How Politics Shaped General Relativity - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...shaped-general-relativity.html
relativity einstein politization science WWI politics
shared by Javier E on 07 Nov 15
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Less commonly understood, however, is how thoroughly the research into this profound, abstruse and seemingly otherworldly theory was shaped by the messy human dramas of the past century.
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But other obstacles were political. The turmoil and disruptions of World War I, for example, prevented many people from learning and thinking about general relativity
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Einstein noted that the public recognition of his accomplishment had a political slant. “Today I am described in Germany as a ‘German servant,’ and in England as a ‘Swiss Jew,’ ” he said. “Should it ever be my fate to be represented as a bête noire, I should, on the contrary, become a ‘Swiss Jew’ for the Germans and a ‘German servant’ for the English.”
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After World World II, a new generation of physicists in the United States began to focus on relativity from their perch within the “military-industrial complex.” Here, political exigencies accelerated a deeper appreciation of Einstein’s theory, in unanticipated ways.
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With GPS, the warping of time that Einstein imagined assumed operational significance. (Later, GPS was opened to the commercial market, and now billions of people rely on general relativity to find their place in the world, every single day.)