Einstein for Everyone
JOHN D. NORTON
Nullarbor Press
2007
revisions 2008
Einstein for Everyone
JOHN D. NORTON
Nullarbor Press
2007
revisions 2008
Preface
For over a decade I have taught an introductory, undergraduate class, "Einstein for Everyone," at the University of Pittsburgh to anyone interested enough to walk through door. The course is aimed at people who have a strong sense that what Einstein did changed everything. However they do not know enough physics to understand what he did and why it was so important. The course presents just enough of Einstein's physics to give students an independent sense of what he achieved and what he did not achieve. The latter is almost as important as the former. For almost everyone with some foundational axe to grind finds a way to argue that what Einstein did vindicates their view. They certainly cannot all be right. Some independent understanding of Einstein's physics is needed to separate the real insights from the never-ending hogwash that seems to rain down on us all.
With each new offering of the course, I had the chance to find out what content worked and which of my ever so clever pedagogical inventions were failures. By this slow process of trial and error, indulging the indefinitely elastic patience of the students at the University of Pittsburgh, the course has grown to be something that works pretty well--or so it seems from my side of the lectern.
At the same time, my lecture notes have evolved. They began as chaotic pencil jottings. Over time they solidified into neater pencil script and overhead transparencies; and then into summaries that I posted on my website; and then finally those summaries were expanded into a full text that can be read independently. That text is presented here.
Its content reflects the fact that my interest lies in history and philosophy of science and that I teach in a Department of History and Philosophy of Science. There is a lot of straight exposition of Einstein's physics and the physics it inspired. However there is also a serious interest in the history of Einstein's science. A great deal of my professional life has been spent poring over Einstein's manuscripts, trying to discern how he found what he found. The results of those studies have crept in. In other places I try to show how a professional philosopher approaches deeply intractable foundational issues. The temptation in such cases is let one's standard of rigor drop, since otherwise it seems impossible to arrive at any decision. That is exactly the wrong reaction. When the problems are intractable, we must redouble our commitment to rigor in thought and I have tried to show how we can do this.
This
texts owes a lot to many. It came about because once Peter Machamer, then
chair of the Department of HPS, urged a meandering junior professor to do a
course that "did" Einstein and black holes and all that stuff. The text is
indebted to the University of Pittsburgh, which has the real wisdom to see
that it gets the most from its faculty by letting them do what fascinates
them, for they will surely do that best. It owes the greatest debt to the
infinite patients of the students who have taken this class, told me what
works and what does not, and each year allow me at least indirectly to
experience anew that inescapable sense of wonder when one first grasps the
beauty of what Einstein did.
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Contents
| Preface | iii |
| 1. Introduction | read |
| 2. Special Relativity | read |
| 3. The Problem of Reciprocity | read |
| 4. E=mc2 | read |
| 5. Origins of Special Relativity | read |
| 6. Spacetime | read |
| 7. What is a Four Dimensional Space Like? | read |
| 8. Philosophical Significance of the Special Theory of Relativity | read |
| 9. Non-Euclidean Geometry | read |
| 10. General Relativity | read |
| 11. Relativistic Cosmology | read |
| 12. Big Bang Cosmology | read |
| 13. Black Holes | read |
| 14. A Better Picture of Black Holes | read |
| 15. Atoms and the Quanta | read |
| 16. Quantum Theory | read |
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