How Einstein Did Not Discover

What powered Einstein’s discoveries? Was it asking naïve questions, stubbornly? Was it a mischievous urge to break rules? Was it the destructive power of operational thinking? It was none of these. Rather, Einstein made his discoveries through lengthy, mundane investigations, pursued with tenacity a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysics in perspective Vol. 18; no. 3; pp. 249 - 282
Main Author Norton, John D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cham Springer International Publishing 01.09.2016
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Relativity
relativity
discovery
light quantum
Albert Einstein
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Summary:What powered Einstein’s discoveries? Was it asking naïve questions, stubbornly? Was it a mischievous urge to break rules? Was it the destructive power of operational thinking? It was none of these. Rather, Einstein made his discoveries through lengthy, mundane investigations, pursued with tenacity and discipline. We have been led to think otherwise in part through Einstein’s brilliance at recounting in beguilingly simple terms a few brief moments of transcendent insight, and in part through our need to find a simple trick underlying his achievements. These ideas are illustrated with the examples of Einstein’s 1905 discoveries of special relativity and the light quantum.
ISSN:1422-6944
1422-6960
DOI:10.1007/s00016-016-0186-z