The Aspiring Polymath's Society discussion

Discuss what you've learned about modern physics and about the great minds that built it....


To start off, I have to remark: from a female point of view, Einstein is way more of a dick than I ever imagined :(

What do you mean from a female point of view? Because back then people had a vastly different view towards females really... even the great minds in the scientific community (sorry to say).

Although Einstein didn't have much to do with Quantum Physics other than being against it : P.

He developed an intimate romantic relationship with the daughter of the family that took him in after his own family left him behind, and it was expected he would marry her. He went off to school instead and left her for a Russian, with whom he had a daughter that he never met or acknowledged. She came back to Switzerland without said daughter and married him; they had two boys together but grew apart. While he was still married to her, he courted his first cousin, who nursed him back to health following illness. Given the help she provided to him, she expected he would marry her. He eventually agreed, under the condition that fidelity would not be expected of him.

Although it's accurate to say that people had vastly different views toward females, that sort of moral relativism does not justify being a dick to women, in much the same way that living during the Nazi regime and "just following orders" does not preclude responsibility for supremacist actions or protect you from the subsequent judgment that those actions make you kind of a dick.

I'm saying that his attitude toward the women in his life was frankly dickish. Famous scientist or not, I think it's really valuable to recognize these issues so that 50 years from now, people aren't still making the same sad excuses for the inequalities of our current society.

The book so far has been an intensely fascinating series of (mini)biographies of some of the important players in quantum physics, covering their personal and academic lives in detail. Though I'm only about halfway through it, Einstein has been the only scientist covered who behaved in this way toward women. From a female point of view, regardless of time era, his behaviour is regrettable. I'd rather not use either his generation or his status as an excuse.

Oh yeah, status is no excuse for anything.

But in any event, it sounds like the courtship practices of the time were pretty outmoded for him. Who's to say you can't have more than one partner? If society was more free he probably would have been better off, but back then you were heavily expected to marry and so forth.

Not seeing his kid on the other hand... that's just being a dick. There's simply no excuse for this.

For sure, I am by no means a spokesperson for traditional marriage. But! My views on polyamory and open relationships are centered largely on mutual understanding and respect. Of course, the author of the book could not have asked Einstein's women their opinions, but my guess is they were not cool with it.

Ergo, bit dickish.

Still a rad dude.

Yeah that's true, but I think the social constructs back then didn't really allow people to consider other options. Like Einstein probably didn't even really know what he actually wanted out of a relationship, because the options were being married or not haha.

Sad he opted for being a dick though.

Let me make clear, I was in NO WAY passing any judgment on Einstein's contributions because of his personal life. I was just commenting that his personal life was not what I expected it would be, on the basis of how much respect I have for him as a scientist.

This actually happens often, and I think it's healthy to realize that your heros are not infallible-- that there are multiple faces on every person, some of which you admire and some of which you dislike or disagree with.

Yes, every person is fallible. Why is recognizing that and disliking a person's certain traits while still respecting their better qualities a bad thing? To me, it seems more honest than this "nobody's perfect so who are we to comment on anyone's flaws!?" attitude. A reasoned discussion about human imperfections presents us with an opportunity to recognize and improve our own faults and those of the society we find ourselves in.

Rohit wrote: "I think if you have not heard both sides of the story, it is premature and presumptuous to pass your judgments on it. Well, I don't want to take any sides but the work for which Einstein is known f..."

I think you may have misunderstood my passing statement. Einstein's work was VERY useful in Quantum Mechanics. I did not mean to imply the foundations and breakthroughs he made were useless. But I was merely commenting on the fact that Einstein wasn't a very active participant in furthering QM, other than saying he didn't believe in it. This does NOT stop other scientists furthering a field from using his work though.

It is like Agassiz at Harvard when he made the Museum of Comparative Zoology to prove Evolution false. Just because he didn't believe in it, doesn't mean the work done there isn't some of the best standing proof that Evolution is true!

I'm not sure about all the stuff you're referencing.

The reason I said you misunderstood it is because it was supposed to be funny.

And I think illustrated that I think being against something can advance science as well with my Agassiz comment.

Yeah, I guess for me I find it quite comical. Here's this giant of Physics and all the data is pointing to QM and he decides not to believe. I mean, it's good to open the debate with giants as long as their side has good points.

Agassiz was pretty religiously motivated and I think that's just more stupid than anything. So I don't think that opened anything useful. But I just imagine all these other giants trying to convince Einstein hehe.

Yeah that's true.

I rarely ever read anything on Biology. I've never read those books you referenced. I primarily read math books and the random Physics book here and there. However, I should probably delve more into Biology as that is a very open and growing field mathematically.

I haven't seen anything for the lay reader. Ian Stewart wrote a book about Biology and Math, that's about it.

I've only ever seen a text book published by Springer which concerns Neuroscience and math.

Personally, I hate statistics with a passion. I find the subject very boring. I'm more interested in things post-statistics, where we have nice equations to maybe look for deeper meaning in things.

Exactly! I am MAYBE interesting in trying to work on getting to the BIG thing. Even if we need to use Non-linear Chaos Dynamics to actually model the stuff... I'm confident there must be something there!

My confidence may be biased though, because I look at wonderful and beautiful equations governing things like Electromagnetism, gravity, etc... and I just think "how can things like this not be in Biology". The major hold-back is that Biology is just so damn complicated haha... And frankly Biologists aren't trained like mathematicians/theoretical physicists, so I'm not sure how many are looking at all this stuff in that way.

I'm so glad we've got some discussion going here! :)

I agree with Rohit that Einstein was important in the development of quantum physics. Not only did he lay the theoretical groundwork for it, but he also provided a voice against which those at the forefront of the theoretical development had to reason-- that kind of oppositional voice is in many ways as important as the voices doing the heavy lifting.

I just finished the book, and I offer my review below:

This was a fascinating exploration of the development of quantum mechanics and quantum theory, as charted through the lives of a handful of 20th century scientists at the top of their fields. Though often tangential and over-personal, for example focusing on the sordid love lives of some of the scientists, Jones tells a compelling story that builds in tension toward a critical conference in 1927, picking up new characters along the way. The format follows one strand of the messy quantum lineage leading up to 1927 before backing off to earlier dates to pick up another thread of the lineage and building to 1927 again, and repeating; although I undersand why it was formatted in this way-- to balance dramatic effect with the reader's difficulty following more than one biography at a time-- it results in a bit of a muddy timeline, with occasional confusion as to how the various players fit together in time. I got the distinct impression that Jones was unaware of how convoluted her story was, and it's rather unfortunate that she therefore didn't realize the text would have been greatly complimented by a timeline presented in an appendix.

Another issue was the scant and not-quite-clear explanations of the physics, if any explanation was offered at all. I've read other "popular" physics and mathematics biographies, and I've seen complicated ideas presented with more clarity and attention than Jones offers. I understand the author is primarily a journalist, though she has a M.Sc. in physics... it's a blessing and a curse that her primary interest is in the history of the science rather than the science itself-- a blessing because it led her to write this book, but a curse because the book could have been stronger with more attention to conveying the ideas behind the science she was chronicling.

Whatever its flaws, I really enjoyed the read. I learned a lot about many of my intellectual heroes, and thoroughly enjoyed reading about the unfolding of academic careers, both successful and ill-fated. That latter focus of the book is one that may bore readers not in an academic circle, who aren't looking forward to doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral positions of their own or worrying over publications and the virtues of scientific truth versus unpolished sharing of ideas as a driving force toward that truth... but those were the bits that interested me most, as a young academic. How did these great minds go from hopeful students to Nobel laureates? What was the trajectory they took while navigating a changing political climate and interpersonal tensions?

My overall impression upon finishing is one of reassurance: I work in a young field (cognitive science) that is consistently in flux and has yet to find its footing in the vein of scientific laws or principles. It's the wild west, in a lot of ways, and it was wholly invigorating to read about another field during its own wild years, when the promise is high on the horizon and the field bubbles with life and tension and a persistent churning progress. It makes me so eager for my own upcoming future, and I'm glad that Jones was able to capture that essence of intellectual pursuit.

On the 'Often tangential and over personal', my impression is that the scientific emphasis in this book is a secondary objective. Categorically, this is a presentation of history and the personal aspects of many great minds. It's an accessory to augment the perspective of the scientific breakthroughs that we all know. The context of such work provides, in my opinion, a greater understanding of how they all thought and what influenced their lives.

The romanticized view of the field is quite compelling. The somewhat close relationships of all the players further drives this aspect and as it was pointed out by Chrissy, it could be compared to a wild west of sorts. Inspiration is what I felt.

Reaching back to the social aspects discussed earlier I offer my brief thoughts on the matter. When dealing with many aspects in history, many of which are considered controversial, I do not attempt to any modern day comparison nor moral judgement. There is no use in getting upset over what would today be considered social injustice; racial, gender, or otherwise. In the television series 'Firefly' (A western show set in space), a government certified prostitute is considered an upper echelon social class. In my mind it would be just as pointless to critique that as it would our own history.