Einstein on Relativity
The theories of relativity were revolutionary. Everybody agrees that Einstein brought about this revolution. Even the people that claim that Einstein just tweaked the theories of Lorentz and Poincaré, admit that Einstein was the first to recognize the physical meaning of the formulations. He understood that the terms and concepts like those of absolute space and absolute time must lose there meaning and other concepts had to replace them, if we were to be able to understand the phenomena of electrodynamics. All this is consistent with a scientific revolution as conceived of by Kuhn. It is then possible to express the revolution in science that Einstein started in terms of Kuhn’s paradigms and paradigm shifts.
Kuhn thought that scientific development was discontinuous . He believed that the important changes in science show radical discontinuity. Most basic to his views was the concept of a paradigm. A paradigm or as he latter termed it, a disciplinary matrix, was the most fundamental rules and concepts that defined a field of study. He said that a disciplinary matrix has three or four basic parts. The first is the symbolic generalizations. For example, in the Newtonian disciplinary matrix that was the paradigm at the time that Einstein worked, a symbolic generalization would be F = ma. The second part of the disciplinary matrix was what he called the metaphysical parts or the ontology. This is where the entities that a theory is committed to are. These are the things that the disciplinary matrix assumes exist in order to express the phenomena of a field of science in terms of these things. In the Newtonian disciplinary matrix, a metaphysical part would be the mechanical viewpoint: that everything ca...
... middle of paper ...
...t agree with that. Also, while Einstein thought that a system could be judged by the experiments and observations objectively, Kuhn did not think that either. Einstein’s science can still be expressed in Kuhn’s terminology as a scientific revolution and revolutionary science.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
Curd and Cover. Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues. W. W. Norton & Company
NY: 1998 pg.83- 118 Kuhn, Thomas. The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions, and Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice.
Einstein, A, Ether and the Relativity Theory, Sidelights on Relativity. Dover
Publications, Inc. NY: 1983.
Einstein, A, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. TR: Lawson, Robert, Three
Rivers Press, NY: 1961.
Einstein, A, Autobiographical Notes. TR: Schilpp, Paul, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois:
1979.
Thomas Kuhn, an American Philosopher of Science in the twentieth century, introduced the controversial idea of "paradigm shifts" in his 1962 book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." This essay will discuss paradigm shifts, scientific revolutions, mop up work, and other key topics that Kuhn writes about in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" in great detail. This essay will explain what Kuhn means by mop up work, by drawing on the broader view of paradigms that he presents and explaining how paradigms are born and develop such that they structure the activities of normal science in specific ways, and this essay will show how this kind of mop up work can, in certain circumstances, lead to a new paradigm instead of more normal science.
The Famous and Brilliant, Albert Einstein, was born in Germany in 1879. Einstein was born into a Jewish family, and grew up in Munich, Germany, where his father and uncle collectively ran a company that produced electrical equipment. Later in his childhood, Einstein’s family moved to Italy, then to Switzerland not long after. In 1896, Einstein renounced his German citizenship so that he would be able to avoid the Obligatory military service.
Without theories, scientists’ experiments would yield no significance to the world. Theories are the core of the scientific community; therefore figuring out how to determine which theory prevails amongst the rest is an imperative matter. Kuhn was one of the many bold scientists to attempt to bring forth an explanation for why one theory is accepted over another, as well as the process of how this occurs, known as the Scientific Revolution. Kuhn chooses to refer to a theory as a ‘paradigm’, which encompasses a wide range of definitions such as “a way of doing science in a specific field”, “claims about the world”, “methods of fathering/analyzing data”, “habits of scientific thought and action”, and “a way of seeing the world and interacting with it” (Smith, pg.76). However in this case, we’ll narrow paradigm to have a similar definition to that of a ‘theory’, which is a system of ideas used to explain something; it can also be deemed a model for the scientific community to follow. Kuhn’s explanation of a Scientific Revolution brings to light one major problem—the problem of incommensurability.
Miller, A. (1975) Albert Einstein and Max Wertheimer: a Gestalt psychologist's view of the genesis of special relativity theory. History of science; an Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching 13 (2): 75–103.
A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn. "Science and Non science: Defining the Boundary." Part 1. Pages 6-19. [...]
Moreover, the nature of human beings in “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolution” is to change. Kuhn’s work mentions that as the universe is evolving, human beings seek
Scientists ranging from James Clerk Maxwell and Max von Laue have been claimed to be true discovers of the Mass-Energy Equivalence, which has popularly been credited to Albert Einstein’s “Theory of special relativity” back in 1905. There has been many controversies, but in conclusion Einstein is the official claimer.(Ball, P. (n.d.). The equation proved that energy and matter are linked. This was only one of the major breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905 and his best work was yet to come in later years.
Stemming from the first years of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has had a monumental influence on modern science. First explored by Max Planck in the 1900s, Einstein modified and applied much of the research in this field. This begs the question, “how did Einstein contribute to the development and research of quantum mechanics?” Before studying how Einstein’s research contributed to the development of quantum mechanics, it is important to examine the origins of the science itself. Einstein took much of Planck’s experimental “quantum theory” research and applied it in usable ways to existing science. He also greatly contributed to the establishment of the base for quantum mechanics research today. Along with establishing base research in the field, Einstein’s discoveries have been modified and updated to apply to our more advanced understanding of this science today. Einstein greatly contributed to the foundation of quantum mechanics through his research, and his theories and discoveries remain relevant to science even today.
The theory of Special Relativity, written by Albert Einstein in 1905, describes the laws of motion at velocities close to and at the speed of light. It was written to make the laws of motion consistent with the laws of electromagnetism. Special relativity makes two postulates: the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers and the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, regardless of motion. One of the consequences of these postulates is that clocks run slower to an observer in motion, or time slows down. Special relativity also states that objects at high speeds always appear shorter in the direction of motion than they do at rest. However, length measurements transverse to the direction of motion are unaffected. Velocity addition is different for special relativity than for classical mechanics because according to special relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Also, in order to retain the conservation of momentum as a general law consistent with Einstein's first postulate, a new definition of momentum must be used at relativistic velocities. The twin paradox is the famous example that uses time dilation and length contraction. Special relativity is not contradictory with classical mechanics because at low speeds, all of the laws of special relativity reduce to the laws of classical mechanics.
Einstein’s theories of Special and General relativity have helped shaped the world that we live in today. By helping us not only know more about space but about the world around us. It helped us understand the laws of nature are the same for everybody and that the speed of light is the same for everybody also. It helped us understand more about space with his theories on space-time and the curvature of space-time. His theories have led to many discoveries that help us in our everyday life such as nuclear technology that we use for our power and medical field.
Kuhn’s book was focused on the scientific world. He said that normal science “means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievments, achievments thatsome particular scientific community aacknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice” (Kuhn 10). These achievments needed to be unprecedented and open-ended so as to attract a group away from competing ideas and to leave all sorts of problems for this group to resolve. these achievments are called paradigms. a paradigm is defined by Kuhn as “an accepted canon of scientific practice, including laws, theory, applications, and instrumentation, that provides a model for a particular coherent tradition of scientific research” (Trigger 5).
The two fundamental components of Kuhn’s proposition of scientific revolutions are the concepts of paradigms and paradigm shifts. He defines paradigms as “sufficiently unprecedented [theories] to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity” (Kuhn, 10). Through this interpretation, Kuhn constructs the argument that possessing the ability to convince other scientists to agree with a novel proposal serves as the most crucial aspect for establishing scientific advancement. Kuhn reasons that the task of discovering “one full, objective, true account of nature” remains to be highly improbable (Kuhn...
The aim of this essay is to provide a summary and critique of Thomas S. Kuhn’s groundbreaking thesis ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.’ This will be done by analyzing his concepts of ‘paradigm’, ‘normal science’ and ‘scientific revolutions.’ Following the overview I will present the example of ‘The Copernican Revolution’ to empirically show a paradigm shift. The rest of the essay is concerned specifically with critically examining Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm and the incommensurability between them. I will show that to define paradigm is a never ending task however this should not hinder the usefulness of the concept itself.
Many scientists seemed to play a small role in Kuhn’s paradigm. Newton believed that science could answer questions accurately, if not “nearly” truthfully. Newton still sought the truth, but acknowledged that one scientist could not solve all of the problems of the world, and thus would solve what he could and leave the harder stuff for people of the future. Newton also believed scientists should focus on observable physical matters that they could answer, rather than philosophical ideas that could not be solved. Newton gave Thomas Kuhn an example of a paradigm shift. Before Newton, there was what was considered new science, which had abjured to Aristotle’s old belief system and the...
Cole, K. C., and Sue Giddings. "Is There Such a Thing as Scientific Objectivity?" DISCOVER Sept. 1985: 76-78. Web.