The Einsteinian Revolution
The Historical Roots of His Breakthroughs
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Publisher Description
How the Einsteinian revolution can be understood as the result of a long-term evolution of science
The revolution that emerged from Albert Einstein’s work in the early twentieth century transformed our understanding of space, time, motion, gravity, matter, and radiation. Beginning with Einstein’s miracle year of 1905 and continuing through his development of the theory of general relativity, Einstein spurred a revolution that continues to reverberate in modern-day physics. In The Einsteinian Revolution, Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn trace the century-long transformation of classical physics and argue that the revolution begun by Einstein was in fact the result of a long-term evolution. Describing the origins and context of Einstein’s innovative research, Gutfreund and Renn work to dispel the popular myth of Einstein as a lone genius who brought about a revolution in physics through the power of his own pure thought. We can only understand the birth of modern physics, they say, if we understand the long history of the evolution of knowledge.
Gutfreund and Renn outline the essential structures of the knowledge system of classical physics on which Einstein drew. Examining Einstein’s discoveries from 1905 onward, they describe the process by which new concepts arose and the basis of modern physics emerged. These transformations continued, eventually resulting in the establishment of quantum physics and general relativity as the two major conceptual frameworks of modern physics—and its two unreconciled theoretical approaches. Gutfreund and Renn note that Einstein was dissatisfied with this conceptual dichotomy and began a search for a unified understanding of physics—a quest that continued for the rest of his life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Albert Einstein's breakthroughs were the product of a long-brewing evolution in physics and "broad dialogue" between himself, "friends, colleagues and peers," according to this impenetrable treatise. Gutfreund, a retired Hebrew University of Jerusalem physics professor, and Renn, director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, follow up their 2020 collaboration Einstein on Einstein with specialized discussions of how the Nobel winner's major innovations were merely the latest steps forward in the gradual evolution of scientific thought. For instance, they describe how Einstein's 1905 hypothesis that "light behaves as though it consists of particles" depended on his taking literally the "light quanta" fellow physicist Max Planck postulated as a "mathematical device" several years earlier. The authors also debunk the notion that Einstein was a "solitary genius," noting that he credited his conversations with engineer Michele Besso for helping him crack his special theory of relativity. Despite Gutfreund and Renn's intent to make this "accessible to a broader community" than the monograph it's adapted from, a solid background in physics is required to follow the technical arguments ("Einstein then derived the entropy of monochromatic radiation in the high-frequency range, corresponding to the range of validity of what was known as Wien's law of spectral distribution"). Generalists will be left in the dark.
