Einstein Finds Reality in Probabilities 234.0

Albert Einstein moved physical science from the cause-and-effect and deterministic mode of Isaac Newton into the probabilistic with his four breakthrough 1905 papers, the first one on photoelectric properties of which he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In so doing he extended scientific knowledge from earth-centric, as is the state of the art from Newton’s time 300 years before, to being applicable to the Universe.

Walter Isaacson’s book was the first after all of Einstein’s paper was released to the public. It included persona notes and letters that clearly highlighted his complex personality and his humanity. Those who are interested in that part can buy the book through the Sidebar link at right.

SYNTHESiST is more interested to highlight his effect the paradigm shift in scientific knowledge and on innovation thereafter.

His Genius. Einstein’s genius is underlined by the main tool he used to acquire insights: the thought experiment. The math came later, of which he needed help from others including his first wife, to prove the insights.

In 1905, he was merely 26 years old at that time and without a PhD yet. It speaks volume of the material culture of science in Europe at the turn into the 20th century that genius is turn into production of knowledge through a system based on merit. More of this below.

The Context: Why it worked for Einstein. He worked at the Swiss patent office during a time when railroads as physical transporter of people and goods was THE NETWORK. (Today, the network is the Internet with its network effects, lock-in, switching cost, and possibilities for increasing returns.)

Those who controlled that network or were players in it, just like those in the present day Internet, were the tycoons for similar reasons. (The nuance for present day internet is that the goods typically carried are inputs to knowledge that have different economic characteristics as the bulk commodities carried in yester-year’s railroads, But this is the subject of another post.)

For the railroads, the technical challenge at that time was coordination. And good coordination, then as now, was a function of reconciling timekeeping and locks across cities. Note that watch technology at that time was mechanical and set to such timekeeping mechanisms as balance wheels and ratchets/pallet levers and pendulums.

Many clocks and train timers were set based on the Bern clock tower. To this day, you can set your watch by the comings and goings of trains in Europe.

(Note: The first thing I master is the train schedule whenever I visit. It is still the cheapest way to get around including for hotels to stay in that are often cheaper say in Holland to attend an exhibit in Germany.)

Einstein worked on many patent applications to achieve such time coordination. He must have a lot of practice with trains during his time as patent clerk. Thus, it was easy for him to visualize his though experiments involving observers on the station and on a moving train or the falling man inside a room in space.

These though experiments were critical in overturning and disproving Newton’s assumptions of absolute time and absolute distance.

Deductive and Inductive Approaches. Einstein was a theoretical physicist and not an experimental one. As a scientist, he preferred a deductive approach that yielded a priori statements subject to proof versus an inductive and empirical one in deriving knowledge.

As a theoretical physicist, he used though experiments to derive insights from first principles, instead of deriving inductive conclusions from empirical cases, and suggested experimental approaches to prove the insights.

For example, his theories predicted that a mass’s gravity will bend light; and that a bid of sufficient mass like the sun can prove such bending. An astronomer needed to undertake an expedition, take photographs of certain stars during an eclipse to prove his predicted values of bending to be correct.

After Einstein, when many physical phenomenon went into the realm of not being observable by the senses and became subject to ‘uncertainties and probabilities,’ indeed, math became the language of science.

Science to Innovation. His most famous insights were embedded in the formula on mass-energy equivalence: E = MC².

Innovations from this scientific insight eventually yielded the atomic bomb, a hellish device, and the more beneficial electric power from nuclear energy.

University System and Public Science Academy. Einstein was a product of a European university system and public academy of science that was competitive and rewarded true merit.

Its context was the mercantilist economics that from the Industrial Revolution allowed the countries then rule as monarchies to use science and innovation for wealth building.

Universities and the professional hierarchies within screened for the best students, trained them, and finally required a system of peer-reviewed research based on citations of past research results that resulted in election to publicly-funded Academies of Science.

Just before the World War I, Einstein was elected to the very prestigious German Academy that gave a generous stipend and allow 100% of his time for rumination and study. The proof of his general theory of relativity soon after WW1 after the eclipse expedition was heralded as a triumph of science over politics; Einstein being German while the expedition was British-led.

The University and Government link remains a viable one for the creation of new knowledge as public good.

Leading a revolution. Einstein’s genius and insight was more revolutionary because it resulted into a break and paradigm shift from the Newtonian orthodoxy. It followed the process described in detail by Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that we featured here in SYNTHESiST.

By Einstein’s time, Newton’s theories were more than 300 years old. Cracks begin to appear that could not be explained by Orthodoxy though many scientist remained to defend it.

As we see now, lifetime careers often depended on such defense. In effect, overturning the Orthodoxy means obsolescense for many such scholars.

Still, the new insights have the power to bridge and explain such gaps. The results are often not to totally reject the Orthodoxy that by now would be embedded in engineering and technology. Indeed, the Orthodoxy can become a special case of the New Paradigm, say formulas that apply on the Earth surface for applications in technology.

Many become foundation knowledge like calculus, that Newton, in his greatness, invented for his science but this time for use in engineering.

Continuing revolution. Science, by definition, continuous to improve on itself. That we know although the source of branching is hard to forecast.

For example. the discovery of a new tool, in material science, may revive a temporarily obsolete branch alive again. In turn, new scientific may allow the discovery of a better instrument and so on.

Benefits to society. Many societies are open to such change that leads to change in culture. They are the ones who survive. Societies who are not capable of learning, as society, disappear and are absorbed the superior ones.