Abstract
Having followed this rather arduous conceptual journey to the principle of relativity, which in the end is quite simple and clear, let’s go back to the beginning of this Chapter and recall Einstein’s imaginary ride on a beam of light at the age of 16. Reprising the problem, which we will now speak of in the language of traveling in an inertial system moving at some given speed, we saw that when the system reached light-speed the space in our dwelling became dark and hence we knew our exact speed, absolutely. It should be clear now what the problem was – what Einstein called a paradox – for this knowledge violated the principle of the relativity of motion. The darkened room would be the experiment, so-to-speak, that detected absolute motion.
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Notes
- 1.
Munich is about 75 miles east of Ulm.
- 2.
- 3.
Einstein [51] [1948], p. 3.
- 4.
Winteler-Einstein [214] [1924], p.xxii.
- 5.
- 6.
Einstein [51] [1949], p. 5.
- 7.
A photograph of the interior of the Einstein electric company and the machinery is in Renn (ed.), [172], Volume One, p. 133.
- 8.
“das heilige Geometrie-Büchlein” in German; in Einstein [51] [1949], pp. 8 & 9.
- 9.
A simple explanation, provided by his sister, is that he was avoiding the military draft. See Winteler-Einstein [214] [1924], p. xxi-xxii. Alternatively, Pyenson [169], p. 51, says: “His decision to renounce German citizenship…can be seen as a reprisal against an entire society that had taken away his family’s livelihood.”
- 10.
A Kanton is a Swiss entity similar to a state or providence.
- 11.
In addition, his sister, Maja, later married one of the sons; and a close friend, who we will meet later, Michele Besso, married another daughter.
- 12.
Quoted in Miller [143]; p. 181 in the 1981 edition. Actually this was his second read; he first perused Kant’s book around the age of thirteen.
- 13.
Quoted in Holton [99], pp. 390–391.
- 14.
For some thought-provoking ideas about Einstein’s background and personality see Pyenson [169], Chap. 3, “Einspänner: the Social Roots of Einstein’s World View.”
- 15.
A noted before, Fig. 2.1 is my reconstruction of Einstein’s thought experiment. There are many attempts at historically retelling Einstein’s idea but there is no definitive one because he never gave us one. It appears only in his autobiography, it is very short, almost cryptically written, and with a confusing if not contradictory sentence. I analyze this sentence in some detail in Topper [198], pp. 12–13. Recall too that the autobiography was penned in 1947, over fifty years after the event, which further clouds the historical record.
- 16.
Supposedly the symbol c was based on the Latin word celeritas, meaning very fast.
References
Einstein, Albert. 1979. Autobiographical Notes. Translated and edited by Paul A. Schilpp. La Salle & Chicago: Open Court Publishing. This is the corrected version of the original 1947 German manuscript, first published in 1949. The uncorrected version is the more accessible one: see Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. Two Volumes. Edited by Paul A. Schilpp. New York: Harper & Row, 1949, Vol. I, 3–95. The latter book is cited separately below under Schilpp (ed.), 1979.
Holton, Gerald. 1988. Thematic origins of scientific thought: Kepler to Einstein. Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 8 (pp. 279–370) is a reprint of the classic article, “Einstein, Michelson, and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment,” published in Isis, vol. 60 (1969), 133–197. Comments on subsequent work are on 477–480.
Isaacson, Walter. 2007. Einstein: his life and universe. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Miller, Arthur I. 1998. Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: emergence (1905) and early interpretation (1905–1911). Republished edition; original 1981. New York: Springer.
Neffe, Jürgen. 2007. Einstein: a biography. (trans: Shelley Frisch) from the 2005 German edition. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Pyenson, Lewis. 1985. The young Einstein: the advent of relativity. Bristol/Boston: Adam Hilger Ltd.
Renn, Jürgen (ed.). 2005. Albert Einstein, chief engineer of the universe. Volume I. One hundred authors for Einstein; Volume II. Einstein’s life and work in context; Volume III. Documents of a life’s pathway. Weinheim: Wiley-Vch Verlag.
Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). 1949. Einstein: philosopher-scientist. Two Volumes. New York: Harper & Row. I have used the 1959 Harper Torchbook edition. This work is a collection of essays on Einstein’s legacy written mainly by noted scientists and philosophers. Several essays are cited in this book: those by Bohr, Born, Lemaître, Sommerfeld, and others. The first essay is the original version of Einstein’s autobiography that Schilpp cajoled Einstein to write. I have used the corrected version (cited above, see Einstein, 1979) for most translations in English. Both it and the first volume of Schilpp also contain the original German version of the autobiography, which I have used when I did not agree with the published English translation.
Topper, David R. 2007. Quirky sides of scientists: true tales of ingenuity and error in physics and astronomy. New York: Springer.
Winteler-Einstein, Maja. 1987. Albert Einstein – A biographical sketch (Excerpt). Einstein Papers 1: xv–xxii. See Einstein, 1987, above. Einstein’s sister, Maja, wrote this sketch in 1924.
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Topper, D.R. (2013). Einstein’s First Famous Thought Experiment. In: How Einstein Created Relativity out of Physics and Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 394. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4782-5_2
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