Book ChapterDOI
Eliminative Induction as a Method of Discovery: How Einstein Discovered General Relativity
John D. Norton
- pp 29-69
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Einstein's weary and consoling response of August 1915 to his correspondent Paul Hertz on a yet another proposal concerning the troubled and still incomplete general theory of relativity is described in this paper.Abstract:
So began Einstein’s weary and consoling response of August 1915 to his correspondent Paul Hertz on a yet another proposal concerning the troubled and still incomplete general theory of relativity. Einstein had been working on the theory for eight years and within a few months would overcome his final obstacles, bringing to completion his greatest scientific achievement.’ My concern in this paper is to establish two theses about Einstein’s discovery of his general theory of relativity. The first concerns the heuristic methods he used to navigate the “chaos of possibilities”; the second concerns an important moral Einstein, the “mathematical ignoramus,” drew from the experience:read more
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Why Einstein did not believe that General Relativity geometrizes gravity
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`Nature is the Realisation of the Simplest Conceivable Mathematical Ideas': Einstein and the Canon of Mathematical Simplicity
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The scope, limits, and distinctiveness of the method of 'deduction from the phenomena': some lessons from Newton's 'demonstrations' in optics
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