Old Email Archive

digest 1997-02-18 #001



11:28 PM 2/17/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 17 Feb 1997 06:00:14 -0800
From: Everdell@aol.com
Subject: Re: The Golem (Einstein)
Joseph Duemer asks one question about the reception and another about
the
genesis of Einstein's Special Relativity.  On the subject of why
Einstein's
Nobel came so late, Abraham Pais's biography of Einstein is very full,
and
includes some politics, opinion, and votes on the Nobel Committee. 
Pais's
final view dismisses anti-Semitism as a serious factor, and concentrates
on
Special Relativity's difficulty of proof.
As for Michelson-Morley, Einstein didn't refer to it in his 1905
Relativity
paper.  Pais goes into the Fizeau experiment, which Einstein did
reference,
and discusses the difficult question of whether Einstein was aware of
Michelson-Morley in 1905.  Pais's answer: probably not.
- -Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
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Date: 17 Feb 1997 09:35:33 -0800
From: Martha Bartter 
Subject: Re: The Golem
At 08:45 2/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I recently gave one of my sharper students a couple of chapters
from
>_The Golem_ by Collins & Pinch. My student is a math whiz and
still
>young enough to want science to be a search for rational truth.
While he
>was able to credit the argument that science is a human institution
and
>often proceeds by other than purely objective and rational means,
he
>would like to think that in the end the nature of reality is laid
clear.
>So he had a question about the chapter on the reception of
relativity.
>Specifically, he asked why, if physicists were so all-fired hot to
>accept the radical theory of an obscure paten clerk (as Collins and
>Pinch seem to argue)--why was Einstein only given the Nobel in 1923,
and
>then for the photo-electric effect?
>
There still exist in most libraries small (and larger) works arguing
with everything Einstein put forth in 1905 -- and even for many
years thereafter. Furthermore, at more than one physics conference,
Einstein's paper was scheduled at the very end of the meeting, when
most participants were already catching trains for home. In other
words,
a great many physicists were NOT all-fired hot to accept Einstein's
work at the time.
If Collins & Pinch fail to mention this, they aren't playing fair.
>My tentative answer was that the politics and sociology of the
Nobel
>committee may have played a role. And I suggested that we'd need to
look
>at Eddington's biography for evidence of his motives, and to see
whether
>he was typical of his fellow-physicists. I also suggested that the
>various attempts to reproduce the Michelson-Morley results were
more
>telling, since the narrative of 20th century science presents the
M-M
>experiments as conclusive proof of relativity when in fact the
results
>were open to considerable interpretation.
>
>
>--
>--
>Joseph Duemer
>Clarkson University
>School of Liberal Arts
>
>"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
>but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
>mistake it for a universal one."
>                                        -- Hannah Arendt
>
>
Martha Bartter
Truman State University
mbartter@truman.edu