Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: parakorn on 10/04/2015 18:34:30
-
http://www.andyross.net/weiberg.htm
In number 4 Steven Weinberg said that Traditional religions generally rely on authority, such as a prophet or a pope or an imam, or a body of sacred writings. Scientists rely on authorities of a very different sort. If I want to understand some fine point about the general theory of relativity, I probably would not look up the original papers of Einstein, because today any good graduate student understands general relativity better than Einstein did. Heroes in science are not infallible prophets.
He said that any graduate student understand GR more than Einstein. I don't think like that because Einstein was the creator of the theory so the one who most understand his theory should be himself. Why did Weiberg write that ???
-
Einstein was very (very) smart, and spent a lot of time thinking about relativity, so I'm sure he understood it quite well. However, just because he was the first to present the theory does not mean he knows the most about it. There has been a century of other brilliant physicists testing, thinking about, and arguing about theories of relativity--their collective understanding has been distilled into textbooks that any student of physics now has to study.
The very fact that Einstein had few people he could discuss the theory with on even footing, and that it wasn't taught to him means that he is at a disadvantage compared to students today. That said, he was extremely smart, and had (or developed) an excellent intuition about relativity, that many today might not have.
-
Einstein was very (very) smart, and spent a lot of time thinking about relativity, so I'm sure he understood it quite well. However, just because he was the first to present the theory does not mean he knows the most about it. There has been a century of other brilliant physicists testing, thinking about, and arguing about theories of relativity--their collective understanding has been distilled into textbooks that any student of physics now has to study.
The very fact that Einstein had few people he could discuss the theory with on even footing, and that it wasn't taught to him means that he is at a disadvantage compared to students today. That said, he was extremely smart, and had (or developed) an excellent intuition about relativity, that many today might not have.
Thank you for your reply. I think that every idea of General relativity after Einstein did is the solution from his field equation of gravitational such as black hole , universe expanding and other solution that use complex method of mathemathical. I think that there are many physicist in present who are more professional in mathematical than Einstein so they can go to more complex solution than Einstein did. But the first one who truely understand GR idea is Einstein himself.