Speaker 1: Okay, we are alive. How does William Ramsey. Welcome to
Speaker 1: William Ramsey Investigates on today's show have a very special guest,
Speaker 1: returning guest. His name is hands Shaan's last name is
Speaker 1: spelled sh a and t z. And this will be
Speaker 1: our third show. We've done a show about just about
Speaker 1: two months ago. We covered his book, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: It's a new book. It's titled The Wives of Heart
Speaker 1: Modern Day Reimagining of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And then
Speaker 1: we also did a part one. This will be a
Speaker 1: part two and it's been titled on this talk which
Speaker 1: you will see the presentation and the slides if you're
Speaker 1: watching this on Rock Fann, Rumble or X. It's titled
Speaker 1: Einstein Relativity in Modern Physics and just kind of I
Speaker 1: think we covered a number of topics in the last
Speaker 1: one Relativity. We talked about this some of these slides,
Speaker 1: the theory of relativity. I can't say I'm a physics
Speaker 1: expert by any stretch of the imagination, but that's why
Speaker 1: he's here. But we talked about kind of kind of
Speaker 1: goes into the politicization of a lot of stuff. Everything
Speaker 1: seems to be political anyway. These days. We talked about
Speaker 1: Einstein coming to America, the eclipse of nineteen nineteen, kind
Speaker 1: of the foundations of gerald general relativity, and also there's
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about and some interesting questions. I
Speaker 1: remember from our conversation that we add in May about
Speaker 1: how it's interesting that Einstein wasn't invited onto the Manhattan
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Hans has also two websites. Let me see.
Speaker 1: Like we have his substack which is at athers are.
Speaker 1: It's a E. T. H. E. R Czar dot substack
Speaker 1: dot com. You can see all this information on there.
Speaker 1: And then also there is athersr dot com, which is
Speaker 1: his website. You'll see his fiction books here too, The
Speaker 1: Hidden True Truth one call mentor Kenholders said the best
Speaker 1: science fiction techno thriller since whatever Neil Stevenston. Stephenston's last
Speaker 1: book was, so you can check those out. And he
Speaker 1: also goes into ultra wide I think one of his
Speaker 1: books was The Art and Science of Ultra wide Band Antennas.
Speaker 1: Pretty technical stuff, but you can see some of his
Speaker 1: books on Amazon. But hopefully we'll get the technical stuff
Speaker 1: figured out. Welcome everybody, hoping you're having a late an
Speaker 1: okay time considering world events, pretty strange days. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this last time of the last show
Speaker 1: we did was April twenty second, twenty twenty five. No,
Speaker 1: that was the first one we did, The Wiser Heart,
Speaker 1: and then May twenty first. It's the first part of this.
Speaker 1: The Zionis clash was inevitable. I mean, this is present
Speaker 1: stuff like Zionism. He was one resulting from differences and standards.
Speaker 1: The Easterners, like many Russian Jews in this country, don't
Speaker 1: know what honesty is, and we simply won't entrust our
Speaker 1: money to them. Whitesman does not know what honesty is,
Speaker 1: but weekly yields to his numerous Russian associates. That's the split.
Speaker 1: Einstein to Frankfurter, a Jewish weakness, always and eagerly to
Speaker 1: try to keep the gentiles in good humor. Establishment Jewish
Speaker 1: press motivated to focus on Einstein to distract from Zionis.
Speaker 1: So Zionist Organization of America sided with Weitzman. Hello, welcome back.
Speaker 2: I can finally hear you.
Speaker 1: It's not your fault. There's something going on with Streamyard.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. It's not stable. It's
Speaker 1: not stable.
Speaker 2: Everything was going fine, and then it just all the
Speaker 2: sounds stopped.
Speaker 1: The last show did that exact same thing to me,
Speaker 1: Like literally mid show, I had to have a buddy
Speaker 1: of mine read like host it. He was my guest,
Speaker 1: and he flipped into others. So that's not your fault. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I was just kind of reading through these slides we went,
Speaker 1: I did a long background again, and we're back to
Speaker 1: Einstein comes to America. So I kind of just read
Speaker 1: this and just showed that there was a kind of
Speaker 1: propaganda or pr campaign about him, and then moved on
Speaker 1: to this once. So if you're ready, we can just
Speaker 1: take it from here. If that's okay, sure, I'll take
Speaker 1: it from here and i'll edit it. I'll edit this
Speaker 1: for the listeners on the live stream, I'll edit it
Speaker 1: out and put out the full audio with that five
Speaker 1: minutes missing. I could have restopped. I could have stopped
Speaker 1: the stream, but it would have been a real difficulty
Speaker 1: to reset it back up and redo it. So I
Speaker 1: apologize to everybody I've had problems with stream yard. If
Speaker 1: you listen to my show regularly, you'll know I'm just
Speaker 1: having a real, a real hard time. So anyway, Han's
Speaker 1: welcome back. So I apologized for that well, thank you again.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and with
Speaker 2: your audience. Where we left off last time, we were
Speaker 2: talking about Einstein's unprecedented publicity on his trip to America
Speaker 2: and some of the factors behind it. One of those
Speaker 2: factors was rivalry among various groups within the American Jewish community.
Speaker 2: There were newly arrived Eastern European and Russian Jews who
Speaker 2: were on board with the Zionist program. That Einstein was
Speaker 2: there raising funds with heim Weitzmann, the head of the
Speaker 2: World Zionist Organization, ultimately the first President of Israel, and
Speaker 2: they were not looked upon with favor by some in
Speaker 2: the establishment American Jewish community, and that ironically led to
Speaker 2: more publicity for Einstein because the establishment Jewish press emphasized
Speaker 2: the Einstein aspect of the tour by way of distracting
Speaker 2: from the Zionist fundraising. Got so next, let's go. And
Speaker 2: you know, that was no doubt frustrating for the American
Speaker 2: establishment Jewish community, but Einstein was also a frustration for
Speaker 2: heim Weitzman and the Zionist organization. Einstein's friend Blumenfelt warned
Speaker 2: Weisman before the trip that Einstein was not really a Zionist,
Speaker 2: intended to say things that perhaps he shouldn't. He also
Speaker 2: argued that the Zionists should work harder to make peace
Speaker 2: with their Arab neighbors, and Weisman in turn said that
Speaker 2: Einstein was a prima donnin about to lose her voice.
Speaker 2: The tension continued when Israel had its war for independence
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty eight, Einstein signed on a letter criticizing Herout,
Speaker 2: which is a right wing political party that ended up
Speaker 2: being absorbed into the Laikud party. But ultimately, I guess
Speaker 2: there were no hard feelings because a few years later
Speaker 2: he was offered the position of President of Israel, which
Speaker 2: he declined. Next. So, just summarizing what Einstein the facts
Speaker 2: around Einstein's publicity tour in America, it was clearly a
Speaker 2: kind of events and circumstances publicity campaign where we got
Speaker 2: to see, you know, the huge crowds that came out
Speaker 2: to see Weismann and the Zionist Party, but were interpreted
Speaker 2: as crowds for Einstein. But you know, even though you
Speaker 2: know there was the massive crowds, Einstein really contributed to
Speaker 2: that through his charisma, his appeal. He made a favorable
Speaker 2: impression on reporters and the alignment with the Zeitgeist. You know,
Speaker 2: the notion that relativity proved that truths were no longer
Speaker 2: absolute contributed to the cultural acceptance of relativity theory. Well,
Speaker 2: this brings us to an interesting question that needs to
Speaker 2: be tackled with some sensitivity. But it's a very important
Speaker 2: topic for understanding than narrative underlying the history of science,
Speaker 2: and of course had very significant influence on world history.
Speaker 2: And that's the conflict between Jewish physicists and the advocates
Speaker 2: of what was called Deutsche physics or German physics in
Speaker 2: the Weimar years and then after the Nazis took over.
Speaker 2: And it's also important to look at what was going
Speaker 2: on and try to set aside our modern day sensibilities,
Speaker 2: because people at the time had views that we today,
Speaker 2: with our modern perspectives, would regard as being blatantly racist
Speaker 2: and anti Semitic. In fact, one very prominent German physicist
Speaker 2: declared that Jews are a group of people unto themselves,
Speaker 2: that their Jewishness is visible in their physical appearance, that
Speaker 2: they noticed their Jewish heritage and their intellectual works, and
Speaker 2: they have the same way of thinking and a feeling
Speaker 2: now that physicist. The next slide was Albert Einstein himself
Speaker 2: in a pamphlet on anti Semitism that he published in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen. Next, so, if we want to ask what
Speaker 2: Jewish physics is and see just analyze for a moment
Speaker 2: Einstein's argument that there is such a thing and that
Speaker 2: it's of significance. One of the first ways we could
Speaker 2: approach it is to speculate that, well, perhaps Jewish physics
Speaker 2: is just what you get when Jewish physicists do physics
Speaker 2: for relativity. It's hard to advance that because it was
Speaker 2: clearly a mix of Jews and non Jews who contributed relativity.
Speaker 2: Now Einstein certainly had the leading voice in what became
Speaker 2: the modern theory of relativity, it was definitely a mixture.
Speaker 2: And even if we look at quantum mechanics, while Neils Borr,
Speaker 2: who was one of the pioneers, had a Jewish mother,
Speaker 2: if we go to the next slide, Berner Heisenberg really
Speaker 2: was the founder of the new theory. According to Einstein's
Speaker 2: friend Max Born Now, he was in a youth group,
Speaker 2: the White Knights, that got absorbed into the Hitler youth.
Speaker 2: Heisenberg contributed or participated in one of the paramilitary organizations
Speaker 2: that helped overthrow the Bavarian Socialist Republic, and he was
Speaker 2: trusted enough to be head of the German atomic weapons
Speaker 2: development program, so it's hard to make a case for
Speaker 2: him as being a Jewish physicist. Next, and also, Heisenberg
Speaker 2: wasn't alone in creating quantum mechanics. Now, some have criticized
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics as the quintessential sort of Jewish science, formalistic
Speaker 2: removed from observation, entirely concerned with symbol manipulation, but it
Speaker 2: was completed by Einstein's Jewish friend Max Born, and by
Speaker 2: Pasqual Jordan. Fact that his contribution was so significant, Einstein
Speaker 2: proposed that Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan should share a Nobel
Speaker 2: prize for their contributions. But Pascal Jordan, at the same
Speaker 2: time he was working on quantum mechanics, was actually contributing
Speaker 2: to nationalist magazines in by Our Germany like Blutenboten, Blood
Speaker 2: and Soil under a pseudonym and writing relatively extreme nationalist
Speaker 2: or right wing essays next, So clearly it was a
Speaker 2: mix of Jewish and non Jewish contributors responsible for quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: So to uphold the argument that anyone who supported quantum
Speaker 2: mechanics had to be Jewish. Heisenberg's opponents coined the term
Speaker 2: a white Jew to describe someone who may not be
Speaker 2: ethnically or racially Jewish, but was upholding Jewish ideas like
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics was supposed to be. Now. Ironically, Heisenberg's mother
Speaker 2: was also friends with the mother of Heinrich Himmler, who
Speaker 2: was the head of the Gestapo, and Heisenberg's mom got
Speaker 2: together with Himmler's mom and persuaded her to talk to
Speaker 2: her son Heinrich about getting his people to lay off
Speaker 2: her son, and was successful in that. After Himmler did
Speaker 2: his own investigation, he concluded, I believe Heisenberg is a
Speaker 2: decent person, and we cannot afford to lose or kill
Speaker 2: this man, who is relatively young and can educate a
Speaker 2: new generation next.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: These attitudes that Einstein had were shared by many of
Speaker 2: his non Jewish colleagues, like for instance, Somerfeld wrote to Lorentz,
Speaker 2: who came up with the Lorentz transforms that are key
Speaker 2: to relativity, and Somerfeld wrote that as ingenious as Einstein's
Speaker 2: approach to special relativity is it seems to me there's
Speaker 2: something almost unhealthy in their non constructive and non visualizable dynamic.
Speaker 2: An Englishman would hardly have put forth such a theory.
Speaker 2: Perhaps what is expressed here is the conceptually abstract nature
Speaker 2: of the semit I hope you'll be able to breathe
Speaker 2: some life into this ingenious conceptual framework. Now this was
Speaker 2: clearly not meant in a derogatory fashion. In fact, Summerfeld
Speaker 2: wrote to Vine a year earlier that he had now
Speaker 2: studied Einstein, who impresses me greatly, so Somemmrfeld also did
Speaker 2: the first class in relativity in Germany, as well as
Speaker 2: the first course on Boor's quantum mechanics, so he was
Speaker 2: on board with the physics, just objected to some of
Speaker 2: the esthetic aspects of it. Next now, Einstein wrote privately
Speaker 2: to Borr, I'm confident that Jewish physics is not to
Speaker 2: be killed in the middle of World War two, and
Speaker 2: Born wrote back, I've always appreciated your good Jewish physics.
Speaker 2: But it's evident from what Born wrote that he had
Speaker 2: a relatively narrow view of what constituted Jewish physics, that
Speaker 2: it was trying to get hold of the laws of
Speaker 2: nature by thinking alone engaging in thought experiments.
Speaker 1: Next.
Speaker 2: Next, Now, Einstein himself had a somewhat loose association between
Speaker 2: fact or experiment in theory. In nineteen nineteen, he was
Speaker 2: asked what his reaction would have been if the eclipse
Speaker 2: had disproved general relativity, and Einstein's reaction was to say, well,
Speaker 2: then I would feel sorry for the Good Lord, because
Speaker 2: the theory is correct anyway. In a debate with Nernst,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, Nerdst spoke of a certain causal relationship,
Speaker 2: and Einstein remarked, I don't think this relationship holds good.
Speaker 2: But my esteemed colleague replied, Nernst, it is justice relationship
Speaker 2: upon which yourself quite recently insisted in a lecture. To
Speaker 2: his amazement, Einstein replied, how can I help it if
Speaker 2: the Good Lord will not ratify what I maintained in
Speaker 2: my lecture. So there is a sense in which Einstein's
Speaker 2: approach to physics involved word games, a disconnection between experiment
Speaker 2: and theory. Next, So it's important to understand that what
Speaker 2: was so revolutionary and caused such controversy about relativity was
Speaker 2: Einstein's adaptation of Mack's positivism. This idea that we should
Speaker 2: look only at what the observer sees, and not worry
Speaker 2: about mechanisms or processes or an ether or anything else
Speaker 2: that might be going on to give rise to this.
Speaker 2: So that's why in special relativity Einstein reduced it to
Speaker 2: two principles. The speed of light appears constant to all observers,
Speaker 2: and the laws of physics are the same in all
Speaker 2: inertial reference frames. Well, when Heisenberg came to Berlin to
Speaker 2: present one of his first lectures on quantum mechanics, Einstein
Speaker 2: invited Heisenberg home, and Heisenberg wrote about this in his
Speaker 2: book Physics and Beyond in nightteen seventy years after Einstein's death.
Speaker 2: But the way Heisenberg described it, Einstein was very disturbed
Speaker 2: by the fact that in Heisenberg's quantum mechanics there was
Speaker 2: no such thing as an electron path or a trajectory,
Speaker 2: and Heisenberg quoted Einstein back to Einstein arguing that we
Speaker 2: should focus just on the observables, that we're not measuring
Speaker 2: the path or only measuring where it ends up. That
Speaker 2: bothered Einstein, and according to Heisenberg, he replied, perhaps I
Speaker 2: did use such a philosophy earlier, and also wrote it,
Speaker 2: but it is all nonsense, just the same. Next, So
Speaker 2: if you look at who really influenced Einstein, it's clear.
Speaker 2: In his early career Mack was one of the primary
Speaker 2: influences that physics is all about observables and we don't
Speaker 2: imagine fundamental physical causes like the ether Mack. But Einstein
Speaker 2: was also deeply influenced by a Dutch philosopher and scientist
Speaker 2: of Portuguese Jewish extraction, Spinoza, who argued that there were
Speaker 2: deep causal connections between everything in reality, even if they
Speaker 2: weren't obvious. So Mack, for his part, even in his
Speaker 2: old age, commented that he accepted relativity just as little
Speaker 2: as he accepted the existence of Adams. At that time,
Speaker 2: Einstein argued that his mode of thinking was much closer
Speaker 2: to positivism than it was later on, that his departure
Speaker 2: came only when he developed general relativity around nineteen fifteen
Speaker 2: or so. Next, let's go to the next slide. So
Speaker 2: the question is is there only one kind of physics?
Speaker 2: And many people who tackle this question and look at
Speaker 2: whether there's such a thing as Jewish physics default to
Speaker 2: the answer that there is no such thing as Jewish physics.
Speaker 2: Because really there's just physics. But even one of the
Speaker 2: scholars I found making that argument acknowledged one's cultural mil
Speaker 2: You may contribute to one's approach and the way one
Speaker 2: approaches problem seeking and answering questions. So it's worthwhile to
Speaker 2: step back and consider other approaches to physics, and three
Speaker 2: that I want to identify and highlight here are an
Speaker 2: English approach, a French or continental approach, and then the
Speaker 2: German nature philosophy approach. Now, the English approach to physics
Speaker 2: has long involved a focus on mechanisms and models. I
Speaker 2: already mentioned. Somemrfeld said an Englishman would never have put
Speaker 2: forth a theory with non constructive and non visualizable dogmatics
Speaker 2: like special relativity. Wilhelm Wein wrote to Ernest Rutherford that
Speaker 2: relativity theory something new Anglo Saxons will never understand because
Speaker 2: it requires a genuine German feeling for abstract speculation. Now
Speaker 2: we can trace English physics all the way back to
Speaker 2: the thirteenth century. I mean one of the first English
Speaker 2: physicists was Robert gross Test who did fundamental work in
Speaker 2: optics and the experimental method. His student, Roger Bacon, was
Speaker 2: one of the first experimental scientists and laid out the
Speaker 2: principles of induction that were taken up by Francis Bacon
Speaker 2: and others later. Of course, Isaac Newton was the quintessential
Speaker 2: English physicist, leading to the view of a clockwork universe.
Speaker 2: Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell applied that in electrodynamics,
Speaker 2: coming up with the concept of fields pervading space, and
Speaker 2: Oliver Heaviside and Heinrich Kurtz brought that to fruition with
Speaker 2: their work in electromagnetics. And of course, ironically the physicist
Speaker 2: responsible for putting the capstone on the English physics program
Speaker 2: was Heinrich Hurtz, who was not only German but also
Speaker 2: half Jewish, so clearly being English is not necessarily a
Speaker 2: requirement for practicing English physics. Next, at the same time,
Speaker 2: there was also a French or continental approach to physics
Speaker 2: that looked more at mathematical models and abstraction for gathering
Speaker 2: deeper knowledge. You can look at Pierre Louis Moperty, for instance,
Speaker 2: who generalized Newtonian dynamics with the principle of least action
Speaker 2: or low pital, who thought Newton's laws were a priori
Speaker 2: deductions of pure thought and the lagrange. You declared he
Speaker 2: had no use for figures and diagrams, only exact algebraic expressions.
Speaker 2: And this is what I talked about last time, the
Speaker 2: notion of a platonic or deductive approach to physics. The
Speaker 2: French Continental School liked physics to be kind of like
Speaker 2: Euclidean geometry. We have a few well described, well defined,
Speaker 2: well accepted axioms, and we deduce from those axioms the
Speaker 2: physical laws. Of course, that was very much, very similar
Speaker 2: to what Einstein did with special relativity. Next, but now
Speaker 2: we get to German physics, and one of the key
Speaker 2: intellectual figures of German culture is Johann GeTe. He was
Speaker 2: not only a scientist but also a philosopher and poet.
Speaker 2: Some people call him the German Shakespeare. He wrote a
Speaker 2: very famous play. Of course, the concept had been tackled
Speaker 2: by other people, but he had his own version of
Speaker 2: the play Faust, the famous play in which a scholar
Speaker 2: sells his soul to the devil in order to achieve
Speaker 2: knowledge and worldly gain. And one thing in that play
Speaker 2: caught Heisenberg's attention, and he quoted a long passage from
Speaker 2: which i'll just give you a small snippet where Mephistopheles
Speaker 2: is counseling faust I counsel you, my dear young friend,
Speaker 2: A course of logic to attend your mind will then
Speaker 2: be so well braced in Spanish boots, so tightly laced,
Speaker 2: that henceforth, by discretion taught will creep along the path
Speaker 2: of thought, and not with all the winds that blow
Speaker 2: go willow wisping to and fro. So that illusion of
Speaker 2: the Spanish boots. The infamous torture device that the Inquisition
Speaker 2: would clamp around the legs and feet of people to
Speaker 2: crush them and extract a confession, is described by Geta
Speaker 2: as imposing these bounds on reason. Of course, Gota's view
Speaker 2: was that you shouldn't tightly lace the Spanish boots, that
Speaker 2: you should allow your reason free realm and be willing
Speaker 2: to entertain paradoxical and potentially contradictory ideas. And ironically, I
Speaker 2: found that exact same phrase about not lacing the spirit
Speaker 2: in Spanish boots in the writings of nerdst when he
Speaker 2: was arguing back long before quantum mechanics was argued to
Speaker 2: have made this happen, that reality had to be a
Speaker 2: causal and we shouldn't lace our thoughts in Spanish boots
Speaker 2: by demanding causality. So this was clearly a key concept
Speaker 2: that the German physics community was thinking of.
Speaker 1: Next, right, so the Spanish boots are like an iron
Speaker 1: maiden for your feet. Right, So it's like that's the picture.
Speaker 1: There is the spiked steel put around. So that's it
Speaker 1: for people who just have audio. Right. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, now, what we talked last time a little bit
Speaker 2: about the beginning of the controversy on relativity leading up
Speaker 2: to Einstein's visit to America, and that had a really
Speaker 2: devastating effect not only on Einstein but also on his critics.
Speaker 2: Einstein dismissed his critics as ignorant or anti Semitic in
Speaker 2: a famous New York Times interview upon coming to America
Speaker 2: and elsewhere, and that really became a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: Next, interesting, so.
Speaker 2: I want to go back and talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about some of his leading critics. One was Philip Leonard.
Speaker 2: I mentioned him a little bit earlier. Leonard's mentor was
Speaker 2: the German Jewish physicist Heinrich Hertz, and Leonard actually spent
Speaker 2: a good year or so working on the proofs of
Speaker 2: Hertz's book after his death and making sure that his
Speaker 2: mentor's last book came out correctly. He had a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for Hertz and later in life described what
Speaker 2: a great scientist he thought Hurtz was, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that he was half Jewish. He assisted Renken on his
Speaker 2: pioneering work developing X rays and was not happy that
Speaker 2: Renkin did not give him credit. He claimed JJ Thompson,
Speaker 2: a British physicist and plagiarized him. But nevertheless, through his
Speaker 2: diligent experimental work, he won the nineteen oh five Nobel
Speaker 2: Prize for his work on cathode rays and for identifying
Speaker 2: and measuring the photoelectric effect that was the same physical
Speaker 2: phenomenon that Einstein got his Nobel Prize for ultimately, but
Speaker 2: for providing a theoretical explanation of it. He was outstanding lecturer.
Speaker 2: Even Einstein's girlfriend, who became his wife, wrote a letter
Speaker 2: to Einstein while attending lectures from Leonard and extolling what
Speaker 2: a wonderful lecturer he was. He's put as much time
Speaker 2: into setting up experimental demonstrations for his students as he
Speaker 2: did for his own research, and he carried on a
Speaker 2: cordial of course respondents with Einstein. After Einstein's paper on
Speaker 2: the photo electric effect came out, they exchanged a number
Speaker 2: of letters and had a very you know, he didn't
Speaker 2: agree with Einstein's interpretation, but they had a cordial correspondence.
Speaker 2: But the events of World War One were really the
Speaker 2: turning point for Leonard. Leonard blamed England for setting France
Speaker 2: and Russia against Germany and World War One. And that's
Speaker 2: not without some justification. The British and forced a very
Speaker 2: strict and devastating blockade on Germany. In fact, they continued
Speaker 2: that even after the war ended, until the final Treaty
Speaker 2: of Versailles was signed. Lots of Germans experienced privation and
Speaker 2: even starvation. Leonard's own son, Werner, died in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: two from the side effects of that long malnutrition that
Speaker 2: he suffered during the war years. In fact, Max Borne
Speaker 2: commented a mutual colleague Caro Runge in Gertingen was emaciated
Speaker 2: in a letter to Einstein and very angry about the fact. Well.
Speaker 2: In addition to his personal tragedy of losing his son,
Speaker 2: Leonard also became bankrupted by the hyperinflation. He like a
Speaker 2: good German patriot, invested all of his money and his
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize winnings in German war bonds, and those got
Speaker 2: inflated away into nothing, and he was insulted by Einstein.
Speaker 2: Next So, in nineteen twenty two, Einstein's Zionist friend Blumenfelt
Speaker 2: was good friends with a German Jewish financier, Walter Rathanow,
Speaker 2: and three of them would get together in Rathenau's apartment
Speaker 2: and talk. At that time, blumen tried to persuade Rathenow
Speaker 2: that it was wrong for a Jew to presume to
Speaker 2: run the foreign affairs of another people, but Rathanou felt
Speaker 2: that he needed to be to show that Jews could
Speaker 2: be good Germans and could could serve the German nation,
Speaker 2: and as a result he ended up accepting the position
Speaker 2: of Foreign Minister in one of the Weimar Republic governments.
Speaker 2: In February nineteen twenty two, Rathanau supported the Versailles Treaty.
Speaker 2: He signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: which angered a lot of the nationalists in Germany, and
Speaker 2: as a result he ended up being assassinated in June
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two. Now, that event got Leonard into trouble
Speaker 2: because Leonard held Rathanou responsible for the hyperinflation that had
Speaker 2: wiped him out and was just beginning to take off,
Speaker 2: but had already had devastating consequences, so he refused to
Speaker 2: lower the flag of his institute to half mass on
Speaker 2: the day of mourning that had been set aside. A
Speaker 2: communist mob broke into the building, dragged him out, and
Speaker 2: almost threw him in a river. It became something of
Speaker 2: a cause celeb and we can point to this incident
Speaker 2: where clearly, from then on out he had very strong
Speaker 2: political feelings and a very strong grudge against Einstein and
Speaker 2: the various Weimar governments in particular. Einstein, for his part,
Speaker 2: at this time, fled Berlin and went to Kiel on
Speaker 2: the Baltic where he had been working with a company
Speaker 2: called Anschutz and had developed some technology for their gyro compasses.
Speaker 2: In fact, Einstein Einstein earned royalties on his patents up
Speaker 2: until just before World War Two, and all of the
Speaker 2: German naval vessels, including the U boats that were attacking
Speaker 2: Allied commerce, they used these gyro compasses that included some
Speaker 2: of the intellectual property that was developed by Albert Einstein.
Speaker 2: I never knew that, so Leonard in the wake of
Speaker 2: what happened to him upon that assassination, added a word
Speaker 2: of a not admonishment to German natural scientists to his
Speaker 2: pre existing more academic criticism of relativity. He pointed out
Speaker 2: or argued that there was a well known Jewish characteristic
Speaker 2: of shifting from factual problems to the field of personal quarrel,
Speaker 2: and he called for the cultivation of a sound German spirit.
Speaker 2: He handed out these flyers at a major nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: two physics convention, and they weren't well received. That Heisenberg
Speaker 2: was in the audience there and commented how tragic he
Speaker 2: thought it was to see Leonard engaging in these semitic
Speaker 2: attacks on Einstein in particular and Jewish physics in general.
Speaker 2: When Einstein did get his award for the Nobel Prize
Speaker 2: in Physics, Leonard not only protested in private, but publicized
Speaker 2: his objections in the newspaper, which was a great breach
Speaker 2: of decorum. Now, the other anti relativist who was one
Speaker 2: of Einstein's great foes and a proponent of the Deutsche
Speaker 2: Physics was Johannes Stark. In nineteen oh seven, he solicited
Speaker 2: Einstein to write an article for the journal that he
Speaker 2: was editor of and he worked on the light quantum hypothesis,
Speaker 2: which is one of the key ideas in Einstein's paper
Speaker 2: on the photoelectric effect. In fact, he contributed. Stark contributed
Speaker 2: so much that Lorentz referred to it as the Einstein
Speaker 2: Stark hypothesis. About that time he offered Einstein. Stark offered
Speaker 2: Einstein an academic post, but Einstein had already made other
Speaker 2: arrangements to go work somewhere else and declined the offer.
Speaker 2: Now they got off on the wrong foot when Einstein.
Speaker 2: In Stark's view, Einstein failed to properly acknowledge his contributions
Speaker 2: and didn't quote him, which is didn't cite him as
Speaker 2: a predecessor in his physical work. Nevertheless, Stark did get
Speaker 2: the Nobel Prize in nineteen nineteen. Now, Stark started into
Speaker 2: the controversy in physics, taking the side of experimentalists against
Speaker 2: the theoreticians who were dominating the field. He argued that
Speaker 2: equated the emphasis on theoretical physics with this abstract, degenerate
Speaker 2: form of theoretical physics. Now, that got answered by Maxi
Speaker 2: Van Lowe, who pointed out at the time experimental physics
Speaker 2: was expensive and that's why there was so much theoretical
Speaker 2: physics going on a revolt of the experimentalists against the
Speaker 2: theorists in German physics societies, but ultimately got outmaneuvered by
Speaker 2: Wilhelm Bean, who ended up taking over and kind of
Speaker 2: shunting him aside. In nineteen twenty seven. Leonard wanted to
Speaker 2: retire and appoint Stark as his successor, but Leonard's colleagues
Speaker 2: rebelled and blocked star disappointment, so the anti relativists really
Speaker 2: weren't able to get much significant traction in the physics
Speaker 2: community until the Nazis took power, but they declared themselves
Speaker 2: for the Nazis. In the wake of the Beer Hall Push,
Speaker 2: Stark said kind of flamboyantly that as the National Socialist
Speaker 2: Party entered their struggle for power, he closed the doors
Speaker 2: of his physical laboratory and stepped into the ranks of
Speaker 2: the fighters behind Adolf Hitler. Now, the Beer Hall Push
Speaker 2: was an attempt in Munich to take over the government there.
Speaker 2: That was in November nineteen twenty three. Of course, it failed,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen twenty four General Ludendorf and Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 2: who were the ringleaders, went on trial. At the time
Speaker 2: that trial started, Leonard wrote a manifesto that Stark signed onto.
Speaker 2: The manifesto argued that the spirit of restless clarity, which
Speaker 2: hates every work of compromise because it's untruthful, it's the
Speaker 2: same spirit that we see in the great researchers of
Speaker 2: the past, like Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Faraday, and we
Speaker 2: admire and revere it in the same manner as Hitler
Speaker 2: and Ludendorf and their comrades. Maybe one of the first
Speaker 2: times someone compared Hitler to Faraday, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler,
Speaker 2: but that was really the a big turning point for
Speaker 2: Stark and for Leonard, placing themselves firmly in the Nazi camp.
Speaker 1: Next right, and then there's like Adolf Hidler saying it's
Speaker 1: Hebrews a poisoning and all that other stuff. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's like in the context, it's like these guys are jocking.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because it was it's not just physics,
Speaker 1: it's it's the entire culture, like the movement against the
Speaker 1: Frankfurt School. So this is also can be seen in
Speaker 1: the context of that. And it's also kind of how
Speaker 1: ethnicity and maybe culture influences what should be kind of
Speaker 1: a cold, dispassionate science. And I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: of that politicization we've seen in the US recently too,
Speaker 1: a lot of politics influencing what isn't.
Speaker 2: It Now we're focusing just on the physics aspect of it,
Speaker 2: but of course there's there's a lot a lot going
Speaker 2: on in the broader culture and buy our Germany than
Speaker 2: just the squabble between Einstein and his Nazi physics critics
Speaker 2: exactly well, they really ultimately were not terribly successful. Leonard
Speaker 2: by that time had pretty much retired. He wrote a
Speaker 2: book Great Men of Science, and he wrote a four
Speaker 2: volume science textbook, Deutsche physic Stark had some initial success
Speaker 2: when the Nazis came to power, getting academic bureaucratic positions
Speaker 2: in the government, and was very heavy handed. He met
Speaker 2: with some academicians and told them if they weren't willing
Speaker 2: to get on board with his program, he would use force.
Speaker 2: He was not well appreciated in the community. In fact,
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty six he was denied elevation to the
Speaker 2: Prussian Academy of Sciences because pretty much every other physicist
Speaker 2: or a vast majority of physicists did not appreciate him,
Speaker 2: and he tried to destroy Heisenberg, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: but Heisenberg's mother managed to quash that. So he did
Speaker 2: manage to keep Heisenberg from succeeding summer Fell. But ultimately
Speaker 2: the anti relativists weren't terribly successful, except in so far
Speaker 2: as they were part of the broader movement that forced
Speaker 2: many prominent Jewish scientists to leave Germany. One of their
Speaker 2: colleagues commented, it's fortunate that Leonard and Stark are no
Speaker 2: longer young. If they still had their youthful alam, they
Speaker 2: would command what should be taught as physics. So, of course,
Speaker 2: the broader context of what happened. In December nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 2: Einstein went for a trip to Pasadena in America, and
Speaker 2: he would never come home again because in January nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three, Hitler became Chancellor. The next month, in February,
Speaker 2: the Reichstag burned down, giving Hitler and his Nazi government
Speaker 2: the excuse to expand their powers. In May nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 2: over fifty thousand books were burned under the direction of
Speaker 2: the propaganda director Paul Joseph Goebbels. Jews were hired from
Speaker 2: their academic posts. Easily a quarter of all physicists who
Speaker 2: were Jewish got fired, even people who were very prominent
Speaker 2: businists like Max Bourne or Fritz Haber. Fritz Haber is
Speaker 2: a particularly tragic case. He was a thoroughly assimilated German Jew.
Speaker 2: He had converted to Protestantism in his youth. He was
Speaker 2: the physicist responsible for developing the haber Bosch process, which
Speaker 2: synthesized nitrogen out of air, creating fertilizer and literally creating
Speaker 2: bread from air. Now that same technology that made fertilizer
Speaker 2: also made the nitrates that were needed to make explosives.
Speaker 2: So his science was critical not only in feeding Germans
Speaker 2: during World War One, but in providing them a source
Speaker 2: of nitrates for explosives when they were under a blockade
Speaker 2: and they could not access the foreign sources of guano,
Speaker 2: bird and bat deposits that they would normally use. And
Speaker 2: yet he also was forced into an exile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a real loyalist, Like he was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent German loyalist. He namtive loyalist. And I think
Speaker 1: he revolutionized really agricultural worldwide, right, not just Germany.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, that process is a large part of what
Speaker 2: keeps people fed today, and we have Haber to thank
Speaker 2: for it. And the Nazis were not terribly.
Speaker 1: Grateful, No, not at all. They should have been. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, one final note. We talked about Einstein's personal life
Speaker 2: a bit and how abusive he was to his first
Speaker 2: wife before divorcing her and having an affair with his
Speaker 2: first cousin and then marrying her. Now he had two sons,
Speaker 2: Hans Albert, who grew up to be a very well
Speaker 2: respected professor of engineering. His other son, Edward, was diagnosed
Speaker 2: as being schizophrenic and institutionalized. And on the eve of
Speaker 2: World War Two, Einstein was busy trying to help Jews
Speaker 2: escape Europe, writing letters of recommendation, trying to get them
Speaker 2: permission and visas to get out. He said he ran
Speaker 2: a little refugee office from his cluttered lawyer desk, helping
Speaker 2: Jews escape Europe. He got a letter from his ex wife, Malava,
Speaker 2: seeking his help. Now she was a Serbian Orthodox Christian
Speaker 2: living in Switzerland. Even if the Nazis had annexed Switzerland
Speaker 2: like they did Austria, she'd probably been okay. But their
Speaker 2: half Jewish son, Edward, who was institutionalized in a mental institution.
Speaker 2: I mean, if the Nazis had taken power, it would
Speaker 2: have been all over for him. He would have never
Speaker 2: made it to a concentration camp, because often the Nazis
Speaker 2: would just show mental patience out of hand. And yet
Speaker 2: despite that, Einstein, as far as is known, never never replied.
Speaker 2: He wrote to paul Aarinfest something I mentioned last time,
Speaker 2: that in Einstein's view, valuable persons should not be sacrificed
Speaker 2: to helpless or to hopeless causes, and that held true
Speaker 2: even when it was his own son that was the cause.
Speaker 2: He wrote, his other son, Hans Albert, if I had
Speaker 2: been informed apparently of a potential genetic mental issue in
Speaker 2: Malava's family, Edouard would never have been born, and of
Speaker 2: course conceivable necessarily that would have meant Hans Albert wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been born. Also, So Einstein had a very troubled
Speaker 2: relationship with his family and was not the wise and
Speaker 2: sainted figure that he was publicized to be.
Speaker 1: He's become kind of like a figure, almost kind of
Speaker 1: like Marilyn Monroe or Elvis in this kind of promotion
Speaker 1: and him riding on his bike and his tongue out
Speaker 1: and humanitarian.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think I mentioned that last time that
Speaker 2: the Hebrew University in Jerusalem that has the rights to
Speaker 2: his likeness has earned something like a quarter billion dollars
Speaker 2: from licensing the Einstein image, everything from you know, the
Speaker 2: little Einstein's to anytime his face has appeared there. They're
Speaker 2: demanding their cut for licensing his image.
Speaker 1: Wow, amazing, he's worth more And since he's passed away
Speaker 1: than in life or should have been could have been.
Speaker 2: So the the the upshot of all this was a bitter,
Speaker 2: obviously very bitter polarization in physics. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: you had German physicists like Ernst Gherk, who acknowledged anyone
Speaker 2: who criticizes Einsteins either called an anti Semite or someone
Speaker 2: who's too stupid to grasp the theory of relativity, or both.
Speaker 2: And on the side of the German physicists like Leonard.
Speaker 2: Leonard was arguing by the mid nineteen thirties that natural
Speaker 2: science is of completely Aryan origin and Germans must today
Speaker 2: find their own way out into the unknown, and that
Speaker 2: polarization made it very difficult for people to look at
Speaker 2: relativity objectively. Another physicist, Ara Houston, writing in his Treatise
Speaker 2: on Light in nineteen thirty eight, commented, relativity is now
Speaker 2: accepted as a faith, and it is inadvisable to devote
Speaker 2: attention to its paradoxical aspects. Now it's kind of interesting
Speaker 2: seeing the fates of the anti relativists after World War One. Now,
Speaker 2: Leonard by that point was in his eighties and was
Speaker 2: so frail that they didn't even bother putting him on trial.
Speaker 2: Stark was a bit younger and was sentenced to six
Speaker 2: years in prison, but he ended up having that sentence
Speaker 2: commuted to a thousand marque fine. One of the really
Speaker 2: interesting cases was Paul Wayland. I remember he was the
Speaker 2: guy who started the working Group of German Scientists for
Speaker 2: Pure Science that somehow came up with a large amount
Speaker 2: of money to hire physicists and rent the Berlin Philharmonic.
Speaker 2: And no one really knows who was pulling his strings
Speaker 2: or giving him his money. He led a long career
Speaker 2: of Cohn artistry and grifting across Europe and even South America,
Speaker 2: and on the eve of World War Two he came
Speaker 2: home to Germany, and when he entered the country, the
Speaker 2: Germans threw him in Dacau, so he ended up spending
Speaker 2: World War Two in concentration camps. After the war, he
Speaker 2: awarded himself a doctorate, called himself Doctor Wayland, and emigrated
Speaker 2: to the US. And one of the final things he
Speaker 2: did was try to persuade the FBI that he had
Speaker 2: a secret information about Einstein being a communist, resulting in
Speaker 2: a rather large investigation, which is now available publicly through
Speaker 2: freedom of information. Now, World War Two was, of course
Speaker 2: part of the foundational narrative that even today the guides
Speaker 2: how we think about America. I really like the quote
Speaker 2: by the comedian Norm MacDonald who said, you know, it
Speaker 2: says here in the history book that luckily the good
Speaker 2: guys have won every single time. What are the odds?
Speaker 2: It's that narrative of the victor's writing the history that
Speaker 2: still governs US today and justice. World War two and
Speaker 2: its events are important to our understanding of the broader
Speaker 2: politics and culture of the US and the rest of
Speaker 2: the world. That debate between Jewish versus Deutsche physics informs
Speaker 2: modern physics, the interpretations of present day relativity and quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2: Though that debate and all of the dramatic effects it
Speaker 2: had in the personal lives of the participants kind of
Speaker 2: overshadows the actual philosophic ideas that are at the root
Speaker 2: of relativity and quantum mechanics, and it boils down to
Speaker 2: primarily being not really Jewish ideas at all, but rather
Speaker 2: the positivism of the Austrian German physicist Ernst Mack and
Speaker 2: Gerta's nature philosophy as channeled through mephistophiles in his play Faust.
Speaker 2: So we don't need to belabor the point. But Einstein
Speaker 2: didn't really live up to the hero caricature. He had
Speaker 2: a lot of personal weaknesses. He tended to answer dialectic
Speaker 2: with rhetoric, dismissing criticisms as being antisemitic or ignorant without
Speaker 2: actually engaging with him. He was very jealous of his
Speaker 2: own priority while being very careless recognizing the contributions and
Speaker 2: priority of others. Now, it was kind of interesting to
Speaker 2: me to see how this more realistic, if less complimentary
Speaker 2: picture of Einstein is really beginning to enter the mainstream
Speaker 2: of physics today. Just a few years ago of the
Speaker 2: science writer Paul Helper wrote in an essay in Physics Today,
Speaker 2: which is the mainstream magazine for practicing physicists. He wrote
Speaker 2: the relationship between Einstein and the press is a case
Speaker 2: in which a scientist's fame triumphed over the substance of
Speaker 2: his work. I mean, Einstein's fame was so hyperbolic, not
Speaker 2: even einste time quite live up to the reputation that
Speaker 2: the press tried to make for him. And Einstein acknowledged that.
Speaker 2: He commented he had been given a publicity value which
Speaker 2: he did not earn, and that was not necessarily a
Speaker 2: good thing. He also commented that the newspapers have mentioned
Speaker 2: my name too often, thus mobilizing the rabble against me,
Speaker 2: in a letter to Max Plot. Now one anecdote really
Speaker 2: drove home to me the importance of the whole Einstein
Speaker 2: narrative in physics. I've already mentioned how quarter billion dollars
Speaker 2: has been earned licensing Einstein's legacy. But not long ago
Speaker 2: I came across this kind of obscure account by the
Speaker 2: physicist Freeman Dyson, writing the forward of the New Quotable Einstein.
Speaker 2: Dyson in December nineteen eighty one was walking around the
Speaker 2: Princeton University campus around Christmas. Most everyone was gone on
Speaker 2: it was a dark and rainy night, he said, And
Speaker 2: then a military truck pulled up to the Institute there
Speaker 2: in Princeton. Israeli soldiers jumped out of the truck and
Speaker 2: went inside and started bringing boxes down and loading up
Speaker 2: the truck, and then you know, when they were done,
Speaker 2: they climbed on board the truck and drove away. And
Speaker 2: that was Einstein's papers and the archive being removed from
Speaker 2: the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton at being transported
Speaker 2: to their current resting place at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: And that that would be a military and Israeli military operation, apparently,
Speaker 2: if we're to take Dyson's word for it to do
Speaker 2: that kind of shows the geopolitical significance of Einstein and
Speaker 2: Einstein's legacy.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be the first Israeli military operation on the
Speaker 1: US soil, for sure, That's not part of our discussion.
Speaker 2: But so really, I've said a lot of negative things
Speaker 2: about Einstein, but I want to close by pointing out
Speaker 2: that his personal story does have something of a redemption arc.
Speaker 2: He pioneered the concept of focusing on observables in his
Speaker 2: theory of special relativity, but he came to reject that
Speaker 2: approach when he saw it applied to quantum mechanics, you're
Speaker 2: telling Heisenberg, Perhaps I did use such a philosophy and
Speaker 2: also wrote it, but it's nonsense all the same. His
Speaker 2: appreciation and adherence to Spinoza's idea of reality being connected
Speaker 2: and causal is what led him to say that God
Speaker 2: does not play dice with the universe, and he pointed
Speaker 2: away to the resolution of quantum paradoxes in what ended
Speaker 2: up being his most cited and perhaps most influential paper
Speaker 2: in the long run, not anything he did on relativity
Speaker 2: or the photo electric effect, but rather the paper he
Speaker 2: did with Podolski and Rosen, the E. P. R. Paper
Speaker 2: that argues quantum mechanics is not a complete theory without
Speaker 2: possibly having additional hidden variables. So I think it's it's
Speaker 2: interesting to uh you just take a moment in a
Speaker 2: moment and acknowledge his his despite his flaws and defects,
Speaker 2: how he may ultimately have ended up rejecting some of
Speaker 2: the worst errors of modern physics and pointing the way
Speaker 2: to a solution.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: So uh, this is uh, you know, our discussion here
Speaker 2: today is excerpted from a number of articles I've published
Speaker 2: on my fields and energy substack. That's it ETHERSR dot
Speaker 2: substack dot com, A E T H E R c
Speaker 2: z A R dot com.
Speaker 1: I have a let me see if I can pull that
Speaker 1: up sure screen present here it is right here there
Speaker 1: is so there's your sub stack and then also your
Speaker 1: website too, which is although also athersar dot com right right,
Speaker 1: and you can be contacted through that. I think this
Speaker 1: whole discussion is interesting because I think you can tie
Speaker 1: it to current events where there's a lot of ethnicity involved,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of ethnic sensitivities in today, whatever
Speaker 1: it could be. It's not just Jewish white people or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It's just there's always some friction and
Speaker 1: competition too. I think in a lot of ideas, like
Speaker 1: maybe just like maybe celebrities compete against each other sometimes
Speaker 1: for the public publicity. Intellectuals and academics do the same thing,
Speaker 1: and some people may not understand that or realize it,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they're very vicious fights and personals. I think
Speaker 1: a Kissinger I will always remember this famous quote by
Speaker 1: Kissinger is like fights are always the most the worst.
Speaker 1: I can't remember robate him, but because there's so little
Speaker 1: at stake or something like that, it kind of comes
Speaker 1: to mind. And then Also the celebrity, you think, also
Speaker 1: distorts the actual work, and it's easier for people to
Speaker 1: kind of astalt personalities and actually go into the details
Speaker 1: and sift through actual you know, the hard digging and
Speaker 1: figuring out what people's work are in context of other
Speaker 1: academicians or other physicists' ideas, and it extrapolates over everything.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really is it? This is a current issue?
Speaker 1: Like how important is that?
Speaker 2: It was very interesting to me to see how Einstein
Speaker 2: had very negative views about the Israeli War for independence
Speaker 2: and thought that the Zionists were too harsh. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was an advocate of the two state solutions. He
Speaker 2: thought that jew should live in peace in Palestine with
Speaker 2: the Palestinians, and the views that he expressed, particularly comparing
Speaker 2: the Herout Party, which of course became the Benjamin Yahu's
Speaker 2: Likud party, he was comparing them to fascists and Nazis,
Speaker 2: and today that would be kind of a scorched earth offense,
Speaker 2: but you know, back in the day that was you know,
Speaker 2: he was forgiven and actually offered the presidency of Israel
Speaker 2: just a few years later, so it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot going on. I mean, it's it
Speaker 1: is interesting context. It's kind of like jockeying elbowing, and
Speaker 1: also you know the impression about people that they haven't
Speaker 1: but he's still he's still seeing like his legacy, aside
Speaker 1: from his kind of like public image, his legacy as
Speaker 1: a real physicist is is legitimate. I mean, do you
Speaker 1: agree with that?
Speaker 2: I do? I mean, certainly, well, I highlight a lot
Speaker 2: of the issues with his work with the you know,
Speaker 2: he left himself open to accusations of plagiarism by not
Speaker 2: citing his sources. I think one of the areas he
Speaker 2: probably gets more credit than he deserves is in the
Speaker 2: whole E equals MC squared idea, which was one of
Speaker 2: his papers but had a lot of predecessors, and in fact,
Speaker 2: Einstein wasn't the one who ultimately came up with the
Speaker 2: general proof of that concept, but he did have very
Speaker 2: creative work that he did on the photoelectric effect. In fact,
Speaker 2: I think that was the one paper he never got
Speaker 2: any accusations of plagiarism on. And we can take issue
Speaker 2: with his approach to special relativity for his emphasis on
Speaker 2: observables instead of on underlying mechanisms. But you know, I
Speaker 2: think people like Oppenheimer and Born himself, and Rutherford, who
Speaker 2: pointed out that you know, it's an esthetic appreciation of
Speaker 2: the approach. The approach works. You might not appreciate the
Speaker 2: way it's formed or the approach he took, but you
Speaker 2: can use it to do science. But what I would
Speaker 2: advise is not to focus on it to the exclusion
Speaker 2: of all alternate approaches. There are many ways to do physics,
Speaker 2: and you really do need to have a balance of
Speaker 2: the kind of deductive coming up with physics from Axiom's
Speaker 2: approach that Einstein pioneered in his earlier life, and the
Speaker 2: more inductive, Well, let's look at what's going on with
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics and try to figure out the hidden variables
Speaker 2: from the problems that we're seeing with it.
Speaker 1: Right, So, some of these things are not really as
Speaker 1: much arguments over content as much as style. Would you
Speaker 1: agree with their aesthetics? Style could be synonymous with US ducks.
Speaker 2: Maybe a lot of it is style. I mean, part
Speaker 2: of the issue is when you are approaching physics from
Speaker 2: this deductive point of view, it's very easy to work
Speaker 2: yourself into a sterile system of thought that is focusing
Speaker 2: on just coming up with ever more elaborate models to
Speaker 2: approach the data instead of stepping back and trying to
Speaker 2: come up with alternate models and alternate explanations on an
Speaker 2: inductive basis.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, great, Thanks so much for your presentation. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for your time. This was part two of Einstein
Speaker 1: Relativity and Modern Physics. And check out or other shows
Speaker 1: that I've done with on Sean's the first one I
Speaker 1: did in May and then the Wise of Heart Modern
Speaker 1: Day Reimagining of the Scopes. Muggy draw now put links
Speaker 1: to his website and to his substack in the show notes,
Speaker 1: so check those out as well. Go subscribe. Hans Schantz
Speaker 1: s C H A N t Z. And again we
Speaker 1: talked about Einstein relativity in modern physics. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for your time. Oh, thank you. There have