as they are changeable, rather than in so far as they are beings).

But ‘being’, as Aristotle tells us in Γ.2, is “said in many ways”. That is, the verb ‘to be’ (einai) has different senses, as do its cognates ‘being’ (on) and ‘entities’ (onta). So the universal science of being qua being appears to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of being when the very term ‘being’ is ambiguous?

Consider an analogy. There are dining tables, and there are tide tables. A dining table is a table in the sense of a smooth flat slab fixed on legs; a tide table is a table in the sense of a systematic arrangement of data in rows and columns. But there is not a single sense of ‘table’ which applies to both the piece of furniture at which I am writing these words and to the small booklet that lies upon it. Hence it would be foolish to expect that there is a single science of tables, in general, that would include among its objects both dining tables and tide tables. Tables, that is to say, do not constitute a single kind with a single definition, so no single science, or field of knowledge, can encompass precisely those things that are correctly called ‘tables’.

If the term ‘being’ were ambiguous in the way that ‘table’ is, Aristotle’s science of being qua being would be as impossible as a science of tables qua tables. But, Aristotle argues in Γ.2, ‘being’ is not ambiguous in this way. ‘Being’, he tells us, is ‘said in many ways’ but it is not merely (what he calls) ‘homonymous’, i.e., sheerly ambiguous. Rather, the various senses of ‘being’ have what he calls a ‘pros hen’ ambiguity—they are all related to a single central sense. (The Greek phrase ‘pros hen’ means “in relation to one.”)

Aristotle explains his point by means of some examples that he takes to be analogous to ‘being’. Consider the terms ‘healthy’ and ‘medical’. Neither of these has a single definition that applies uniformly to all cases: not every healthy (or medical) thing is healthy (medical) in the same sense of ‘healthy’ (‘medical’). There is a range of things that can be called ‘healthy’: people, diets, exercise, complexions, etc. Not all of these are healthy in the same sense. Exercise is healthy in the sense of being productive of health; a clear complexion is healthy in the sense of being symptomatic of health; a person is healthy in the sense of having good health.

But notice that these various senses have something in common: a reference to one central thing, health, which is actually possessed by only some of the things that are spoken of as ‘healthy’, namely, healthy organisms, and these are said to be healthy in the primary sense of the term. Other things are considered healthy only in so far as they are appropriately related to things that are healthy in this primary sense.

The situation is the same, Aristotle claims, with the term ‘being’. It, too, has a primary sense as well as related senses in which it applies to other things because they are appropriately related to things that are called ‘beings’ in the primary sense. The beings in the primary sense are substances; the beings in other senses are the qualities, quantities, etc., that belong to substances. An animal, e.g., a horse, is a being, and so is a color, e.g, white, a being. But a horse is a being in the primary sense—it is a substance—whereas the color white (a quality) is a being only because it qualifies some substance. An account of the being of anything that is, therefore, will ultimately have to make some reference to substance. Hence, the science of being qua being will involve an account of the central case of beings—substances.

Taken from link.

 

Yep agreed, poor journalism, but I'm sure most interested in science would have been aware of that hiccup.
Just as most would be aware at how a self confessed independent scientist, who claims he has a paper superceding GR, and with even more unworkable irrational political views, is then so eager to criticise all scientific publications as pop science.

 

I have never really yet agreed with spellbound for many reasons, but I'm in total agreement that you are a fraud. Sorry about that.

 

??What's a lie? Please explain.
I'm not entirely into the "detailed" history of the advent of GR, but do know that he did discuss things with David Hilbert.
Who published the basic ideas of Einstein's theory?Please elaborate without any of your political biased nonsense.
According to what I have read his first inkling towards GR was recognising the Equivalence Principal which came about through one of his many thought experiments. He reportedly saw a painter falling off a ladder [please don't critique or otherwise this point, it isn't really relevant

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] and realized that any falling body will not feel any weight. [also why our Astronauts in orbit in the ISS feel weightless as they are falling around Earth]
Einstein then of course like any good physicist, stood on the shoulders of other giants, both at his time and before, to see as far as he did and formulate successfully GR.

 

Dunno what missing link you've quoted but it is an accurate representation of Aristotle's metaphysics of being. Your highlighted red section demonstrates my point about the closeness of Aristotelian misconceptions and Einstein's BS!

The word 'substance' is a term commonly used (e.g. by Spinoza as well) for what is normally termed 'matter' but is a more embracing term.

The mistake of Aristotle, Spinoza and Einstein is to reduce the physical world to one common being, one type of substance. The philosophical claims made by Aristotle, Spinoza and Einstein lead to error in that they invoke notions that can only lead to logical paradox.

This is because being is NOT reducible to one thing: i.e. mere existence or substance or matter.

Being is NOT monistic: the basic division of being is threefold - space, time and matter. The relationship is indirect, prepositional i.e. matter is in space which in turn is in time. Only in this way is difference preserved (i.e. the goal of postmodern thought in its argument against modernist rationalism) and nature demonstrated to be fundamentally disordered; i.e. nature is NOT fully rational. All else, including and especially Einstein's SR & GR which preach a fully ordered universe, is just spam-bound i.e. total BS when applied to science.

FOLZONI

PS: Einstein did indeed "believe in something big" but in the sense of Joseph Goebbels' remark: "if you're going to tell a lie, make it a big one."

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You think so?

I think that many of your sources are popscience. This is natural, and there is in fact nothing wrong with this, given that you are a layman, and popscience is what is written for you. But not all of your sources are popscience, for example, your beloved river paper has motivated me to write an own paper, one which Hamilton himself has reviewed in a quite positive way. For another of your sources, I have found a minor error (which was what you quoted ;-) ) but which I have characterized, despite this minor error, as a good paper.

Einstein himself. GR was not a theory presented once completely finished in 1915. The equivalence principle is from 1907. The paper is this (in German): http://www.soso.ch/wissen/hist/SRT/E-1907.pdf It predicts, in particular, time dilation caused by a different gravitational potential, as well as the curving of light rays by a gravitational field. All this not yet based on a well-defined theory with well-defined equations, but on a general principle, and the approximation that a gravitational field can be apprioximated, in some degree, by a homogeneous one. So, there was yet a long way from 1907 to 1915 full GR. But my point was to show that

is a lie. The 1907 paper of Einstein, as well as other papers between 1907 and 1915, like http://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstein-papers/1911_35_898-908.pdf of 1911, http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/annalen/history/einstein-papers/1912_38_355-369.pdf of 1912 and other have prepared the scientists for the 1915 paper.

 

Many of my sources disagree with what you say maybe closer to why you call them pop science.
Oh, and your derisive comment re my "beloved river paper" is also off the mark. It''s simply a paper I find that can explain what is happening at or inside a BH to the best of our knowledge, and that I have used and proven with even more lay friends of mine, who are not into cosmology.

I won't argue with your links and I can't, as they are in German, but rather surprised you have chosen to comment on some pedant in my post, [which was by the way a reproduction of an article by someone else which I found interesting] with out comment on the other trash that has been posted in this and other threads.
That infers some sort of agenda.

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Oh, and worth noting that your own "historical take" on the advent of GR, and your associated thoughts, are in some way tarnished due to the agendas that you cherish and support.

In fact I do like the following account in WIKI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity

 

Sorry, but this is a cheap personal attack, nothing else. If I evaluate something, I try to be neutral, believe it or not. What I name pop science may be string theory presentations like from Kaku, which is nice math but not physics, or, as above an article about GR and Einstein, thus, a scientist I admire a lot, and a theory which appears as the limit of my own theory, thus, will remain as important as Newtonian theory forever even if my theory wins, so, from this point of view I have no "agenda" to attack it. And even if you will probably not believe this, it was not that you have posted this, and my attack was not against you, but really simply against the article itself. Because what makes the article wrong - what I have criticized - are things I know about, but only out of accident, this is nothing which was teached or so, and you, as a layman, cannot be blamed at all for not knowing this. But a science journalist, if he makes such statements, should check them, or deserves to be called a presstitute.

Regarding the river paper, this is certainly not despisable pop science, but a nice paper, with some weak points which I have criticized, and which the author has accepted. A normal thing in the scientific discussion. Here, the only problematic point is your behavior, namely to ignore the criticism. Which is part of what I criticize if I name you "uneducable".

Take it as a compliment. Seriously, there is a lot of esoteric nonsense here in the forum which I don't comment, simply because I don't even read it.

 

Oh please Schmelzer, stop all this pompous silly false indignation.
It's no more cheap, and no more personal than what you said.
Of course I know now we'll get a page or two on semantics and other bullshit of how that is not so.

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Schmelzer, you have your views on science, life and politics....I have mine, simple as that.

 

The art and beauty of GR has surpassed many yrs. ago. You hold on past pad.

 

Really?
The art and beauty of general relativity
November 26, 2015
Really?
http://www.space.com/8024-einstein-general-relativity-confirmed.html
Einstein Was Right: General Relativity Confirmed
Really?
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/
NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment
Really?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...warf-neutron-star_n_3157482.html?ir=Australia
Einstein's General Relativity Theory Gets New Confirmation In Study Of White Dwarf, Neutron Star

 

They will give you want to hear or read.

 

Why don't you then present some evidence showing that the art and beauty of GR was surpassed many years ago?

 

And of course it's what I want to read and hear. They are all factual experiments that confirm GR.
But I'll wait for your experiments that supposedly invalidate GR.