Newton's gravitational laws of inertial motion in the cosmos of the solar system lead inevitably to the sun growing into a red giant and then collapsing into a white dwarf, while Einstein's discovery of the photoelectric law of relativity prioritizes mankind as "in the driver's seat," so to speak. Einstein places mankind in the role of an observer participating in the solar system instead of merely overviewing it as a divine creation. Einstein's theories have given rise to technological advances in medicine, communications (e.g., Global Positioning Systems), space exploration, greater accuracy in observing deep space, and other inventions, you can name them!
Einstein's positioning of human beings as observers is not that original as Bishop Berkely and I think Hume did the same. Einstein's mix of philosophy and science was by itself elemental.
Stanley Wilkin ,
Yes, I see; you are right about Einstein and David Hume's direct influence:
"IN 1915, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, who had recently composed an article on the theory of relativity. Einstein praised it: ‘From the philosophical perspective, nothing nearly as clear seems to have been written on the topic.’ Then he went on to express his intellectual debt to ‘Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I had studied avidly and with admiration shortly before discovering the theory of relativity. It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution.’
More than 30 years later, his opinion hadn’t changed, as he recounted in a letter to his friend, the engineer Michele Besso: ‘In so far as I can be aware, the immediate influence of D Hume on me was greater. I read him with Konrad Habicht and Solovine in Bern.’ We know that Einstein studied Hume’s Treatise (1738-40) in a reading circle with the mathematician Conrad Habicht and the philosophy student Maurice Solovine around 1902-03. This was in the process of devising the special theory of relativity, which Einstein eventually published in 1905. It is not clear, however, what it was in Hume’s philosophy that Einstein found useful to his physics. We should therefore take a closer look.
In Einstein’s autobiographical writing from 1949, he expands on how Hume helped him formulate the theory of special relativity. It was necessary to reject the erroneous ‘axiom of the absolute character of time, viz, simultaneity’, since the assumption of absolute simultaneity
unrecognisedly was anchored in the unconscious. Clearly to recognise this axiom and its arbitrary character really implies already the solution of the problem. The type of critical reasoning required for the discovery of this central point [the denial of absolute time, that is, the denial of absolute simultaneity] was decisively furthered, in my case, especially by the reading of David Hume’s and Ernst Mach’s philosophical writings.
In the view of John D Norton, professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, Einstein learned an empiricist theory of concepts from Hume (and plausibly from Mach and the positivist tradition). He then implemented concept empiricism in his argument for the relativity of simultaneity. The result is that different observers will not agree whether two events are simultaneous or not. Take the openings of two windows, a living room window and a kitchen window. There is no absolute fact to the matter of whether the living room window opens before the kitchen window, or whether they open simultaneously or in reverse order. The temporal order of such events is observer-dependent; it is relative to the designated frame of reference.
Once the relativity of simultaneity was established, Einstein was able to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable aspects of his theory, the principle of relativity and the light postulate. This conclusion required abandoning the view that there is such a thing as an unobservable time that grounds temporal order. This is the view that Einstein got from Hume."
Source link: https://aeon.co/essays/what-albert-einstein-owes-to-david-humes-notion-of-time
Glad I was right as I was half remembering. Berkely as a Christian reasoned that reality was god but he believed that human conception saw elements of god as material objects. The uncertainty of materiality within time.
But Leibnitz might be another influence as he was not materially absolute like Newton and many are looking at him again.
Dear Nabcy Ann,
the question you posed is interesting, but I need to think about it a little to avoid hasty answers.
Thank you for sharing this reflection.
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