Talk:Albert Einstein/Archive 9

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Why is there no mention of Einstein abandoning his first family in Europe? He walked away from his first wife and children without any further financial support of them. That should be included in this article. In many respects, this article is more of a mythology of Einstein than a biography... Stevenmitchell 11:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 Hi  Fastfission, what's wrong with primary sources
 directly from Einstein's mouth ? 
 He spoke clearly about his religious opinions.
     His  " God does not play dice "  quote,
 from the 20 year debate he had with Bohr,
 is known by almost everyone.
    He was also a popular author who's
 " Ideas & Opinions " and  " The World As I See It " 
 books were widely read.
 My most central quote comes from those books.  
 Jeff Relf 22:13, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
Strange comment indeed! For sure Wikipedia should avoid secondary sources in those cases where primary sources are available and sufficient, as in general originals are more reliable than paraphrases of those originals. An example is the Ehrenfest paradox, where one or two secondary (and more tertiary etc.) sources even misquoted the original source. Harald88 23:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I took fastfission's comment to mean Secondary Source quotes and information needed to be properly referenced. As Jibal says, when some one quotes a primary source, but rephrases what they say - often creating a different interpretation, especially when the primary source is dead - it creates a lot of confusion. Out of curiousity I did a google search on Jeff Relf and it seems he has a history along these lines. (Mainly on USENET). --Astralusenet 12:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Jeff, Einstein never used the word "pseudorandom"; that came out of your mouth, not his. Thus, it's not a primary source. You either realize this, and are acting here in bad faith, or you don't. WP policy says I must not assume bad faith, but since it is quite beyond plausibility that you don't realize that your words are not a primary source, I haven't assumed it, rather I have had it forced upon me as a matter of logic. As that is rather unpleasant, please stop doing that which forces that conclusion upon me (and most others here, I suspect). -- Jibal 10:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Jibal,  There can be no doubt that
 Einstein took the very metaphysical, 
 yet very sober view that all randomness
 is pseudorandom.
     The Wiki entry on the word
 Pseudorandomness begins:
 " A pseudorandom process is a process that 
   appears random but is not. 
       Pseudorandom sequences typically exhibit
   statistical randomness while being generated by
   an entirely deterministic causal process."
 As you can see, the meaning is not restricted
 to computer simulations.
     As countless quotes from Einstein reveal,
 Nothing I wrote was Original_Research.
 In fact, that's why the quotes Must_Be there,
 no matter how much _You_ disagree with Einstein.
 Jeff Relf 23:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Point out EXACTLY where Einstein used the word psuedorandom in this context. A verifiable source, in literature. Till then ITS YOUR OPINION 62.56.70.236 23:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

  • OK, let's back off a bit. What Einstein did say was, essentially, that anything we call "random" is so because we don't understand the causality behind it. I think it would be a mistake to link this to the word "pseudorandom", unless we can provide an authority for connecting Einstein's metaphysical position to the mathematical term "pseudorandom". It shouldn't be hard, if it's as obvious as Jeff says. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff please cut the BS and quit hiding behind the ...no matter how much _You_ disagree with Einstein bit. I don't see anyone here disagreeing with Einstein, they are all just questioning your interpretation and wording connections between the quotes. The article can be written without any quotes and your lame, the quotes Must_Be there, phrase is quite simply absurd. An article is not just a creatively patched together list of quotes. Vsmith 02:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Jpgordon, Vsmith and 62.56.70.236,
 I'd love to see better  " interpretations ".
 The word pseudorandom was never limited to mathematics.
 Einstein wrote:
   Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end,
   by forces over which we have no control.
       It is determined for the insects as well as the star.
   Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to 
   a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
 He also wrote:
   If  [ God ]  is omnipotent,  then every occurrence,
   including every human action,  every human thought, 
   and Every human feeling and aspiration is also His work;
       how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for
   their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being ?
   In giving out punishment and rewards he would,
   to a certain extent, be passing judgment on Himself.
       How can this be combined with
   the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him ?
   EinsteinAndReligion.COM/scienceandreligion2.html
 Jeff Relf 02:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

So? Our interpretations of those quotes and your interpretations of those quotes are utterly irrelevant. You really need to get to understand this. We don't get to come to conclusions here. We don't get to make inferences. We don't get to analyze. If you want to link Einstein with the term "pseudorandom" -- and I think it's quite a good connection, actually -- you just need to find a single verifiable reliable source making that connection. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:23, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Jpgordon,  My interpretation ?
 Einstein didn't write in hieroglyphics.
     Einstein debated 20 years with Bohr
 about this topic and wrote best-selling books which
 also discussed it.
 What does the ever-famous phrase:
    God does not play dice.
 mean to you ? any why doesn't that imply that
 randomness is always pseudo-random ?
 Do you imagine that dice are truly random ?
 Jeff Relf 03:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 Astralusenet quoted Jeff_Relf:
 Hi  Jpgordon,  My interpretation ?
 Einstein didn't write in hieroglyphics.
  • well Jeff, if this is the case where did he use the word pseudorandom? You are being deliberately obtuse about this. --Astralusenet 12:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

What could that conceivably have to do with anything? Stop. Listen. Please. Find that reliable source. That's the only way the word is getting into the article. That's how it works here. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:48, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Jpgordon,  Imagine my surprise last Saturday
 when, glancing at the top-left front page
 of the New York Times, the fist line I read was:
   Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that
   " anyone can edit."  Unless you want to edit
   the entries on Albert Einstein...
 Einstein was first, last, and foremost,
 a mathematician... modeling nature herself, God.
 Dice are pseudorandom, Einstein talked about
 psuedorandomness all the time, ten different ways,
 ...I can show you the quotes.
 And that's true no matter if
 he used that exact word or not.
 Jeff Relf 04:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

And no you admit he may never have used the word at all. Its not exactly a great advert for wiki... --Desdinova 10:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I've replaced the pseudorandom bit with a more in context quote as it seemed Jeff was using "The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past." quite out of context. Now the longer quote I added (from Jeff's source[1]) provides context, but needs to be integrated better if it is to remain. I dislike cherry picking quotes to support a "personal" interpretation out of context. Vsmith 13:27, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Vsmith  ( and Desdinova ),
 I moved the fuller context to the footnotes
 because it disrupted the flow, the intent.
 I replaced the word pseudorandom with the phrase
 " never truly random ".
 Look guys, it's obvious to me that you simply
 don't like what Einstein had to say 
 about randomness; but that should not influence
 WikiPedia's report of the facts.
 Jeff Relf 00:17, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You have been asked several times to provide a fuller explanation for your interpretations, which yyou have failed to do. --Desdinova 01:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desdinova,
 There's no doubt about what Einstein believed
 concering block time.
     The only doubt is
 whether you'll allow WikiPedia to mention
 those beliefs.  My comments merely point
 to the philosophical catagory that it falls under
 and to emphasize and clarify.
 Jeff Relf 04:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The full quote sums up his religious views quite well and does not belong in a footnote. Your picking out a single line of it to support your pseudo- stuff is out of context cherry picking and quite possibly OR. Your cherry picking of that quote says to me that you don't like what he says about religion and are trying to turn it into some pseudorandom speculation. He had a strong disagreement with aspects of quantum mechanics because of the uncertainties and unpredictabilities involved, but that was not due to his religious ideas but his scientific philosophy (where the line is between those is quite uncertain 'though). Vsmith 02:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Vsmith, oddly enough,
 I like the changes you made.
 Jeff Relf 04:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Two things: 1. I don't like the use of the term "psuedorandom" to describe the opinion that in the end there is no ultimate randomness. This is not what pseudorandom means (when something is pseudorandom, it means it is simulating randomness. That is not the same thing as saying that randomness does not ultimately exist). If you want to say that Einstein believes that observed randomness is really just apparent randomness, or that he ultimately believes in a deterministic universe, then just say it; don't misuse terminology when there is no reason to. 2. Whatever the case may be (honestly, I don't care whether randomness exists or not), I still don't see why this is in the "Religion" section. This is quantum metaphysics. It does not really have much to do with his religious views, in my opinion. When people read a section on "religious views", they want to know things like does he believe in a monotheistic God, does he believe people go to heaven, does he believe that the world was created by a God or that it came about under natural processes, etc. The question as to whether or not there is actual randomness in the universe seems to have little to do with that except under the most strained and un-intuitive of interpretations of the word "religion". (It should be noted that believing that observed randomness is only apparent randomness is not an opinion unique to Einstein in the slightest; much of 18th century statistics was made by people who thought that the randomness they observed was just a sign of their ultimate lack of true comprehension. It is only slightly interesting in the context of the Bohr-Einstein debates and in relation to Einstein's views on quantum mechanics, IMO, which again has practically nothing to do with religion in any sense that I know of). --Fastfission 03:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems, based on his comment history here, and what I found on Google Groups, that Jeff has some level of obsession about presenting his ideas regarding "psuedorandomness" and equating it to a religious belief (which he asserts is held by Einstein). Anyway, (sorry for the ramble), you are quite right. Reading this now, it would be much better served by being in a different section. It seems to have less and less to do with Einstien and more to do with a metaphysical interpretation of the world.

--Astralusenet 08:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Fastfission,  Please read 
 the latest Religious_Views section.
     Vsmith's changes now make it quite clear
 how randomness was a _Religious_ issue 
 for Einstein.  ( Thanks Vsmith )
     Per your request, 
 the word pseudorandom has been replaced with 
 this wording:
   Einstein asserted that
   time is pseudo-directional; 
   in other words, God (physical nature)
   is never truly random so the future
   is just as immutable as the past.
   For example, he once said:
     People like us, who believe in physics,
     know that the distinction between past,
     present, and future is 
     only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
 If you read the block time entry,
 including all the greater links,
 you'll see that it's a philosophical belief.
 Jeff Relf 04:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok so is this Einstein's Religous Views, or JR's personal interpretation? This is getting beyond a joke. He's been told several times to lay off, and he just keeps editing it back in. --Desdinova 13:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

JR seems to blur the distinction between religion and philosophy. The two are not the same and Einstein's personal philosophy regarding determinism and other philosophical points seem rather out of place in a Religion section. I think the non-religious philosophical bits should be removed from the section. Einstein's philosophy can be discussed separately. Although the boundaries between religion, mysticism, and philosophy are not distinct - we shouldn' lump them all in the religious views section. Vsmith 13:39, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd go along with that if I didn't know the facts. As everyone(except you and Fastfission?) knows, Einstein claimed "God does not play dice". Thus he himself presented it as religious philosophy (otherwise, his argument is meaningless). Don't you know that churches have been divided and literally split in two on that issue? Thus it's unwarranted to call his opinion about randomness a "non-religious philosophical bit". Harald88 20:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not consider his one (famous) line about God playing dice to be representative of the connection between religion and quantum metaphysics in his head (no more than it is a claim about the existence of a monotheistic God -- Einstein himself took pains to encourage people not to read too much into that famous line). As I pointed out, I thoroughly recognize that metaphysics and religion are related to one another but to label his thoughts on questions of determinism in quantum mechanics as his "religious views" is thoroughly misleading. --Fastfission 22:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Amazingly enough, that famous line is absent. IMHO it belongs there, with comments - especially Einstein's explanation "to encourage people not to read too much into that famous line", as you put it, will be very useful for the general reader. We can't pretend that the issue doesn't exist, instead it's better to deal with it. Harald88 23:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
(following edit conflict) Agreed, it is perhaps one of the most misused quotes of the century. Also the related quip by Stephen Hawking: Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.[2] It was an analogy used in a discussion of deterministic philosophy of 19th century science and the weirdness and unpredictability of quantum mechanics. Neither Einstein nor Hawking were discussing religion - unless religion encompasses all philosophy. Also, if I hit my thumb with a hammer and exclaim God damn!, am I discussing religion? - I think not. Vsmith 23:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, please stop enforcing your personal view on this entry, particularly with words that are not representative of his views. You are running dangerously close to the three reverts. --Desdinova 22:59, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Fastfission, Harald88, Vsmith and  Desdinova,
     Vsmith's quote perfectly compares and contrasts
 Einstein's _Religious_ views with that of
 traditional society.
    I can't win either way...
 if I add any words other than quotes you all
 claim that I'm making wooly interpretations
 and coming up with Original_Research.
    Yet if I just list quotes you claim it's
 just a list of silly bons mots, better left to
 WikiQuote.
    The reference to Block Time _Must_ be there,
 as it's a known philosophy which is central to
 _Einstein_'s POV  ( not yours, quite obviously )
 see: Plato.Stanford.EDU/entries/time/#8
 ACA.MQ.EDU.AU/PaulDavies/publications/reviews/THAT%20MYSTERIOUS%20FLOW.pdf
 Jeff Relf 23:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

That is YOUR VIEW. --Desdinova 23:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, you're absolutely correct in saying that neither your interpretations of Einstein's views or simple quotations of them will suffice here. But those are not the only two solutions. I have tried to suggest the third way, the way sanctioned by Wikipedia's content policies, a few times already: use secondary sources, per the guidelines in our Wikipedia:No original research policy. If nothing on block time is presented as a religious view of Einstein's in secondary literature, then it should not be presented as such in the Wikipedia article. It is pretty simple. There is a lot of good secondary literature on Einstein's religious views, and it should be taken advantage of (there is even an entire book on the topic by the eminent Max Jammer called, aptly, Einstein and Religion, which is searchable through Google Books).
I am not at all opposed as to having an entire article devoted to Einstein's views on quantum mechanics, his views on the nature of time itself, his views on metaphysics, etc. It would be very interesting if it was well put together and clear. We could even have a short paragraph or two in this article with a link to the main article. But I don't think we should try and cram all of that under the heading of "religious views" unless it has an easy and clear relation (Jammer, for example, mentions the "God doesn't place dice" very briefly in connection with Spinoza-like unlimited determinism, but only in passing, saying that it was a belief that was "at least to some extent, religiously motivated". Note that this is far from saying that it is a statement of his religious views.)
I think the current section is woefully inadequate (the lack of any mention of the theology Spinoza, which Einstein explicitly affiliated himself with many times, is due evidence of this). --Fastfission 23:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Fastfission,
 You've chosen to ignore this authority:
   Plato.Stanford.EDU/entries/time/#8
 Not even this Scientific_American article
 appeased you:
 ACA.MQ.EDU.AU/PaulDavies/publications/reviews/THAT%20MYSTERIOUS%20FLOW.pdf
 Isn't that because 
 -- you can't accept Einstein's ideas -- ?
 Even if you confined your comments to just books,
 you couldn't do any better than 
 Einstein's own books.
     He compared his religion with that of
 more traditional ones.
     I fail to see what's wrong with looking
 directly at what Einstein said,
 instead of some idiot selling Feel_Good ideas.
     Sure most people object to his ideas,
 but what a shame it would be if they were
 exluded from WikiPedia solely for that reason.
 Does WikiPedia have any standards ?  I wonder.
    I'll appeal to more level heads if I have too.
 I'm a _Very_ patient man.
 Jeff Relf 03:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Jeff - once more you use the strawman that any one who disagrees with you and the way you present things simply can't accept Einstein's ideas. This is not the case. You are posting Your opinion about what, generally out of context, quotes means. It seems that when you have read about Einstein, you have selected particular references which support your own point of view and are more than willing to dismiss all others. Despite what you try to assert, you have never spoken to the man and you have no greater insight into his thought processess than anyone else. I especially like the threat at the end, where you combine disgreeing with you as a lack of standards and imply you will find "more powerful" allies.

--Astralusenet 08:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Astral_Usenet,
 Einstein's views on pseudorandomness are famous.
     I can give you endless quotes
 where he talked about it. Jeff Relf 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
what you actually mean here, is you can produce endless quotes where Einstein has said things which you have interpreted as being about pseudorandomness. Do you have a single quote where he has used the word in any context? --Astralusenet 17:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 Can you provide one quotes where 
 he changed his opinion ? Jeff Relf 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I see you really arent getting it. First you assert Einstein held opinion X, then when challenged demand others prove proof of when this opinion was changed. Do you see what is wrong here? --Astralusenet 17:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
     Why did none of the admins here
 correct Desinova when he claimed 
 Einstein favored Determinism over probabilities ?
 The two are _Not_ related.  I'm in shock. Jeff Relf 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I suspect you havent read it properly. --Astralusenet 17:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
     Why did none of the admins take the time
 to read these authoritative sources:
   Plato.Stanford.EDU/entries/time/#8
   ACA.MQ.EDU.AU/PaulDavies/publications/reviews/THAT%20MYSTERIOUS%20FLOW.pdf
   WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Block_time
 Again, I'm in shock.
 I plan on being here for years,
 so you better get used to me.
    And yes, I might get help if I need to. Jeff Relf 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Really? Second time you have made this threat. What is it supposed to mean? --Astralusenet 17:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 WikiPedia should not be allowed to make
 Einstein look like a Christian just because
 it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
     Fastfission's Secondary_Sources are fine,
 _If_ they carry more weight than 
 the many/serious sources I have.
 Jeff Relf 09:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff,

Einstein (via the EPR paradox) proved he was uncomfortable with a probabilistic universe, hence his dice quote and his continual attempts to find fault with QM. He was in essence a classical scientist in that case, with an almost Newtonian view that the underlying theories of the universe could be modelled (hidden variables).

The quote about "deterministic..." is proper scientific terminology. As you don't understand it, let me explain. Einstein's views was that the Universe could be understood, calculated and catalogued - determinism, rather the the QM view that everything was, in essence, controlled by probabilistic wave functions.

Above, you have simply proved you don't understand what I have said, and have instead used a strawman argument to argue against what you thought I have said.

Your threats to vandalize this page are a disgrace. Your USENET profile shows you are intent of imposing your views only on this page. --Desdinova 12:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, I have tried to explain exactly what the objections are and how to go about rectifying them. Others have done similarly. The objections are clearly in line with Wikipeida content editing policy. In return you have dismissed them as being simply the results of people who "disagree" with Einstein's views, something which is quite unwarranted (I do not have an opinion on whether the universe is ultimately deterministic at a quantum level or not, it has no effect on my perception of the world). Nobody is trying to make "Einstein look like a Christian" -- this is a pure straw man you are pulling out from who knows where. Secondary sources are always better than the idiosyncratic attempts to interpret primary sources in cases like this. I took a look at the stanford.edu source -- I see no reference to Einstein or his religious views there. Again, it seems like an idiosyncratic interpretation of yours that it is related somehow to Einstein's religious views, rather than a self-evident fact. I read the Davies piece. It is an interesting pop-science piece on the philosophy of time which uses Einstein's views in the very beginning to outline one aspect of it. I don't see the immediate relevance to Einstein's religious views at all.
Here are some sources I found, searching around, which seem to be on the topic and seem to be from reliable bibliographers:
Primary sources can be used to further illustrate interpretations already put forward in secondary sources. Again, read our Wikipedia:No original research policy on this: "Articles may not contain any previously unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new analysis or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas that serves to advance a position." --Fastfission 13:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Fastfission,
 You admit that Einstein asserted that
 randomness is always pseudorandom,
 no matter if the outcome is knowable or not.
    On numerous occations, Einstein compared
 this assertion with traditional religions,
 that's why it belongs in the Religious_Views
 section.
     Desdinova and Vsmith have demonstrated
 their ignorance on this topic by imagining that 
 pseudorandmoness implies Newtonian-like
 a priori knowledge and the dismissal of all things
 probabilistic.
     As Einstein was one of the 
 founding fathers of quantum mechanics,
 I can assure you that this idea
 is _Horridly_ amiss.  Desdinova and Vsmith
 should be _Blocked_ from spreading such _Absurd_
 notions.
     I can make this arguement all year long,
 and I probably will.
 Jeff Relf 03:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as Jeff Relf has tried to add it again, and I reverted - is there any chance this particular section can be locked until the issue is resolved?

Jeff - Einstein was not a founder of QM, he spent most of his physical career trying to refute it. He used early quantum theory to explain the photoelectric effect, but Heisenberg and Bohr are far more pivotal to QM. You are arguing from false premises. What gives you the notion that you are the only one who knows Einsteins mind? --Desdinova 02:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/

EPR Paradox

"Initially Einstein was enthusiastic about the quantum theory. By 1935, however, his enthusiasm for the theory had been replaced by a sense of disappointment. His reservations were twofold. Firstly, he felt the theory had abdicated the historical task of natural science to provide knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, significant aspects of nature that were independent of observers or their observations. Instead the fundamental understanding of the wave function (alternatively, the "state function", "state vector", or "psi-function") in quantum theory was that it provided probabilities only for "results" if appropriate measurements were made (the Born Rule). The theory was simply silent about what, if anything, was likely to be true in the absence of observation. In this sense it was irrealist. Secondly, the quantum theory was essentially statistical. The probabilities built into the state function were fundamental and, unlike the situation in classical statistical mechanics, they were not understood as arising from ignorance of fine details. In this sense the theory was indeterministic. Thus Einstein began to probe how strongly the quantum theory was tied to irrealism and indeterminism.

He wondered whether it was possible, at least in principle, to ascribe certain properties to a quantum system in the absence of measurement (and not just probabilistically). Can we suppose, for instance, that the decay of an atom occurs at a definite moment in time even though such a definite time-value is not implied by the quantum state function? That is, Einstein began to ask whether the quantum mechanical description of reality was complete. Since Bohr's complementarity provided strong support both for irrealism and indeterminism and since it played such a dominant role in shaping the prevailing attitude toward quantum theory, complementarity became Einstein's first target. In particular, Einstein had reservations about the scope and uncontrollable effects of the physical disturbances invoked by Bohr and about their role in fixing the interpretation of the wave function. EPR was intended to support those reservations in a particularly dramatic way" --Desdinova 03:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Religion vs sci philosophy

Time for another header :-)
I have divided the Religious views section of the article also. Seems there is a distinction between Einstein's religious views and his ideas on scientific philosophy and the discussion needs to be separated. Vsmith 12:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Excelent idea. --Desdinova 13:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desinova and Vsmith,
 Einstein asserted that nature is never truly random.
 No one disputes that... right ?
     What you two fail to realize is that that
 does not mean probabilies are out the window
 and everything is knowable/Newtonian.
     Einstein co-invented Bose-Einstein statistics,
 and was one of the founders of quantum mechanics,
 he had _No_ problems with probability distributions.
     Einstein compared is views on pseudorandomness
 with traditional religions... that why
 it has to be in the Religious_Views section.
 Jeff Relf 02:55, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Yet again you show a complete lack of understanding here. When I say probabilistic in terms of the universe, I mean quantum mechanics. He was not a founder of it, he was pivotal in statistical mechanics which is very different indeed.

Einsteins work with the EPR was because he believed that underneath it all, the universe was deterministic. Your first two paragraphs do not make sense.

I actually understand it as today I (in essence) got a first class degree in Astrophysics, and this senester included the study of statistical mechanics - so I am well aware of BE and FD statistical mechanics.

I heartily suggest you read up on the EPR paradox and Einsteins ongoing battle against the probabilistic view of the universe. You do not understand the underlying physics behind his views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics,_philosophy_and_controversy

"The basic debate between Einstein and Bohr (including Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) was that Einstein was in essence saying: "Of course, we can know where something is; we can know the position of a moving particle if we know every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can predict where it will go." Bohr and Heisenberg were saying the opposite: "There is no way to know where a moving particle is ever even given every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can never predict where it will go"."

Einsteins position was determimistic, therefore a classical view - Bohr and Heisenberg were probabilistic. --Desdinova 03:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


Jeff, no it doesn't have to be anywhere. His views on religion are quite separable from his debates about science philosophy and he did have profound disagreements with some aspects of QM, but not on religious grounds. I've reverted your changes and obvious pseudorandom original research. Vsmith 03:07, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Jeff. Your claim that "Einstein asserted that nature is never truly random. No one disputes that... right ?" bears no relevance to the debate here. Seriously if you are trying to troll this wiki page into a USENET flame war, please find something else to get your kicks from. --Astralusenet 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Vsmith and Desdinova,
 Einstein compared his views with 
 traditional religions, so I'll be 
 putting it back into the Religious Views section
 every chance I get.
    You two are so wrong,
 in so many ways, it almost makes me want to _Cry_.
     Do you know what Bose_Einstein systems are ?
 Einstein got the Nobel prize for proving to 
 the world that atoms and photons exist as _Quanta_.
     _Hell_Yes_ he was a founding father of
 quantum mechanics.
 Bohr was a positivist, while Einstein
 was a logical-positivist.
    Bohr intentionally refused to take 
 a metaphysical stand while Einstein
 constantly predicted things like Atom_Lasers
 and the Cosmological_Constant... which are only
 _Today_ gathering _Strong_ empirical evidence.
     You can not deny that Einstein asserted
 that randomness must always be pseudorandom,
 irregardless of knowability.
     I'll correct you all year long if I have to. 
 Jeff Relf 03:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Threat noted to vandalize wiki. I am well aware of statistical mechanics, scoring in the high 90's of that subject Jeff. Einstein's early work was with the photoelectric effect and quanta - BUT he did not develop, or support QM. Read the links I provided on EPR.

Nobel prize was for explaining the photoelectric effect - showing energy levels in atoms were discrete. --Desdinova 03:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desdinova,
 Not only are you and Vsmith vandalizing WikiPedia
 I can _Easily_ demonstrate why that's so. Jeff Relf 03:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Please feel free to do so. At the moment you have created a situation where you assert that when Einstein said "XYZ" he really meant "WXY." This is fine in the great scheme of things, but is not appropriate for Wiki. Remember Wikipedia:No original research the policies in force here. I appreciate that you don't feel these policies are appropriate for you or that you should be bound by them. This is not the case. If you want a website which follows your rules, then set one up. This is Wikipedia. If you want to post here, then you can follow the rules. --Astralusenet 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
     Einstein compared his views with traditional
 religion, that why it _Must_ be in the
 Religious_Views section. 
     Einstein got the _Nobel_Prize_ for proving
 to the world that quanta exist !  For fuck's sake. Jeff Relf 03:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Dont be rude. There is no reason to take the fact that Einstein was awarded the Nobel for the Photoelectric Effect as proof that his ideas about any form of philosophy bear more weight than anyone elses. You are citing an authority fallacy here. Also, this is nothing to do with Einstein's religious viewpoint, it is his philosophical view point. The fact you arent happy with that is becoming unimportant. --Astralusenet 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
 Before Einstein there was considerable doubt
 about the existence of atoms and photons.
     Likewise, my dear sir, you fail to realize
 that nature is pseudorandom even when outcomes
 are _Unknowable_. Jeff Relf 03:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
    • Another logical fallacy. The second sentence has nothing to do with the first and cant be assumed to be a logical conclusion of the first. --Astralusenet 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
     You also fail to realise that this postulate
 says nothing about knowability or probabilities.
 Jeff Relf 03:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

No there wasn't - there was just confusion as to their nature. Even the Greeks postulated atoms. Your edits are full of babble and is Original Research.

Jeff, you have yourself admitted in various places your lack of physics education. Please do some REAL reading of the subject. Your insistence that nature is pseudorandom is your view, it is not commonly accepted science. Read on the EPR paradox, and Bells Inequality to read the argument against it.Desdinova 03:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desdinova, it's not enough to
 read about the EPR paradox in a class.
 Jeff Relf 04:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

However, reading about it in a class is far preferable to not reading about it at all. Jeff, you cannot keep insisting that you have the fast track to knowledge in this case. Your edits are non-sensical, and unsupported by any evidence. Desdinova 16:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

     Despite unknowables, Einstein famously asserted
 that randomness is always pseudorandom.Jeff Relf 04:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Where is your citation for this? I have still not seen any signs that Einstein ever used the word pseudorandom. As it stands, the best you can say here is that Einstein used a phrase which you have interpreted to mean randomness is always pseudorandom. You dont even seem to understand what this argument is about. --Astralusenet 00:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
     This does not mean Einstein didn't understand
 quanta and probablities... in fact,
 it's horribly obvious that it's _You_ who doesn't
 understand such concepts.
 Jeff Relf 04:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Strawman argument - again you assert because I disagree with you that I do not understand it. That is borderline delusional behaviour Desdinova 16:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

     He compared his views with 
 traditional religion/science.
     Bohr intentionally took no metaphysical stand
 and thus could never predict, 
 decades in advance of any empirical evidence,
 such marvelous things as the lasing of atoms
 or the cosmological constant, a.k.a. lambda,
 a.k.a. the dark energy equation of state,
 w = -1, pressure over density.
 Jeff Relf 04:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

We've had this arguemnt before, and I note you haven't yet tried to introduce your flawed reasoning that temperature is another dimension onto Wikipedia.

Jeff, please give up. It is now becoming fundamentally clear this is less about Einsteins views, and more to do with your flawed interpretation of them. You are using strawmen arguments. Your lack of physics education is becoming ever more clear. Desdinova 12:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The bit about atoms and quanta is also not correct:

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Ls7adisc.htm

(c. 1803)"The notion of atoms started from a fundamental problem in chemistry (#1): why did (say) one gram of hydrogen always combine with 8 grams of oxygen, never more, never less? Because each molecule of the resulting compound--water--always contained a fixed number of atoms of each kind. By comparing different reactions, Dalton concluded that (for instance) 2 atoms of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen, to create H2O."

I'll also point you to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics%2C_philosophy_and_controversy#Consequences_of_the_uncertainty_principle

"Albert Einstein was not happy with the uncertainty principle, and he challenged Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg with a famous thought experiment (See the Bohr-Einstein debates for more details).

It is this interpretation that Einstein was questioning when he said "I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe." Bohr, who was one of the authors of the Copenhagen interpretation responded, "Einstein, don't tell God what to do." Niels Bohr himself acknowledged that quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle were counter-intuitive when he stated, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word."

The basic debate between Einstein and Bohr (including Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) was that Einstein was in essence saying: "Of course, we can know where something is; we can know the position of a moving particle if we know every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can predict where it will go." Bohr and Heisenberg were saying the opposite: "There is no way to know where a moving particle is ever even given every possible detail, and thereby by extension, we can never predict where it will go."

Einstein was convinced that this interpretation was in error. His reasoning was that all previously known probability distributions arose from deterministic events. The distribution of a flipped coin or a rolled dice can be described with a probability distribution (50% heads, 50% tails). But this does not mean that their physical motions are unpredictable. Ordinary mechanics can be used to calculate exactly how each coin will land, if the forces acting on it are known. And the heads/tails distribution will still line up with the probability distribution (given random initial forces).

Einstein was not adverse to quantum mechanics as a whole, but specifically with the uncertainty principle itself....."

And as to photons ... In 1704, Isaac Newton (England). In his Opticks, Newton put forward his view that light is corpuscular but that the corpuscles are able to excite waves in the aether. His adherence to a corpuscular nature of light was based primarily on the presumption that light travels in straight lines whereas waves can bend into the region of shadows. [ http://members.aol.com/WSRNet/D1/hist.htm ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light also discusses the wave and particulate nature of light 200 years previously.

Desdinova 13:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


Wow, I thought this thread was about Einstein's influence of his religion on his outcome of advances in science, the specific example being the debate between Einstein and Bohr (including Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle).

I didn't see where anybody mentioned that Einstein believed in God in such a way that drove him to search for answers where he went on faith that such answers must exist. What was his view of God in the sense of his guessing God's mind in the symphony of creation?

Isn't Einstein's belief in God of interest to how it affected the search to develop math to connect everything to everything in the universe? He didn't do completely, but did make amazing progress toward.

While the theories that used probability turned out to be a more practical approach at the time, isn't it of interest in Wiki world that even today it is taught to children that events in nature could truly be random, while most sane experts understand we are really talking about human limitations of measurement and techniques?

All this dating back to the Einstein/Bohr debate. I find it truly amazing, that's all.

Bptdude 04:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

WW II - the atomic bomb

I could not find any reference to Albert Einstein's role to kick-start the American development of the atomic bomb project.

I have read the original letter he wrote to FDR, which is fascinating for a number of reasons as well as historically significant. This is the source of his name being linked to the equation E=MC^2 as well as shows kind of humorously, how such a brilliant scientist could be such an awful engineer and warfare strategist. I admire him, like so many, and think this very human aspect should not be left out of such a comprehensive sight.

Did I overlook mention of this?

Is it worth my time to track down the verifiable reference?

Or am I just going to set off a bunch of nut-jobs, either the pro-Einstein or anti-Einstein?

Bptdude 07:56, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

It's listed in the article twice. Once under the World War II section and once under the Political views section. There are even two links to an article about the Einstein-Szilard letter. There is even a picture of Einstein re-enacting the writing of the letter. So... yeah, I think you somehow overlooked it? --Fastfission 14:51, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yup, you are right, and I'm impressed. Thank you. I do wish the entire contents of the letter was on Wiki, not selected parts. After all, it is very short.

Bptdude 19:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The entire content is on Wikisource, which is linked to from the page about the letter. At the time I made the page about it I thought that the letter was a little lengthy (2 pages, though double-spaced) for total inclusion in the article (and only parts of it seems really important to get in the original language, whereas the rest could be summarize). --Fastfission 21:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


Thank you again. I followed the link, read the letter and the other source material about the letter. I'm even sorry I called him an awefull engineer. I'm done. I've never read such detail about him.

Bptdude 01:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's Learning Disability

My first day here, so I guess I'm bound to misunderstand. I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be a place for anyone to add to the knowledge database, yet the first time I actually take the time to make an entry Fastfission deletes the entire thing within minutes. Why bother?

I suppose if I were really serious I should take the time to go back through decades of documents to find where I originally learned such trivia. Or if someone else was really interested they could do the research and find out themselves the details on the disabilities of such notables as Einstein, John Lennon, Hans Christian Andersen, Woodrow Wilson, etc. I was only trying to begin sharing knowledge gleaned through several decades of teaching Disabled students.

Fastfission comments: I don't think that's all entirely true. He apparently did fine in school. I would really need to see a citation about him never learning to tie his shoes.)

As regards Einstein's difficulties, he had ongoing difficulties in school because the brains of individuals with Learning Disabilities are wired differently, and not in the same way in each case. His mother kept him from starting school until the age of seven, preferring to educate him at home. Here he was permitted to learn at his own rate and in his own way, but was not exposed to peer socialization. When he did go to school, he had interpersonal difficulties with instructors although he was far advanced academically. He questioned everyone and everything. He failed fourth-grade math, not because he couldn't do the math, but because he was one of those people who can intuit, or "see" the answer, but cannot explain the "steps" to tell you how to arrive at that answer. The rather inflexible teacher failed him because he failed to "show his work." He also had little use for assumed authority, and had a major blowout with his seventh grade teacher, who predicted Einstein "would never get anywhere in life." His mother was primarily responsible for his education in many arenas not covered by the narrow curriculum available in his school at the time, but this was insufficient for him to pass his entrance exams for the higher education institution of his choice, though he was clearly brilliant. He saw things differently from other people, and was too preoccupied with other matters to be overly concerned with his appearance. Whether this was a result of his Learning Disability or of his Giftedness is uncertain, as both populations exhibit similar characteristics in many areas. He really never did learn to tie his shoes, unless this was a myth taught to me in my early college days, but I doubt I will ever take the time to go find my notes from thirty-plus years ago.

I concede with as much grace as my professional pride permits. Do with it what you will. However, I hope that this will at least serve to inform some few individuals who take the time to read about a seldom-revealed side of an "icon." As an editorial note, it only serves to reinforce the social norm that relegates the disabled to the bottom of the heap and ignores the major contributions of many disabled individuals throughout history. It particularly fails to instill the belief that others struggling with similar conditions may be able to use their ability to see things differently to achieve heretofore unanticipated success. Rachel 05:40, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I don't mean to be a pill here, but the reason for my suspicion is that a lot of these claims about his difficulty in school and absentmindedness in life are seriously contested by historians. The famous "Einstein flunked math" claim is based on a misunderstanding of the grading system in Einstein's time, and as our article says:
There are innumerable legends which suggest that Einstein was a poor student, a slow learner, or a sufferer of autism, dyslexia, and/or attention deficit disorder. According to the authoritative biography by Pais (page 36, among others), such legends are unfounded. An article in The Washington Post on April 24, 2001 further debunked these legends.
It's only because these claims have come up here before that I removed them without much comment (I considered leaving a message here, but never got to it). There are some people who claim that Einstein suffered from certain learning disabilities (i.e. autism), but like most cases of post-hoc attribution of mental disabilities, they remain pretty dubious diagnoses.
There are a lot of myths floating around about world-class figures like Einstein, repeated by very smart and well-meaning people, so when it comes to things which have a high likelihood of being apocryphal, we tend to stray on the side of conservatism unless we have a really definitive statement supporting it. In this case, we have a fairly definitive statement saying that it is unlikely to be true (Pais's biography).
Hope that clears things up. --Fastfission 05:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, and sorry I got so angry. As a newbie, of course I had no idea of the on-site history you based your response on. I will be interested in reading the sources you mentioned. Thanks for providing these for my edification.
FYI, autism is not a learning disability. It differs greatly in severity, characteristics, and methodology, and, unless he responded amazingly well to early intervention efforts, I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly think he could have been autistic. (Though this would clear up the debate neatly about exactly why his mom kept him home from school until age 7, wouldn't it?) An individual with a learning disability, however, can exhibit any one OR ANY COMBINATION OF 96 different symptoms, which is a large part of what makes diagnosis so difficult. Dyslexia is a label that has been applied to one common such grouping of symptoms. Rachel 06:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
watch out.... in Europe, the age at which you normally start school has varied (it was only a few years ago that Norway changed it from seven to six). So if you make a statement like "his mother kept him home rom school until age 7", you'd better have citable sources showing:
  • what the normal age for starting school for a kid in his social stratum was
  • that it was his mother, and not his father, who made the decision (if there was one)
Traps abound for the unwary - been down a couple of them myself... --Alvestrand 07:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
FASTFISSION- Where is "our article?" Unable to locate Washington Post April 24, 2001 article. Do you have a title? Author? Anything that might help the search? Thanks. Rachel 08:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
"our article" that Fastfission referred to is the Wikipedia Albert Einstein article we are discussing. The WaPo article can be located by searching their on-line archives, which I've done for you; here's the abstract (it loads slowly; be patient -- make some coffee, walk the dog ...), you'll have to pay for the full article:

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/71706692.html?dids=71706692:71706692&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=&date=Apr+24%2C+2001&author=&desc=EXTRA+CREDIT

P.S. What you need to understand about WP is that there is already a very large knowledgeable community of people who have added to the knowledge database, and there are demanding standards (policies) that "trivia" that you have "learned" but for which you cannot pinpoint "decades of documents" do not meet. Each of our "learn"ings, while they seem like facts to us are, in a more objective framework, merely our opinions in the absence of substantiation -- and there are policies against adding such opinions to WP articles; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines, which refers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources

Of course, we're all human and fail to live up to these standards, but it's a goal to strive toward. You seem to be a diligent person who is open to such standards and quick to appreciate input (unfortunately, many contributors to WP stray very far from those traits), so you should fit in well here and will no doubt make some wonderful contributions. -- Jibal 12:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


Rachel said this "Whether this was a result of his Learning Disability or of his Giftedness is uncertain, as both populations exhibit similar characteristics in many areas."

Hero worship aside, Einstein was quite a character, different in so many ways. Isn't disability and giftedness often really how a person's unusual "specializations" match up with how they fit in with the world around them? There was something different about Einstein; I'm hoping people can at least agree on that. Am I to assume there is no common belief about it having a clinical explanation? Or, should we just say he was wonderful, which he was, and have to close the book on why?

Bptdude 04:06, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Mileva Marić's contribution

He wrote many papers before they were married. He wrote many papers after they were divorced. She wrote no papers before they were married and wrote none after they were divorced. No one has produced evidence showing any contribution that she made to his papers during their marriage that would have been more important than the influence of any of the other people he chatted with about his work. Is it still necessary to include in the article that it is a controversial subject? It might be debated by people with a political agenda, but not by anyone with any familiarity with the history of the subject. Sighalot 14:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

You need see the PBS TV program called Mileva they present much evidence. Her name did appear on early drafts with Albert's.
"No one has produced evidence showing any contribution that she made to his papers during their marriage that would have been more important than the influence of any of the other people he chatted with about his work" : no, that's erroneous. Harald88 20:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've read the source material. The source material does not support PBS's agenda. Much has been written pointing that out. They took phrases out of context and wielded a heavy political agenda. Their spurious conclusions are being repeated as though they are fact. They are not. They are television journalism with an agenda. I thought maybe the time had come when we could move beyond that. I guess we have not. I waited a decade for the same thing to die down after the book that originally started this ball rolling. I guess I'll wait another decade for people to move beyond this PBS special before trying again. Sighalot 00:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I second Sighalot. The PBS documentary was based upon a book which runs sharply counter to the mainstream opinion in the history of science, which is essentially that Maric was Einstein's (first) wife and a fellow graduate student, not his collaborator. See for starters the most recent mainstream popular biography, the book by Albrecht Fölsing, then see papers by John Stachel etc.---CH 03:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Write PBS a letter. They'll laugh at you. And Stachel has been thoroughly discredited. 67.8.115.243 04:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
67.8.115.243 (talk • contribs), aka the tampabay.res.rr.com anon
Please sign your comments in future (see the headers if you forget how).

Archives

They are growing very rapidly, unfortunately. This talk page is currently at 42 KB and was 140 KB until I archived stuff from earlier this year. ---CH 04:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

List of papers

The article is currently too long to load conveniently for most WP readers. I think the long list of links to his papers is very useful, but I'd like to see it moved to a seperate page, perhaps Albert Einstein/List of works. Comments? Similar suggestions? ---CH 04:13, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy with that. --Fastfission 13:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Quotes

Removed the rapidly expanding quotes section. They belong in Wikiquotes. The page is already quite long and a list of contextless unsourced quotes is just an invitation to exponential growth. Vsmith 23:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

First, I was locating a source when you reverted all the quotes. Second, if the lack of sources was the issue you could have left a [citation needed]. Third, you should improve not delete, so why didn't you move them to where you said they should go and (fourth) leave a pointer behind for easy navigation. --Michael C. Price talk 23:11, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry 'bout that. First - you should have had a source - they came from somewhere ... Second, lack of source was just part of the issue. We simply don't need a list of quotes w/out any context. The page is a bit long already. Third, hey the link was provided and your quotes are still to be found in the history of the article. Take 'em to wikiquotes or write some in context article content to go with the quote. Cheers, Vsmith 23:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
And there was I thinking that WP was about improvement, not perfection. --Michael C. Price talk 23:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Wikiquote is the place for lists of quotes. There's no way to decide which quotes are notable enough to add to an article like this, where (as the Wikiquote page shows) there are hundreds of quotes to choose from. Some of those quotes look a little dubious IMO as well. --Fastfission 23:24, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I've added:-
  • Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.
    • [Einstein] objecting to the placing observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces ISBN 0521371406 by Abdus Salam (1990)
--Michael C. Price talk 00:53, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Einstein Founded Relativity ?

How can we say Einstein founded relativity when later in the article it says that Henri Poincaré had discovered it first ? ?

Nobody says this. The introduction into this article reads: He _founded_ the special and general theories of relativity. So what this introduction says is simply that Einstein founded (set up) a THEORY of relativity. He did not find nor found relativity. And here you may have misunderstood something. Don't think twice, it's all right... Hans Rosenthal (ROHA) (hans.rosenthal AT t-online.de -- replace AT by @ ) (24062006)
That is a highly controversial statement. It was generally regarded that relativity before general relativity was founded by Lorentz and Einstein, while nowadays the contributions of Poincare are also receiving recognition. See also Talk:Albert_Einstein/Archive_8, item 32, where Pallen proposed to revert to the earlier formulation "Einstein made major contributions to SR", thus to distinguish between his work on SRT and GRT.
I'll do that now. Harald88 08:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't like "founded" (relativity is not an organization), but I don't think "major contributions" quite does it either. Without wanting to diminish the obvious contributions of Lorentz or Poincaré, I think we can do a little stronger language than that. Lorentz and Poincaré, in my mind, made "major contributions" to special relativity, but Einstein is generally recognized as the chief formulator of it as a coherent theory and method. Perhaps the best way to approach it is use something a little more weasely, like "is recognized as the formulator of" or something like that. --Fastfission 17:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I surely go along with that: lately I hesitated between "major contributions" and "developed", neither of which is entirely satisfying (a little too weak vs. a little too strong). Thus something like you propose is fine.
What about this one: "He was the chief formulator of special relativity and he founded general relativity."?
But if we go for general opinions (which often are oversimplified anyway!), no need to be that "weasely". That's an alternative way out of the problem.
Thus what about this one: ";He is regarded as the father of the special and general theories of relativity." Harald88 19:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Sigh. It seems that this article cycles through the options every few months. And the "annus mirabilis" section is now in full flight as "lots of people did the same theory at the same time", which I still think is wrong - others got the same formulae, but only Einstein was willing to draw the implications and accept them. For the intro section, I think Harald88's formulation is exactly right - he IS regarded as the father of both relativities. But the "annus mirabilis" section needs to become less hesitant about his contribution too. --Alvestrand 02:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Agnostics ?

Is he? "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"... Psychomelodic (people think (people think Baba Ram Dass write your own!) edit) 14:04, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think labeling him as an agnostic simplifies things quite a bit. I've always thought of him as somewhat of a Deist. --Fastfission 15:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
No, he was a pantheist; he explicitly compared himself to Spinoza, to a Rabbi in a telegram. A Jewish pantheist, of course :-). --Michael C. Price talk 00:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
In any case, calling him an agnostic flattens him quite a bit, I think we can agree. --Fastfission 02:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's Major Contribution ?

Harald, exactly what was Einstein's major contribution to Special Relativity ? The article points out that Poincare completed the theory before Einstein's first paper even appeared.

Also Harald, GR was founded by Marcel Grossmann who was Einstein's tudor on the subject. - and as you know David Hilbert first completed GR, from a variational principle, a fact that is nowhere made clear on Wikipedia, and why is it not ?

Who wrote that? Anyway, some major contributions IMO were the derivation of the LT from few assumptions, the prediction of time dilation, the "relativistic Doppler" effect. And then there was something with the Maxwell equations that Lorentz and Poicare had not shown yet, if I recall well. Harald88 21:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Lorentz and Poincare did come up with the basic transformation formulas, but Einstein gets credit for seeing that the effects were both artifacts of coordinatization (choice of frame of reference) and descriptions of real, testable physical phenomena. It has been remarked that the special theory of relativity was an idea whose time had come and that Einstein was the first to tie all the pieces together, whereas general relativity was an unexpected answer to a question that nobody but Einstein thought to ask. That's an oversimplification, of course, but there is some truth in it. DAGwyn 20:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Political Views

In response to [3]

( The veracity of this alleged ad and the previous quote, is disputed. No copies can be found in New York Times Archives and the referred source here is a student's private web page. The alleged letter/ad is found only on politicized propaganda web sites. It is also not found nor mentioned in the Einstein archives http://www.alberteinstein.info/ )

Author: 24.187.77.138

Religious views redux

I've been working some additions to the religious views section to try and address some of the concerns raised by myself and others. Here is a draft of my work so far; it's perhaps too long at the moment but your feedback is appreciated. Maybe some of this will be useful for the article. --Muchness 17:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's parents were secular Jews who did not observe Hebrew traditions. However, the state required all children to receive religious education, so at the age of 9, Einstein began studying Judaism with a distant relative.[1] According to his sister Maja, the teachings awakened in Einstein "a deep religious feeling".[2] Einstein later described this period as the "religious paradise of youth";[3] he gave up eating pork and composed hymns in praise of God that he sang as he walked to and from school.[1]

The phase came to an end when Einstein was about twelve. His uncles Jakob (who introduced Einstein to the Pythagorean theorem and algebra) and Caesar encouraged him to pursue sciences, and to further discourage his religious fervor, Einstein's parents invited a Polish medical student, Max Talmud, to visit them weekly. Talmud lent Einstein many books, including Aaron Bernstein's Popular Books on Natural Science.[2] Einstein later said that this reading inspired in him "fanatic freethinking, coupled with the impression that youth is being intentionally deceived by the state through lies."[3] He would never again believe in a personal God, writing in 1947 that "the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously."[4]

According to a neighbor at Princeton, Einstein read both Testaments regularly;[5] however, Einstein described the Bible as "in part beautiful, in part wicked," adding that "to take it as eternal truth seems to me also superstition which would have vanished a long time ago would its conservation not be in the interest of the privileged classes."[6] When New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein telegrammed him on 1929 to ask whether he believed in God, he replied, "I believe in Spinoza's god who reveals himself in the harmony of all things, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men."[7]

In an interview with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein stated, "I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. . . . We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations." In the same interview, he professed his admiration for what he called "the luminous figure of the Nazarene", saying, "No man can read the Gospel without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word."[8]

I suggest you be more explicit with dates and try to time order the presentation. It would readers a feel for the evolution of his thoughts. --Michael C. Price talk 20:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
So, is Einstein an agnostic or not? He said he believed in Spinoza's God, and Spinoza was a pantheist. However, he said he wasn't a pantheist. Is there any evidence to support the label of agnosticism.Homagetocatalonia 21:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we just have to accept that, like most people, Einstein said things that are contradictory or apparently so. However I note that whilst he was quite sure about saying he wasn't an atheist his denial of pantheism sounded less definite. Perhaps agnostic-pantheist? --Michael C. Price talk 22:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Looking in Wikiquotes I see, in addition to the Spinoza quote,:

  • I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
  • Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

--Michael C. Price talk 01:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b Brian, Denis (1996). "Childhood and Youth", Einstein: A Life. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 4-5. ISBN 0-471-11459-6.
  2. ^ a b Smith, Peter D. (2003). "maths, Music, and Magnetism (1879-1894)", Einstein. London: Haus Publishing Limited, 14-16. ISBN 1-904341-15-2.
  3. ^ a b Overbye, Dennis (2000). "On the Road", Einstein in Love. New York, NY: Viking Penguin, 6-7. ISBN 0-670-89430-3.
  4. ^ Rosenkranz, Ze'ev (2002). "Einstein's Jewish Identity", The Einstein Scrapbook. Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 89. ISBN 0-801-87203-0.
  5. ^ Brian, Denis (1996). "A New Life in Princeton", Einstein: A Life. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 266. ISBN 0-471-11459-6.
  6. ^ Brian, Denis (1996). "The Race for the Bomb", Einstein: A Life. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 334. ISBN 0-471-11459-6.
  7. ^ Smith, Peter D. (2003). "Eclipsing Newton (1916-1933)", Einstein. London: Haus Publishing Limited, 103. ISBN 1-904341-15-2.
  8. ^ Brian, Denis (1996). "The Unified Field Theory", Einstein: A Life. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 186. ISBN 0-471-11459-6.

Nobelprize

I think that the portrait of the Nobel prize is wrong. The passage is: "Most physicists agree that three of those papers (on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity) deserved Nobel Prizes. Only the paper on the photoelectric effect would be mentioned by the Nobel committee in the award." It is wrong, because the Nobel Prize is given only to people who a) live and b) have a particular application. The special relativity is a theoretical proposition with no concrete application. It is the foundation of physics, not an application. I don't know about the one about Brownian motion, but it is impossible to actually give a Nobel prize for special relativity. I therefore suggest that one should reformulate the text in such a way that it makes clear why Einstein was only given one Nobel Prize for a paper which isn't considered his biggest masterpiece. --194.45.150.17 11:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The reasons you have given are not why Einstein did not receive the prize—plenty of people have received prizes for purely theoretical and foundational work. However we should go into some more detail on it. A recent book was just published on the subject, using actual Nobel archival sources, under the title of Einstein's Nobel Prize, A Glimpse Behind Closed Doors: The Archival Evidence (by Aant Elzinga). It seems like the natural place to consult on the issue, though I haven't had time to look at it yet. --Fastfission 02:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Another very interesting article based on archival sources is available on line. I posted it long ago in a different thread: http://www.europhysicsnews.com/full/34/article5.pdf --Pallen 21:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Some information that might be used in the article (my paraphrase of Robert Marc Friedman's The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science, chapter 7):

Einstein was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1910, and there was gradually increasing support from nominators until by 1920, he was the only candidate to have more than a handful of nominations. However, the Nobel Physics committee was very hostile to theoretical physics in general and quantum physics in particular; in part the Swedish Academy greatly admired German culture, and especially the anti-theoretical style of much German science (which would eventually evolve into Deutsche Physik). Committee member Allvar Gullstrand, a medical physicist, led the opposition to Einstein receiving an award, and prepared reports criticizing special and general relativity even after most physicists had accept the latter and nearly all had accepted the former; his reports betrayed a misunderstanding of the physics, but the Academy in general was disinclined to give Einstein an award and did not look into it too deeply. In 1920 they instead selected Charles-Edouard Guillaume and were widely criticized for the choice. They withheld the prize in 1921 and awarded the 1921 prize to Einstein and the 1922 prize to Bohr at the same time the next year, in part because of what a black eye it would be for the Nobel Institution to hold off giving it to Einstein (and Bohr) for any longer. Mentioning only the photoelectric effect was a strategy on the part of Einstein's supporters (particularly Carl Wilhelm Oseen) find a way to award Einstein the prize without arousing the opposition of so many Academy members who disapproved of ongoing transformation of the theoretical foundation of physics.

This is the same author as the above linked article; it looks like the article is a condesation of the book chapter.--ragesoss 22:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Never Learned Hebrew?

This isn't made clear in the article, but it sounds like Einstein never knew Hebrew. How odd: Einstein never knew how to read, write, or speak the traditional language of the Jews, despite being one of the most prominent Jews in the history of the World? Does anyone know if he ever tried to learn it? -205.188.117.65 12:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


never learned Hebrew?

I'm not Jewish, but plucked the following from the listed source, which seemed credible enough:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/yiddish.html

"For nearly a thousand years, Yiddish was the primary, sometimes the only language that Ashkenazi Jews spoke."

"The six million European Jews who died in the Holocaust comprised the majority of the world's Yiddish speakers."

My guess is he probably didn't speak Hebrew, but spoke Yiddish. Actually, this might be an obvious fact to Jewish people! *smiles*

Bptdude 01:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

See the Yiddish article, especially the "The modern Haskalah" section. Yiddish had died out among German Jews by the late 1800s and was primarily an Eastern European dialect spoken in what we would think of as the former Soviet Union and East Bloc countries. So Einstein almost certainly didn't learn Yiddish. If his parents weren't observant, then he might not have learned Hebrew either.--A. B. 02:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


Actually I did look up Yiddish in Wiki and found the following:

" On the eve of World War II, there were 10 million Yiddish speakers, overwhelmingly of the Eastern dialects. [Liptzin, 1972, 2] The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. "

I think we are talking about Eastern Yiddish versus Western Yiddish. So, to keep on topic, I still would best guess Einstein, spoke Eastern Yiddish, to be exact. I'm done with this thread. It is silly for me to talk about something like this, when there are so many of that culture with more expertise and interest. I'm convinced about the Einstein question, though it is indirect guess.

Bptdude 06:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Clean up on religious views...A must

I'm going to keep all of the same quotes, but format the section differently, to get rid of the tag...


Continual addition of pseudo-nonsense on this page

So is Jeff allowed to get away with this pseudo-*? Its original research.

Isn't this a case of a user trying to force their original research and subjective point of view on a document. Desdinova 22:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

That's how it looks to me. "Classical physcist" describes Einstein quite well since he did not accept the quantum view of the universe. Classical physics generally means non-quantum, but includes SR & GR. Use of "block time" is highly non-standard -- it would be clearer to say that E viewed time as another dimension alongside the spatial ones -- which is the standard view, of course. --Michael C. Price talk 07:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

There are serious errors in Jeff's additions. For instance he equates causality with determinism, whereas probabilistic processes are still causal. And then he asserts that consequentially time is "pseudodirectional" (new, non-standard terminology) without a nod to standard view that time is just another dimension similar to space (yet one of the references he cites is entitled "4D view of time" which is the standard view in standard terminology). 4D time is not a consquence of indeterminism.

Jeff, if you don't incorporate such changes the likelhood is that all your work will be lost.

--Michael C. Price talk 10:54, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to possibly request protection for this section.

Desdinova 12:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted Jeff's changes. Jeff please pay attention to standard terminology, and in particular to the opening sentence of classical physics:

Classical physics is physics based on principles developed before the rise of quantum theory, usually including the special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity. (In contrast, modern physics commonly refers to the physicist's world view wrought by the revolutionary quantum theory.)

--Michael C. Price talk 12:21, 8 July 2006 (UTC)5

I note in the last 24 hours JR has reverted at:

1:21, 6:14 and 12:13

Desdinova 13:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

As a heads up - Jeff is now trying to rewrite the classical physics entry to further this obsession with "pseudo-*". More precisely, the section MichaelCPrice quoted above. Desdinova 00:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Urgh. Is there a quack-watch list we can report him too for monitoring? --Michael C. Price talk 00:35, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Jeff is fairly well known (i.e. notorious) on the USENET group sci.physics, where he continually drips his nonsense. He appears convinced that he is the natural successor to Albert Einstein and is the only person who truly understands physics. As you may imagine he is repeatedly proven wrong. --TWake 19:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I think something has to be done - His justification is

"Quantum theory is based on relativity, relativity has not been superseded, it's modern physics, not classical. Right or wrong, Einstein believed in block time." and "Previous wording claimed relativity was "Classical""

Which shows a woeful lack of knowledge of G/S R and QM... Desdinova 00:38, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Check out the Salon link at the bottom of the article -- something worth keeping?
--A. B. 20:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

What Salon link?

Ah that one - read it before, reading it again. Its good - thanks for the pointer ;-)

Desdinova 21:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


I'll throw this in -

My copy of Hartle:"Gravity: An introduction to Einstein's General Relativity" (My fourth year GR textbook) opens chapter 1 with: "Gravity is one of the four fundamental interactions. The classical theory of gravity - Einstein's general relativity - is the subject of this book" My copies of "Black Holes : Einsteins outrageous legacy" and "The Road to Reality" all lump relativity in to Classical Physics as well.

Desdinova 00:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Scientific/Religious Perspectives

 Like it or not, 
 everything in this new section is documented as 
 something Einstein strongly believed in.
     Einstein's Perspective of time 
 was not traditional...how could it be ?
 Jeff Relf 09:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You've also put in a lot of extra duplication.

Desdinova 13:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

 I find it's very misleading to call relativity
 "Classical".  Some call Relativity 
 "modern physics" [4]
 as nothing has superseded it and
 it plays a central role in Relativistic
 quantum field theories
 which are indispensable to 
 the standard model of particle physics.
 Jeff Relf 11:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes some include relativity in modern physics, but also in classical physics since it does not use Planck's constant. The superseding angle is a complete red herring since no one disputes that QFT is part of modern physics. --Michael C. Price talk 11:34, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Its traditional to include relativity in Classical Physics because it contains no uncertainty as such. I have included cites, including a GR text book at UG/PG level, that shows the current position is to include relativity in Classical Physics. I have copied them below from my Talk Page.

My copy of "Road to Reality" by Penrose has a Chapter 19 "The Classical fields of Maxwell and Einstein" and says (Pg 440) "What are now called the classical fields are, indeed, the electromagnetic field of Maxwell and the gravitational field of Einstein".

I think the problem here comes from the rather ambiguous use of the word "Modern" as well. If you read the Classical Physics page it adds more depth to the argument then the Modern Physics page. The definition comes from Wiki's own page on Classical Physics and as I said, in my own studies in University the above definition is the one I was also taught as well. My dissertation was on GR orbital motions so I placed in my dissertation that Relativity was "Modern Physics" when I was corrected by my project supervisor that it comes under Classical Physics. As it stands, there is no quantisation in Relativity. Relativity and QM disagree on the nature of space time on small scales. Relativity's roots comes from classical sources, as I said, Lorentz, Poincare and Maxwell - to name a few.

As I originally said, this is just a very small part of my argument against Jeff. Einstein himself had a very deterministic view of the universe.

Just found in my copy of Kip Thorne: "Black holes and time warps" Classical: Subject to the laws of physics that govern macroscopic objects, non-quantum mechanical.

And my copy of Hartle:"Gravity: An introduction to Einstein's General Relativity" (My fourth year GR textbook) opens chapter 1 with:

"Gravity is one of the four fundamental interactions. The classical theory of gravity - Einstein's general relativity - is the subject of this book"

You've also been told SEVERAL times about NOT putting in the psuedorandom nonsense has you have NO direct cite for that information to back up your original research.

Desdinova 13:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

As it stands, without the duplication - that section is now just a list of achievements. I think it doesn't belong. What do others think?


Desdinova 13:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Jeff

I removed

a) the unnecessary duplication bewtween your section and the one below it b) the "pseudorandon" stuff which you have consistently failed to show is original research

Please stop gaming the system, you are working your way around 3RR again.

Desdinova 13:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desdinova,
 Need I document your hate of me ?
  • Yes please, while you are at it you can include your own diatribes against myself, Desdinova and Wiki in general. --TWake 22:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 Your sole reason for being here is to revert me.
 Must I show everyone where you endlessly ridiculed
 Wiki_Pedia, Einstein, relativity and me personally ?
     You're only here to vandalize these pages,
 and you're doing a fine job of it to, I might add.
 Further, I can prove to everyone here that
 you don't understand simple time dilation.
   The word Pseudorandom is clear,
 and I used the word Causal to make it even clearer.
 A dice toss is only notionally random.
     As I said above "Classical" implies depricated
 to anyone but yourself.  Relativity has never
 been depricated, it an essential part of both
 the standard model of particle physics
 and the concordance model of cosmology.
    I'm documenting
 an important part of Einstein's life...
 the part that you, and people like you,
 hate so very much.
     Everything I wrote is tied together
 in a thread... it can't be separated.
 I'm adding it back.
 Jeff Relf 14:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

1) I do understand relativity pretty well Jeff. As I have said, I spent a year studying GR orbital motion. My knowledge of relativity is not on trial - stop setting up strawmen arguments. I don't hare GR or SR, excep when I have to revise it for exams ;-).

2) I have never said Classical means deprecated - thats your interpretation. Penrose, Hartle and Thorne all class relativity as Classical. It is "Classical" as it shows no probabilistic tendencies. In fact, the nature of the HUP is in conflict with GR when it comes to the nature of spacetime in small scales - a prime reason for classing relativity as "Classical" particularly considering its roots.

3) I have already reported you for 3RR as it is obvious that you have no intent to show consensus.

Desdinova 14:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

 Hi  Desdinova,
 Thanks for bringing such a huge flame war
 to Wiki_Pedia... we're all indebted to you.
 Thanks again for immediately reverting
 anything I write... now I know what
 the word consensus means to you.
 Might you tell us why this aspect of Eintein's
 life must never be told ? huh ?
 Jeff Relf 14:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You are the one with the inability to show consensus Jeff. The history of this page has shown MULTIPLE people telling you that your "pseudorandom" stuff is ORIGINAL RESEARCH and has no place in this article. This is not to do with "surpression of the truth" as you seem to think it is, because you have shown time and time again no direct cites of the source of this information - only a mangled interpretation of other sources.

As I have pointed out, it is not just me that is concerned about this. I am not interested in a flame war, only the truth. You have shown a deliberate desire to impose your interpretation to this argument, even when shown (as in the "Classical" argument above) that you are mistaken.

Desdinova 14:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

  • It may be worth noting Jeff's comments on news://sci.physics regarding this - mainly in msg id:Jeff_Relf_2006_Jul_10_FaJl@Cotse.NET - where he stated "I'll wander on to any page I like and edit whatever/whenever I want." (message titled "I've already won") --TWake 22:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 Hi  Desdinova, if relativity is classical
 then how do you explain QFT's presence in
 the standard model ?
 I don't like the word "Classical",
 it suggests buggy whips, not QFT.
 Jeff Relf 15:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Jeff, this is the same problem you have had in your USENET debates on this subject. The crux of the issue is that you dont like the word classical because it conjures images for you of something you cant equate with relativity. Other people do not suffer from this, yet you feel the need to assert your issues on every one else. Can you see this is wrong? --TWake 22:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
    There's nothing wrong with saying:
 "pseudorandom ( i.e. causal )"
 The idea is there, Einstein is famous
 for thinking it, and he's quoted saying
 something almost exactly like it.
 As if that weren't enough, I show:
   WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Block_Time
   Philsci-Archive.Pitt.EDU/archive/00002408/
   Scientific American, Sep 2002:
     Urgrue.ORG/lib/mysterious-flow.html
   Plato.Stanford.EDU/entries/time/#8
 Please get over Wiki_Pedia, Einstein and me,
 and let the story be told... no more insta-reverts.
 I need all the parts to tell the story.
 Jeff Relf 15:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


Jeff, until you learn to debate in a civilised fashion and start listening to what people tell you all your contributions will be reverted as vandalism. You have argued here and elsewhere pushing your non-standard terminology, but no-one believes you or has any interest in your minority view of one. If you have any new physical insights then get the stuff published in a peer reviewed journal. Any non-original research insights are acceptable but only presented in the standard terminology. Wikipedia is not in the business of acting as your personal formum for pushing your neologisms. I don't seriously expect you to take on board any single word I say (why should I, you haven't listened to anyone else?); I expect you to be banned soon. --Michael C. Price talk 15:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)


You said:

" Hi Desdinova, if relativity is classical

 then how do you explain QFT's presence in
 the standard model ?"

Plenty of classical physics shows up in modern physics Jeff. Non-Euclidean geometry is considered classical for example. By that arguement, there is no classical physics.

I already pointed out Hartle, Penrose and Thorne. Are you saying you know more about relativity then these three?

" The idea is there, Einstein is famous

 for thinking it, and he's quoted saying
 something almost exactly like it."

And right there is the problem "something almost exactly" which is not equal to "he said that...".

" As if that weren't enough, I show:

   WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Block_Time
   Philsci-Archive.Pitt.EDU/archive/00002408/
   Scientific American, Sep 2002:
     Urgrue.ORG/lib/mysterious-flow.html
   Plato.Stanford.EDU/entries/time/#8
 Please get over Wiki_Pedia, Einstein and me,
 and let the story be told... no more insta-reverts.
 I need all the parts to tell the story."

Which has no relevance to this part of the discussion.

Desdinova 16:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Einsteins nationality

I think the notion of a "German-born Swiss-American scientist" is not appropriate. Einstein never described himself in that way. His roots of thinking and cultural imprint was German (not in a geographical but in a cultural sense). And later in his life his Jewish background became more and more important for him. He adopted Swiss citizenship to escape from possible military service in the German Army in 1896 but became again German citizen when he moved to Berlin and adopted American citizenship when he later had settled in America. He admired the American democracy and fully supported America's struggle during the war against Nazi Germany. But everyone can realize when hearing his American radio speeches that he only spoke English with an effort. He still performed all his important intellectual discussions even in his time in America in German (e.g. with his close friend Kurt Gödel in Princeton or with other refugees from Europe like Leó Szilárd and others).

I therefore suggest to apostrophize him as a German-Jewish scientist and changed the article accordingly. Please discuss!

Furfur, July 13, 2006

I agree with this change and only defined his nationality in accordance with Kip Thorne's book Black Holes and Time Warps.

Help wanted for an Einstein spammer

Every so often a spammer using an IP address that starts with 64.228.225. spams links to bogus web sites. I have tracked down and reverted all I could find, but I'm getting a little sick of tracking all these articles on my watchlist (it's up to 263 pages by now). Can I ask the regular, frequent editors of this article to keep an eye out for this person? If they hit again, please revert the edit and warn the spammer. If you have the time, check out what other edits they made that day and revert them as well -- or just let me know and I'll do it.

The link they like to add to this article is [http:// einstein. ipfox. com/ A selection of Quotes from Dr. Einstein]. The real point of the link is to build search engine rankings for the commercial links at the bottom of the page; the same spamdexer is linking similarly bogus pages for Hindu mystical figures and U.S. country music stars -- all with the same links at the bottom of the page.

The spammer also recently created an account, User:Borgengruft.

For more info, see:

Thanks for your help.--A. B. 03:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


I'll keep an eye out - thanks for the headsup

Desdinova 11:32, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Dispute

So, people have tried to put an infobox on Einstein's page for what must be the fifth time at least. Is there any great reason to do this? The non-scientist box contains no useful information not already found immediately in the article, while the "scientist box" has huge amounts of whitespace and dubious categories like his Erdos number (who cares? does anybody really think that the Erdos number means anything?), the names of his children and spouses (is this vital information?), and other information which looks completely silly to try and be boiled down to a single field category. I think all of the infoboxes are ugly and unnecessary, and there is no mandate to have infoboxes on biography pages or scientist pages. I've removed it for now, are there other opinions on this? To compare, here it is with a generic infobox, scientist infobox, and no infobox. In the past, every attempt to add an infobox has been rejected as unnecessary, ugly, and potentially destabilizing (just what we need, another place for people to try and boil Einstein's religious views into three words or less). --Fastfission 21:23, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the infobox is not especially useful. (But I must take strong exception to your shocking disregard for the importance of Erdos numbers, see: Wikipedia:Wikipedians by Erdős number!) Paul August ☎ 21:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)


Please consider putting the infobox back for the following reasons:

  • The white space is there anyway because of the contents header. Ugliness is relative. When things stabilise white can easily filled with something useful.
  • The info is no more silly than the infobox for US presidents or that in many other categories. They are there for a reason. It in fact is very useful to have dates & details summarized in a quick snapshot.
  • It was a good infobox and thus was rather draconian removing it so quickly. Please give it at least two weeks in future, so others can actually see it and form an opinion. How can any one discuss it if it has been removed? I understand the need to quickly remove vandalism, but in this case it obviously was done with care and scholarship. It clearly was a rolls-royce job with good information in the infobox.
  • To answer your question: "Is there any great reason," the answer is twofold: (a) You are looking up basic biographical information and you want to know where Einstein (say) graduated or the names of his wives, you have to trawl through the article for 20 minutes. With the infobox you get this in a snapshop. You get all his relevant dates in a snapshot too. That's why the Wikipedia supports infoboxes! Look at them in other categories and see how widespread and useful they are. (b) The new infobox had a great concept of recording the Erdos number that most people are fascinated by and also recording the scientist's doctorate advisor and key doctorates he supervised.
  • Now just think about that last point for a second and its implication. One of the problems in current biographies of scientists it is really difficult finding out a scientist's "academic heritage." That is who is the "father" (doctoral advisor) of the scientist, and who is the "grandfather" and so on. This is very very useful for those who study the history of science in the understanding of the linkages and influences. It is really hard work digging up such information in conventional encyclopedias, but a web-based wikipedia is perfect for this task. As the infobox propagates to all scientists one just clicks on the infobox links and you instantly can find a scientist's "academic tree" easily going back to the 16th century. This is the beauty of the wikipedia. So let's use its power for good!
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.34.209.186 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) .
  • This infobox also recorded the religion of scientists. It seems it was this field of the infobox that really annoyed you the most. OK, so let's discuss it. There are many solutions to this problem. As you know with infoboxes if you leave a field blank it goes away. So this could be a good solution, if people deem that a one-word descriptor such as "humanism" doesn't adequately summarise Einstein's religious position. Another possible solution is to put a link in the infobox to the religion discussion in the text.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.34.209.186 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) .
Please sign your posts. BTW I agree with the above unsigned POV: I thought the infobox looked quite good, was informative and, yes, Erdos numbers are cool. Please restore it. --Michael C. Price talk 23:15, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
The Erdos number doesn't seem to mean much and it seems like a science-geek in-joke; the equivalent of the "six-degrees to Kevin Bacon" sort of thing. I think we need to take into account here that this is a general audience encyclopedia, and that most people are going to be confused by it. (I had never heard of an Erdos number before and I'm relatively well-informed about science and scientists compared to most of the population.) I think it looks pretty unprofessional. If we were going to use silly numbers, some of those which reflect how many papers he wrote and their degree of citation would be more appropriate. (Einstein's 1905 papers are among the most highly cited in physics, if I recall correctly). --Fastfission 23:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't consider the whitespace to really be a problem. And yes, ugliness is relative, but I think the infobox is uglier. You claim the infobox was "very useful" but I still don't see what it is useful for. In the rare event that somebody needs to know about his kids and wife they can find the information in the article without any difficulty. His relevant dates are in the first line of the article—if they can't find that quickly, then we really can't help them. As for the doctoral advisor and students, for Einstein we have "unknown" as the advisor and "None" for the students, so I really don't see how making such a strong argument for the importance of those categories being at the top as being very relevant here. Again, I don't see how this is likely to help people at all. Most of that information is useless to 99% of the people who will read this article, and the information which is not useless is easily found if not already in the first paragraph. --Fastfission 23:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
So remove the duplicated information from the first paragraph. --Michael C. Price talk 00:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Duplicate info like what his name is, what he is known for, when he was born and died, what his nationality is, and things like that? Give me a break. They are more useful in the first paragraph than they are in the infobox. --Fastfission 16:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I note that Isaac Newton has a simple infobox; just the bare details: classic portrait, born & died, where/when. Why shouldn't Einstein? As with Newton I agree it would not be good to try to categorise his religious views. --Michael C. Price talk 08:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Well Newton was a hard core Anglican. He's is a simple case.
"Why shouldn't Einstein?" The question here is "Why should Einstein?" I don't edit the Newton page, I don't have any opinions about how they run their own ship. --Fastfission 16:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
No, he denied the Trinity. Prophetic Unitarian might be closer. --Michael C. Price talk 12:30, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
But I agree there would be many scientists that would hard to categorize. Polkinghorne would be an easy one :-) I think in those cases the religion field can be easily skipped. If you look at infoboxes for presidents, actors etc etc they use a particular infobox template but do not necessarily use all the fields. The feilds only need be used when appropriate.


      • It seems to me that all articles on really famous people (at a minimum, those people who are listed in Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have#Biography ) should have infoboxes for the convenience of little kids whose mean teachers have asked them to write a three-page biographical paper on so-and-so. I'm perfectly serious about this - I think that this is a useful service for one particular segment of Wikipedia users. -- Writtenonsand 22:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

First proposed infobox

OK guys. Here's an example for discussion. No religion and no Erdos number. Any objections?

Albert Einstein
1947 photographed by Oren J. Turner
1947 photographed by Oren J. Turner
Born March 14, 1879
Ulm in Württemberg, Germany
Died April 18, 1955
Princeton, New Jersey
Residence USA
Nationality Originally German-Jewish, then finally a US-Swiss citizen
Field Physics
Alma mater ETH Zurich
Academic advisor <to be checked>
Notable students <to be checked>
Known for Brownian motion, photoelectric effect, special relativity, and general relativity
Notable prizes Nobel Prize (1921), Copley Medal (1925), Franklin Medal (1935)
Wow, this is an awesome infobox. In response to the concerns of Fastfission, here are some pointers to remember:
  • The issue is not about Einstein. Think beyond Einstein and note how useful an infobox template will be when propagated to all scientist biographies.
  • Wikipedia supports infoboxes for danged good reasons. Let's use them! They nicely encapsulate key biographic data.
  • If we are going to delete infoboxes for scientists, then perhaps we should visit all the US President pages and delete their infoboxes too, and in all the other categories. Clearly that would be vandalism and wrong. If that is wrong, then why was deleting the Einstein infobox right?
  • Fastfission, I challenge you to start a stopwatch and time how long it takes you to trawl through the Einstein article and find the infobox data. You'll see it's not that easy. I will eat my hat if you can do it under 20 mins. In fact, if you do this exercise it will help you to notice that some data is actually not in the Einstein article, and that parts of the article are so poorly structured and ambiguous you will spend a lot longer than 20mins. For example, say you didn't know that Einstein was a dual Swiss-US citizen. Try finding that in the article. The infobox thus has a secondary benefit for motivating improvements in the article. Also there is a part of the article that is ambiguously written and makes it sound like Einstein had a son called Paul. The infobox helps the reader to work out that there is no son called Paul and therefore the article is talking about another relation to Einstein. The infobox fixes a lot of readership questions and problems. In otherwords the infobox can act rather like a "spreadsheet" ensuring all the checks and balances add up.
  • Regarding the objection that birthdate etc. is at the beginning of the article and the infobox. If you look at examples of biographies in non-science categories they all repeat the birth info in the infobox. It's just standard infobox practice. This because there is a category of readership that will just browse infoboxes only. I think this and many of the other objections have arisen because of thinking just about the Einstein article in isolation. However if one thinks more globally about how the whole wikipedia is designed then the infobox makes total sense.
  • Request to Fastfission: please reconsider putting the infobox back. How much free beer would you like in return? :-)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.34.209.186 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) . at 11:35, July 16, 2006
The dates of spouses overlap. Also I suggest changing Nationality from German-Jewish to German (there is no nation "Jew"). And please sign your posts, otherwise people will think your words are mine. --Michael C. Price talk 12:30, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm someone else. I'm new so I don't know how to sign. Sorry. But all I want to say is that Einstein divorced Mileva in 1919 and married Elsa the same year, so there is actually no overlap. Einstein was pretty slick when it came to women! I hope no one thinks this is you. Perhaps I can disagree with you a little and say appending "Jewish" is quite normal in biographies. I agree its not a nationality, but it seems to be a widespread thang. I guess it wouldn't hurt to remove it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.34.209.186 (talk • contribs) 13:51, July 16, 2006 (UTC)

  • Again, why have his spouses and children in an infobox? Why do we need this information in an infobox at all? The rare person who really wants to know the names of Einstein's sons can figure it out, just like the rare person who just wants to know what he was doing during World War II would as well (or should we add a field for that in the infobox?).
  • There is no "standard infobox practice" — some people like them, many people do not, not all articles have them at all, and typically they are decided on a case-by-case basis. There is no mandate to do it, and I honestly don't see the benefit for all scientists to have standardized infoboxes. Most encyclopedias do not have such silly things which arbitrarily chosen categories. I don't know what the "dang good reason" is that Wikipedia supports them, and if you can't articulate it I think it says something about how "dang good" it is.
  • For something where there are typical and standardized categories (i.e. the "Vice President" and "Terms" and "Preceded by" for a President), I can see where that sort of information can make sense. For someone like Einstein, I don't. Most of the categories are arbitrarily chosen (why his children? why his wives? why his last university? why his alma mater?) and all of the non-arbitrary information (i.e. birth/death dates, what he is "known for", his field of study) are in the introduction, where they ought to be.
  • I still have not seen any explanation which explains what we get from an infobox that we don't already have from an article, and so in the end it comes down to aesthetics and perhaps professionalism, which IMO would default to not having a silly and somewhat pretentious infobox. I sincerely doubt there is a category of "readership" who "browse infoboxes only" (and even if there were, I fail to see how this infobox would tell them anything useful or interesting that they couldn't get from the first paragraph of the article). This is an encyclopedia article — there is a "dang good reason" that Wikipedia supports having narrative text for things like biographies and encourages people to use them to reflect the nuance in someone's life, rather than trying to boil them down to a few arbitrarily chosen variables. I think the infobox is both aesthetically and conceptually ugly, I think it is useless, and I think it is silly. I think the endless attempts to change fields in the infobox (was Einstein a physicist or a theoretical physicist? was he also known for his work on a unified field theory, or for the formulation of E=mc^2? should his "residence" reflect all of his residences, or just his final one? did he die in Princeton, NJ, or Trenton, NJ? and god knows what we are supposed to do with the "nationality" field). I think it was fine the way it was. --Fastfission 16:42, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


I don't see your problem. The various people above have answered your questions in great detail. You are repeating yourself. Did you read them carefully? Did you do the suggested challenge of taking out your stopwatch? Sure there can sometimes can be a little arbitrariness in an infobox...but, hey, what we chose to retain in a whole article is all a matter of taste too. You seem to be the only guy/gal complaining. What makes you the big cop? Relax. Take it easy and try to see the big picture. Tell me this: why is it that in the Spanish wikipedia the Einstein article is so much better? Do you even realise how bad the current English version is? (See above discussion for the flaws that are in it). Now get this: this discussion page goes on and on and is even archived for several years. Whereas in the Spanish wikipedia the Einstein article is so much crisper, well-structured, and cleaner—and guess what: there is only one tiny page of discussion!! Not volumes of archived discussion. How is it the Spanish can be so civil, laid back and sensible, whereas we English speakers are always having these edit wars? Cummon' man, be a little Spanish tonite and put the infobox back. Leave out some of the fields you don't like. You can leave them bank. When you look through the archives of this discussion site here, the name "Fastfission" comes up over and over again. Your name doesn't appear in the Spanish discussion board and it is 1% of the size this one—ask yourself what you are doing to this site! Are you the cause of all these endless discussion wars? We beg you to put the infobox back and show a little charity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.34.209.186 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) . 18:10, 16 July 2006

In saying that Fastfission is the only one opposed to infoboxes, you don't seem to read very well: The second post was a concurrence by Paul August.
I too think the infobox is ugly — and (in the case of Einstein as least) useless, misleading and contentious. (The sample above, for example, lists his residence as USA and his university as Princeton. This despite the fact that he did no memorable work in the USA or at Princeton.) I find no added value in the sample above.
You mention the length of this talk page. Much of that length is in arguments against additions of nonsense to the article. The top half of the talk page, e.g., is "discussion" with a single editor, who insisted that the article must contain the word "pseudorandom." This article seems to attract nuts.
You might be reasonable about whether Einstein was German-Jewish or about leaving out of an infobox a section about his religion, but these are very contentious issues on this article. People are continually trying to add nonsense about his religion. Look at the edit history, and read this talk page. Note in particular that when Fastfission removed the infobox, he interrupted an edit war on Einstein's religion.
Perhaps an infobox may be useful for some scientists. For Einstein it is misleading; he defies being pinned down to the few words that fit in the infobox. --teb728 00:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I am 14 years old and at high school. I have never tried this before so do not know what this signing thing is about. Anyways, me, my friends and all the milions of kids in the world love those infoboxes. When we have home work assinments that make us rite essays about famous people, we are suppose to add stuff about family life of the person and there kids and who they married. So remember us. We are people to. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.36.216.111 (talk • contribs) 15:11, July 17, 2006 (UTC)

Hah! Well said -- we need to remember there is a wider audience here. And to respond to teb728's point, Einstein does not defy description in a few words any more than anyone else. Just leave out those items from the infobox that do not admit to a concise description. How hard is that?
PS to stop most of the edit wars semi-protect the article. Admins? --Michael C. Price talk 15:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps I haven't been following this article long enough, but my impression is that most edit warriors (here and elsewhere) are logged-in users. Semi-protection stops principally vandals. --teb728 02:57, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
My impression is that anons add substantially to the noise level during edit wars. --Michael C. Price talk 07:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I guess I have to admit that 80.36.216.111 and his sock puppets, 212.145.145.227 and 194.42.125.16 have proved I was wrong. I've submitted an RFP. --teb728 21:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Second proposed infobox

Albert Einstein
Photographed by Oren J. Turner (1947)
Photographed by Oren J. Turner (1947)
Born March 14, 1879
Ulm in Württemberg, Germany
Died April 18, 1955
Princeton, New Jersey
Residence Germany, Switzerland, and finally USA
Nationality Initially German; finally dual US-Swiss citizen
Field Physics
Institution University of Zurich (1909-1910), Karl Ferdinand University (1911), ETH Zurich (1912-1913), University of Berlin (1914-1931), Princeton (1932-1955)
Known for Brownian motion, photoelectric effect, special relativity, and general relativity
Notable prizes Nobel Prize (1921), Copley Medal (1925), Franklin Medal (1935)

OK, guys here is a version that overcomes all the major objections above. The only way to resolve this dispute is to now go ahead and put it on the page for a 30-day trial period to see how it goes. There can be no reasonable objection to a trial period.

80.36.216.111 06:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

In another section User:203.114.48.84 said "The wiki status quo is 'to be bold.'" Yes, indeed, "be bold." But if you get reverted, negotiate. That means persuade. A good start would be agreeing to give up on "dispute" templates, which are unacceptable even to those who will accept an infobox. Note also that insults have an anti-persuasive effect.--teb728 21:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Was Einstein autistic?

There is clearly POV-claims in the section about Einsten not being autistic. AFAIK, this has definitely not been disproved or discarded. A BBC-article on the topic confirms that it hasn't been disprove: [5]

I think for POV-reasons, this article should be added as proof that this is still a possibility. --Rdos 15:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

The Line "There are innumerable legends which suggest that Einstein was a poor student, a slow learner, or a sufferer of autism (such as High-functioning autism, or Asperger syndrome), dyslexia, and/or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder." Legends certainly seems POV. I'm altering it to the NPOV "claims" —the preceding comment is by 69.123.210.71 - 20:28, 19 July 2006: Please sign your posts!

I think that calling the section "myths" is biased towards the perspective that Einstein is not dyslexic and autistic. I really think something like "speculation and controversy" would be more NPOV. Q0 21:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Henri Poincaré

In light of the new Einstein letters, more credibility has been given to the fact that Einstein was not working in isolation. This paragraph should be updated to reflect these new findings.--Esprit15d 19:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Dispute Box

A dispute box is totally necessary for a number of reasons:

  • Many readers may pass through the page and not realise there is a dispute
  • In thirty days time if the info box is suddenly removed, all these people will

then wonder why the box was removed and then there will be a flood of protest.

  • Therefore in the interest of keeping wars to a minimum, the warning box is definitely needed.
  • This namby-pamby attitude of "oooh, it lookths so obtruthif" is really spineless. Real adults use warning boxes.
  • Hiding under a cloud of pretense that nothing is happening is how wars are created
  • Warning boxes shoot straight and tell it like it is.

212.145.145.227 14:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I've removed some fuzzy and duplicated info so that it shoots quicker and straighter. Hope you all like it. --Michael C. Price talk 21:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually the way that edit wars are created is that some editors insist on their own way and refuse to compromise. I removed {{Calm talk}} and {{trialperiod}} (as opposed to reverting the whole info box entry) to see if without it other editors would let the infobox stand without them.
Incidentally, I notice that IP 80.36.216.111 disappeared at the same time you (IP 212.145.145.227) appeared, defending the same position. If you are the same person, you are now in violation of WP:3RR.
In any case, using insults like "spineless" will win you no supporters here. --teb728 18:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


It seems the warning box is necessary as other editors are removing the infobox unwittingly. The dispute box is really needed otherwise people really do not know what is going on.

Also because laguage like "spineless" is being used, I think the "calm talk" box is now justified.

194.42.125.16 19:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Debate

I've removed the infobox again. I think we should achieve a consensus of the editors of this page first before the an infobox is added to this page. Paul August ☎ 23:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I've restored the infobox again. I think we should achieve a consensus of the editors of this page first before the an infobox is removed from this page. --Michael C. Price talk 23:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Why? Paul August ☎ 00:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

This is foolish. The status quo should be maintained, at least on a featured article, until there is consensus on the talk page. In this case, the status quo is no infobox. I myself have no opinion one way or the other, so long as the article is not polluted with childish dispute templates. –Joke 01:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Leave it out pending consensus. My vote toward that consensus is ditch the ugly thing, here and on other scientist pages. Vsmith 01:06, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep it out. It's ugly and mostly unhelpful. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 03:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Keep it in! It's a 30-day trial period. The wikipedia will be around long after all you guys are dead and you'll have no control over it then. Stop sweating small stuff. How can the public have an intelligent discussion about this box if it is not there to talk about? This is a legit box with good info that deserves some discussion. I think a 30-day trial period is entirely reasonable.

If you guys are scared of the 30-day period because everyone else will like it and want it kept in....then you guys need to be seriously banned from wikipedia because there is no place for control freaks here. However, I'm sure that you are all nice guys and that is _not_ your fear.

So 30-days it is. Unless you can spell out a legitimate fear why 30-days is bad. You need to clearly state a valid argument.

The wiki status quo is "to be bold." Thirty days is teeny-weeny compared to the next 1000 years of the wiki's existence. A reality check is in order here:-) I have reverted the infobox. If you put back, be warned that I am only 16 years old so will outlive you and revert it when you are all too old to care. The future of wiki in the hands of your kids. So be nice to us and try to understand that we love infoboxes.

You adults are behaving like little spoilt brats, and us kids have a maturer outlook. Go back to the old people's home where you belong and keep outta here! 203.114.48.84 11:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I suggest you create a named user login account, otherwise you may find yourself blocked out when the protection kicks in. --Michael C. Price talk 20:52, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

No Infobox is my vote. Infoboxes are very useful for movies, radio stations, countries...things that have laundry lists of tangible information that everyone will most likely be looking for (population, box office gross, call letters, etc.). Scientists don't need infoboxes because cramming their research into 3 words is too derivatized to describe their contribution to the topics meaningfully. The text of the infobox also reads like a duplication of the summary paragraph at the top of the article. Birth, death, a prize or two, fields of research, countries of residence...it's all in there. Scientists don't put up stats, so they don't need a baseball card at the top of their articles. Let the article speak for itself and do away with the infobox. ju66l3r 14:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What rubbish. Scientists are no different from other notables. There is no reason why basic, consensual biographical details shouldn't appear in an infobox. --Michael C. Price talk 20:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
To use one of your own rhetorical devices: There is no reason why basic, consensual biographical details should appear in an infobox. See, I can be just as dismissive, as you have done multiple times within this topic, all the while adding nothing to the discussion, yet interjecting my opinion as fact at the same time. Back to the point, scientists are people, making their biographical encylopedic articles different from those of inanimate notable objects (like movies, radio stations, countries). The biographic nature of the article should easily convey all of the infobox facts but in a context of the person's life that gives much more information than the infobox ever will. The infobox format also requires the removal of parts of a person's life that don't easily fit the space requirements. For example, the most recently removed version of the infobox was missing at least 2 of the Institutions that Einstein held appointments at as well as the fact that he held Prussian citizenship and as a young man he resided in Italy at one point. These are examples of how boiling down to just the largest or most important facts in the infobox misses out on details which the box makes one believe it has conveyed. Use of an infobox on this page (and others like it) adds next to no value (if more summary is needed, let it be added to the introduction) and potentially removes the finer details of a person's contributions, legacy, and life that brings a person to read the biographical article in the first place. ju66l3r 04:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It's clear that we haven't reached a consensus over the past week. What next? Should someone initiate a straw poll perhaps? Maybe an RfC? ju66l3r 18:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep the infobox. I see no special reason why it should not appear in this article when it appears in many, many other biographical articles on wikipedia. Deputydog23 06:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
  • No infobox Just because someone gets the bright idea that there could be an infobox in all biographies doesn’t make a Wikipedia policy that the editors who watch the bio need a “special reason” to keep it out. An infobox (like all content) needs a reason to be included not a reason to be left out. An infobox makes sense in the bios of most if not all celebrities and politicians, but it makes no sense here. BTW, the Nationality entry in the 13 August version should be reviewed in the light of the discussion at Opening Line: Jewish-German-Swiss-American scientist?. --teb728 08:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Another Rumor

I've been told that Einstein only had one suit of clothing, although several pairs of it, so in the morning he would never need to decide what to wear, for there was no choice. It's kind of apparent in all his pictures, he's wearing the same thing, I'm wondering if someone is willing to add it to myths and rumors, or is it true? Lovok 12:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I heard that, although my source is the film "The Fly"... --Michael C. Price talk 20:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Whether it's true or not, if someone added it, it would be immediately reverted as trivial and unencyclopedic. --teb728 21:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I find that a very sad comment, that you should dictate what other people should be interested in about Einstein. The whole world knows that Einstein didn't wear socks (or did he? WP is silent on the matter) and regards this as an expression of his iconclasm or independence of mind; yet you take it upon yourself to declare that such satorial items are too trivial to mention. --Michael C. Price talk 21:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a compendium for trivia. It is not just him who makes up these sorts of standards, there are lots of us who would rather our entries be useful and respectful and leave the pointless (and probably apocryphal) bits to "the whole world" out there on the internet which trades in kooky trivia. --Fastfission 01:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
What is trivia is subjective and POVish. Einstein's sock habits have been noted by notable people (including Einstein himself[6]) -- thus it is itself notable. --Michael C. Price talk 10:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

The article is 84 kb already. Need to find ways of tightening rather than add more useless banalities. Maybe start an article called Useless Einstein trivia orTabloid Einstein. So, even if some find socks and suits mind-bogglingly fascinating, let's leave that sort of trivia out. Cheers, Vsmith 10:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

A shame you can't offer unprejudiced advice. A more sensible solution to the problem of overlarge articles is to break them down into separate articles/sections. --Michael C. Price talk 10:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, shame on me! Now isn't that sensible solution sorta what I was saying? Sorry 'bout my weird attempt at humor. Vsmith 13:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Well if that was 'sorta' what you were saying it would help if you had actually said it. As I'm sure you're aware humour can easily be misinterpreted without emoticons. --Michael C. Price talk 13:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I see that the rest of you are as bored as I am since they semi-protect the page: No vandalism, no edit wars. Sigh --teb728 17:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Cosmology

I changed "...significant contributions to ... cosmology" in the intro to "...significant contributions to ... gravitation." I was reverted by an editor citing the cosmological constant and dark matter. It is true that the cosmological constant was Einstein's idea, but that wrong idea is pretty much where his contribution to cosmology begins and ends. (As for dark matter, I don't know where that came from.) On the other hand, his theory of gravitation is the basis of modern cosmology. –Joke 12:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it may be an author who earlier tried to put some other nonsense into this page, as it fits their interpretation of Einstein and his work

Desdinova 15:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I never tried to put nonsense into this page. Don't make baseless accusations. The following is not my interpretation of Einstein and his work. Einstein predicted an effect called cosmological shear. Astrophysicists are seeing that he was right all along about measuring what we now call dark matter. (Aside: The cosmological constant may serve as the most economical solution to the accelerating universe problem. It is not a wrong idea.)

--68.224.247.234 22:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say he made a significant to cosmology as well as gravitation. Who before Einstein constructed a plausible gravitating cosmos model? I know Newton tried but I think it is generally reckoned (now, not then) that was catastrophically gravitationally unstable. --Michael C. Price talk 20:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It was not Einstein. Einstein did it wrong and had an unstable model. (I don't know if Newton did anything – I can't see why his model would be unstable, if indeed he ever worked on it – perhaps it is related to Olber's paradox?) Alexander Friedmann, Georges Lemaître, Howard Percy Robertson and Arthur Geoffrey Walker were the ones who did it, using Einstein's theory. –Joke 20:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Einstein's model was unstable, but not as unstable as Newton's. See Appendix B "Newton and the infinite static universe" Alan Guth (1997). The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins. Random House. ISBN 0224044486. . GR was major step forward for cosmology. --Michael C. Price talk 20:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. It is a gravitational version of Olber's paradox, that an infinite homogeneous mass distribution is unstable. That is pretty much exactly the same instability that plagues the Einstein static universe.
I think the instability is more profound with Newton, although I'd have to check to be sure. --Michael C. Price talk 21:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the instability is more profound with Einstein, because not only does the severe perturbative instability of Newton's model persist, but also the cosmological constant has to be fine-tuned to ensure a static universe (although one might say this a problem with Newton's model too). –Joke 00:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
No, it is much worse with Newton -- the whole Newtonian universe collapses in t \approx \frac{1}{\sqrt{\rho G}}, whereas Einstein's original model was metastable. --Michael C. Price talk 07:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't contest that GR was a major step forward for cosmology – it was the tool that, combined with the cosmological principle and the Copernican principle, allowed the first understanding of the structure of the universe as a whole. Likewise, the transistor was a giant step forward for computer science. That doesn't mean that John Bardeen made significant contributions to computer science. –Joke 21:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Funny, I would have thought it implied just that. --Michael C. Price talk 21:40, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's Nobel biography confirms his contributions to relativistic cosmology. --68.224.247.234 22:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

This section is getting a little off track. The issue is not whether Einstein contributed indirectly to cosmology: No one is disputing that. The issue is whether this contribution should be mentioned in the lead paragraph alongside quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics. I think it should not. --teb728 22:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Certainly, his contributions to those areas, and to gravitation, are of an order much greater than his contributions to cosmology. –Joke 23:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Einstein and de Sitter both developed cosmological models in 1917. Einstein obtained a static universe by “tinkering” with his own equations of general relativity… he added the so-called cosmological constant to prevent his presumed static universe from contracting and collapsing under its own gravity. This cosmological model is referred to as the Einstein-de Sitter Model of the Universe. --68.224.247.234 23:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. There is an interesting historical paper about this here Janssen paper. –Joke 00:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Further, Einstein's formulation of the general theory of relativity is widely regarded as the most significant contribution to cosmology made by an individual. In fact, this theory is the entire basis for cosmology and the Big Bang theory. What is indirect about these contributions and, more importantly, why are they relatively lesser when compared to his contributions to statistical and quantum mechanics? To state his contributions to relativity theory but ignore those to cosmology is ridiculous. (Note: Einstein introduced valuable results in relativistic cosmology, a branch of theoretical cosmology.) --68.224.247.234 00:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Widely regarded by whom? Many introductory texts on cosmology start from an entirely Newtonian point of view – in fact, the Friedmann equation can be viewed as a Newtonian equation. I am not denying that it is important – indeed the physical cosmology article, which I largely wrote, cites it, along with Hubbles observation of the redshift-luminosity relationship, as the foundation of modern cosmology. But it is a theory of gravity, not a cosmological model, and thus a tool used by cosmologists. Einstein's best known work on cosmological model building is pretty much limited to the Einstein static universe. This is by no means insignificant – every cosmologist knows what it is, and why it is a failure – but it is not that important. By all means mention it in the article, just not in the intro. –Joke 00:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there a consensus on this matter or not? --68.224.247.234 00:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. Do you agree with my comments? –Joke 00:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

He laid the foundations for cosmology with his general theory of relativity and took one of the first steps towards modelling the behavior of the entire universe through his application of this theory. I agree with Michael Pryce in the above example of Bardeen. --68.224.247.234 01:17, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

"He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology." Do you refute this statement in his Nobel biography? --68.224.247.234 01:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

What if the phrasing were to state "relativistic cosmology" rather than cosmology (maybe referencing this sourced information)? --68.224.247.234 01:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Note that I have made this edit I aforementioned and have included the reference. I see no reason for further conflict. --68.224.247.234 02:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I have made my perspective clear, but I don't intend to carry on the pointless conversation any longer. Perhaps we should just replace the page with the Nobel biography, and be done with it? –Joke 02:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

One reference to the Nobel biography does not suggest replacing the entire article with this source. Your pointless sarcasm is not worth my time. I can see all you are interested is reverting the work of others -- I proposed a solution and you have become offensive. Do not lecture me, you are unqualified. --68.224.247.234 02:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

In what way am I unqualified? –Joke 03:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Please - personal jabs don't belong here. Keep focused. The consensus seems to be that the cosmology bit is valid for inclusion within the article, but not important enough for the intro. At least that's my take on it. So, stop the revert war and find a spot elswhere in the article for the info & source. Vsmith 03:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


I'm with Joke on this one. Relativity is a tool that is used in Cosmology sure, but Walker, Robertson, etc etc. The transistor comment above is a useful analogy.

Desdinova 12:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it was an awful analogy, because the transistor isn't really a contribution to computer science, but to computer technology. If we neutrally rephrase the sentence we can see how misleading it is:

Likewise, the X was a giant step forward for Y-science. That doesn't mean that X's inventor made significant contributions to Y- science.

which is plainly false. --Michael C. Price talk 12:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Hey, both of you, let's stay on topic here: This talk page is not a forum for general discussions but a place to discuss what should go in the article. I'm with Vsmith: "The cosmology bit is valid for inclusion within the article, but not important enough for the intro." --teb728 17:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

And I agree with your conclusion -- I just don't like seeing bogus arguments being put forward, even if I agree with the conclusions. And BTW the false analogy wasn't off topic. --Michael C. Price talk 17:36, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Einstein's work is a tool that's used in Cosmology, but its also used in a lot of other places as well. I agree that the phrasing in the intro would be better in the main subject - otherwise one could argue that a lot of current physics comes under the same boat. There's also the issue that seemingly went undiscussed about making edits before the discussion...

As joke said - a lot of cosmology starts off from Newtonian principles. I think the word "gravitation" is better considering it describes the fundamental tool underneath that Einstein did his work in.


Desdinova 19:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually I think the rider "and gravitation" should be deleted from the intro -- it already mentions general relativity and implies ("moreover") that "gravitation" is something outside his relativity work. --Michael C. Price talk 21:33, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with that. --teb728 22:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree to the fact that Einstein made valuable contributions to the more restrictive branch of theoretical cosmology known as relativistic cosmology, but not to cosmology, in general, beyond general relativity. Perhaps, the term "gravitation" can be replaced to account for this. --Kasparov 22:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, well seem to have a sorta consensus, so I struck while the iron was hot and deleted the reference to "gravitation" from the intro. --Michael C. Price talk 23:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone contend with the addition of relativistic cosmology to the list under debate? --Kasparov 23:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

You'll've to have clue me in a bit here. Are you talking about the introduction: if so, I don't think we need mention it there, and that seems(?) to be the consensus. If we're talking about other sections, is that in the proposal in the section below (here on the talk page): if so we can address the issue there. --Michael C. Price talk 23:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I am referring to the introduction. --Kasparov 23:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't really know what relativistic cosmology means. It is certainly not a term that is in wide use. Is it related to high-energy astrophysics? or does it just mean cosmology with relativity, which is implicit these days? In any case, I think it would be best to explain Einstein's work in some depth in the body. –Joke 00:12, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Relativistic cosmology would surely be covered by the mention of general relativity. Other wise we would have to mention all of modern physics (which is all relativistic): relativistic dynamics, quantum electrodynamics, string theory.... etc --Michael C. Price talk 00:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
This is not necessarily true as one can study classical problems in relativity without recourse to their astrophysical implications. --Kasparov 00:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Relativistic cosmology studies the relativistic Universe (i.e. universe dynamics and structure as a result of relativistic consequences). (Matter and radiation give a 1+3 local splitting of spacetime into time and space directions. Further, spacetime symmetries determine preferred space sections and associated preferred time coordinates. A classic example of broken symmetry.) Models which were basically geometrical initially, became the vehicle for observational predictions, used for testing the models, and then became the basis for extensive studies of physics in the expanding Universe. This then led to revised views of universe dynamics, where quantum fields in the early universe led to dramatically changed possibilities in dynamics, in particular including inflation as a major paradigm. This has led in a curious way to an emphasis on detailed observational predictions, but also a viewpoint where theory takes precedence over observations in some other ways. Einstein initiated all this in 1917 with his seminal and ground-breaking paper on the subject. --Kasparov 01:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Besides, I am discussing work that Eintein himself undertook. Mentioning modern physics is not the matter herein. --Kasparov 01:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

By “relativistic cosmology” do you mean the same thing as the content of the physical cosmology article? I ask because 68.224.247.234 (who seems to have a special relationship with you, being the only person to make un-reverted changes to your user page) tried to impose a link to that article with the text “relativistic cosmology.” That article seems to credit Einstein only with general relativity and the cosmology.
You mention Einstein’s 1917 paper: That was the paper where he introduced the cosmological constant in the mistaken belief that it would produce a static universe.
Do you find an Einstein contribution to “relativistic cosmology” beyond general relativity and the cosmological constant?
You mentioned “broken symmetry” of spacetime. That sounds like a very modern and non-Einstein interpretation of relativity—perhaps even OR. --teb728 04:31, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Do you think "Prof" 68.224.247.234 is Kasparov's evil twin :-) --Michael C. Price talk 04:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm only suggesting that they probably have the same conception of relativistic cosmology. I certainly prefer Kasparov's approach to editing. --teb728 06:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed content on cosmology etc

OK, how about this for a place to talk about cosmology in the article? I am think of adding something like the following as new subsection (perhaps at the end of Biography). You all undoubtedly would have additions and clarifications. But are there any objections to the idea?

===Contributions to other fields===
Although Einstein rejected the inherent randomness of modern quantum mechanics he made vital contributions to its development:
  • The photoelectric effect began the quantum revolution by showing that the quantization of light (which had appeared as a mathematical device in Planck) was real.
  • Bose-Einstein statistics remains a part of quantum mechanics. In addition, it led to Fermi-Dirac statistics, which in turn led directly to modern quantum mechanics.
  • Special relativity is an essential part of quantum mechanics.
Although Einstein regretted adding the cosmological constant to general relativity, the cosmological constant – and general relativity generally remain in modern cosmology:
  • Etc

--teb728 21:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I suggest we mention cosmology, Hubble and the cosmological constant in the section on GR. --Michael C. Price talk 22:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Opening Line: Jewish-German-Swiss-American scientist?

What is this convoluted nonsense? Einstein was born in Germany to a Jewish family, spent good part of his life in Switzerland (where he was also schooled and later naturalized) and ultimately died in the USA as its citizen. If you guys can't decide on how to effectively describe this in the opening line, I'm removing it completely. He was a theoretical physicist, period. His national and religious identities can be discusssed within the body of the article. Gordon Freeman 21:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Most professional encyclopedias refer to Einstein as a German-American. He was born in Germany and died in the United States. This is not an issue of citizenship. --68.224.247.234 21:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I have seen this article use such instances as: "German-born American theoretical scientist", "Jewish theoretical scientist", "German-Swiss-American theoretical scientist", and the list goes on. All of these descriptions are incomplete in one way or another and certainly biased towards one end of the spectrum. I have no issues utilizing the expression "German-American", however he was also Jewish by birth - an ethno-religious group; And omitting the mention of it might violate NPOV. If anyone can effectively phrase the opening line with all of the aforementioned points, and do so without jeopardizing the integrity of it - I'm all ears. Until then however, I prefer we stick with the statement "theoretical physicist". Gordon Freeman 14:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Below this section on the talk page is one entitled "Jewishness" that also addresses this edit conflict. My response there is: "May I suggest: '...was a Jewish, Swiss-American theoretical physicist born in Germany.' or '...was a German-born, Swiss-American theoretical physicist of Jewish (persuasion/heritage/ethnicity)'." Do either of these two options satisfy you? ju66l3r 18:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Both your versions are way too long and convoluted to go in the header, where brevity is at a premium. Both versions add almost half as many words as are in the header's mention of relativity. If a brief label like “German-American” were adequate, no one would object to it. The body of the article adequately explains the extent to which he was Jewish, German, Swiss, and American; there is no need for it in the header. --teb728 21:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I will continue this debate below in "Jewishness" Gordon Freeman 18:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Deir Yassin link please?

i'm new to wikipedia but i'd like to request one quick change to this article that hasn't been mentioned. Can someone please link the mention of Deir Yassin to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre ? it's good to have a link to it so people know what exactly he was protesting. if there's a better place for me to make this request, please let me know! Xfireworksx 02:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC) xfireworksx

Jewishness

Does this define the man?? Is this his most important accomplishment?? Should this be noted in the HEADER? Thanks! --Tom 14:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and is living in America his most important accomplishment? Perhaps it doesn't really matter what he was born or where he lived. --Lividore 14:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

His being Jewish had a pretty big impact on his life, yes (his work was derided as "Jewish physics" by the Germans, it had big effects on his employment arrangements, was a big reason he left Germany after Hitler came to power, and had big effects on his political views as well). I don't know whether it is useful in the header, though. --Fastfission 14:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

He was conspicuously Jewish. He lent his name to Zionist causes. He was to some extent a target of anti-Semitism. He was personally active in the founding of what was to become Brandeis University, etc. etc. It's not irrelevant. Indeed, I'd say that in recent years, in pop-culture Einstein hagiography, there's been a bit of a tendency to try to downplay or minimize his religion, just as there has certainly been a tendency to downplay or minimize his political views. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. It's really sad, and further proves that anti-Semitism just changes its form, it never dies. --Lividore 14:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

In search of a compromise on "Jewish" vs "German-born, Swiss-American", may I suggest that both be included. Based on WP:MOSBIO, "German-born, Swiss-American" is necessary for style considerations. At the same time, MOSBIO suggests that ethnicity is relevant if important to the notability. I agree with those here that say it is relevant. His ethnicity shaped his ideologies, determined his citizenships, played a role in the acceptance of his work, and influenced many other aspects of his life because he was a Jew in Germany leading up to WWII. Therefore, both are appropriate material for the introductory paragraph. May I suggest: "...was a Jewish, Swiss-American theoretical physicist born in Germany." or "...was a German-born, Swiss-American theoretical physicist of Jewish (persuasion/heritage/ethnicity)". ju66l3r 18:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

My I suggest we look at other biograpgies? Very few bios if ANY say "Joe Bow was a Jewish-American whatever" for good reason. If the person was a famous rabbi or their being Jewish was the reason for their notability, then I would agree. I agree with what you are saying but is Einstein notable for being Jewish or something else? I would say the later. I would look at Edward Teller. He was a featured article awhile back and somebody added Jewish to his header and this is what got me interested in this whole "issue". I still feel that the wording/the way it reads(2nd sentence) today still needs work but whatever. Einstein and all people should have their ethnicity discussed, but just not, imho, in the header/lead sentence UNLESS that is what makes them notable. Anyways...--Tom 18:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a valid point. Louis Armstrong for example is not described as an African-American jazz musician, but merely American. Unless an individual's ethnicity/religious heritage is of utmost importance and/or relation to their most notable achievement, it should be omitted in the header. Now in regards to Einstein's Jewish background: Not only were Einstein's parents non-observant Jews, but he also attended a Catholic elementary school. His Jewish heritage, however valid, was a small contributing factor to his scientific achievements. While Einstein renounced his German citizenship when he became a Swiss citizen, he certainly did not identify with the Swiss land, its people, nor its culture and customs to the extent which would equally qualify it worth of a mention. With that in mind, I propose we utilize either "German-American theoretical physicist.." (which is used in most encyclopedias) or "German-born theoretical physicist..". If anyone wishes to challenge this feel free to give your input. Gordon Freeman 19:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I went with the "German born American xxxx...."...I am sure we will be back to this in a few months...and the beat goes on...--Tom 19:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I have no terribly strong feelings on this one way or the other. I see that The Columbia Encyclopedia, which of course is a very short article, opens with "American theoretical physicist, known for the formulation of the relativity theory, b. Ulm, Germany." Jewishness is mentioned only once: "His property was confiscated (1934) by the Nazi government because he was Jewish, and he was deprived of his German citizenship," and implicitly when it says "Einstein's writings include.... About ZIonism."
The Britannica, after giving his dates, opens "German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect." Second paragraph says "His celebrity gave him an influential voice that he used to champion such causes as pacifism, liberalism, and Zionism." Longest statement about his Jewishness occurs mid-article:
With the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Berlin, Einstein was castigated for his “Bolshevism in physics,” and the fury against him in right-wing circles grew when he began to publicly support the Zionist movement (see Zionism). Judaism had played little part in his life, but he insisted that, as a snail can shed his shell and still be a snail, so a Jew can shed his faith and still be a Jew.
Encarta leads with "Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity and for his bold hypothesis concerning the particle nature of light." The words "Jew" or "Jewish" don't appear in the article, but it says "After the war his continued public support of pacifist and Zionist goals made him the target of vicious attacks by anti-Semitic and right-wing elements in Germany. Even his scientific theories were publicly ridiculed, especially the theory of relativity."
So, it doesn't seem as if other encyclopedias think Jewishness or... what is the word? Swissness? are lead-sentence material. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the current phrasing "German-born American scientist". It gives off a false perception of his nationality. Let's not forget that he was schooled in Germany and Switzerland, and has formulated his defining theories while there as well. He only emigrated to the US towards the later part of his life. One could argue he was more Swiss than American. I vow to either use "German-American theoretical scientist" or "German-born theoretical scientist". I feel the current heading is very US-centric. Gordon Freeman 19:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I would argue that his jewish ancestry is on a level in signficance with his being German-born. We cannot quantify the affect either of those things had on his actual work. After all, physics has no nationality nor religion. However, when it comes to the way his work was accepted, the circumstance of his life and his own personal attitudes towards faith they are very signficant. Not to delve too deeply into a Turtledove line of reasoning here, but imagine if he had been born a non-observant Christian, and stayed in Germany through WWII. I doubt he would have joined the nazis but surely his work would have been more acceptable and they would have made further inroads into nuclear research, drastically changing the 20th century paradigm.
As for his "German-Swiss-American" status those things are largely trumped by his being Jewish, for he would likely never have become the second or third if he weren't born a Jew. Indeed, identifying him as "German-born" without noting he was jewish is something of a muddle. Where Charles Darwin can simply be described as English, Linus Pauling as American, and Henri Poincaré "one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science" without noting that Einstein was jewish his "German-born" status is confused. If he were not a jew he'd be "German" rather than "German-born." --Geeman 03:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
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