'One of the sketches showed an isosceles right triangle with "Equatione di Moti" written along the hypotenuse. Gharib was curious about the meaning of the phrase, but it was in old Italian and also written backward in Leonardo's trademark "mirror writing." '
According to Wikipedia[0], one of the hypotheses for his motivation to write like this was to have better recall of the material.
Many great mathematicians and physicists had used time as 4th dimension, but none developed it out into special relativity, even Lorentz has his name on the Lorentz's transformation, but he didn't see a brand new space-time relationship. There is a huge gap between linking something together to writing it down with a mind boggling and fundamentally new theory to reshape how human beings see the universe. That said, all people's work are built on top of predecessors. Without generations work on mathematics before 20 century, Einstein wouldn't have developed GR as well.
That’s false he wasn’t bad at math. It’s a (false) myth that’s perpetuated. Before he was years 15 old he’d mastered differential and integral calculus:
Tbh I was taught both in school at about the same age.
This doesn't prevent me from kicking the kubernetes can down the road instead of coming up with more general relativity. Maybe it's the lust that's insufficient.
The low hanging fruit on physics discoveries using current technology is also all taken.
The right person at the right place at the right time -- the time is maybe the biggest one. It's not just Einstein who revolutionized physics, his contemporaries did too
I remember when I was a kid, I'd heard various things about how Einstein failed school or was bad at mathematics or was just a simple patent office clerk etc etc...
Seems he was in fact super smart and educated at good schools / universities in the countries he lived in. As you'd expect from someone who revolutionised parts of science.
On General Relativity after having published ground breaking publications on Special Relativity and Brownian motion. David Hilbert is one of the greatest mathematicians in history - it is a bit unfair to detract from someone's abilities if they receive help from the one of the world's top practitioners.
There is a myth, that Einstein was so bad at math that he failed math.
There is also a quip by mathematicians and physicists that he just wasn't that good at math. I heard this a few times in undergrad physics, and the proof was typically that while he had good insight, his field equations for GR, Einstein said were neigh impossible to solve, but Schwarzchild and a few others almost instantly had solutions. Einstein was really good at math with regards to normal people, but when you compare with great mathematicians and physicists (Gauss, Euler, Von Neumann, etc), he was probably on the lower end.
He wasn't bad at math, but his wife was better at math than he was, and there is a lot of historical evidence suggesting they collaborated on his "miracle year" papers.
Yeah there’s definitely some singularity like stuff happening. While we don’t see visibly dramatic evolutions like GR happening, we are making incredible strides on unsolved problems and extravagantly complex discoveries at a blistering pace, so much so that they’re not noteworthy any more.
One way to view things is that GR was obvious to a smart person with good enough tools and that if Einstein wouldn't have discovered it someone else would have soon after.
Hmmm, when I studied GR, the consensus was that it came out of nowhere and if it wasn't for Einstein's genius, it would have taken at least a long time until someone else had discovered it. But you make a good point. Ultimately it's an unanswerable question, I guess.
Of all the physical theories, general relativity is probably the one that's least likely to be true of. Because it just wasn't needed in all its generality at that point of time. Instead of going from first principles like Einstein some other physicist could have developed it from the other end, and made corrections to Newton mechanics based on the observed precession of Mercury and the deflection of starlight by the Sun (if someone would have done that observation without the impetus of GR). It could have been akin to how quantum theory in its first 25 years was a collection of ad-hoc explanations of various phenomena using the quantized energy idea but having no generalized theory of them.
We'd have found out for sure when we first built a GPS system without relativity correction. It wouldn't work and that experimental error would have to be explained somehow and that in turn would lead to the discovery of GR if it had not been discovered through some other means at that time.
David Hilbert, for one, was apparently close. That said, I feel that it is a bit of a stretch to call it obvious (maybe more obvious in the sense of "this is the way to go" rather than that the answer was obvious.)
From what I remember, Hilbert actually got the equations first by applying the principle of least action, so a much more mathematical than Einstein's physical approach. However, everybody agreed that Einstein did all the heavy lifting (he worked closely with mathematicians for years to figure things out), so that's why they aren't called the Einstein-Hilbert equations.
To make such a significant breakthrough like relativity theory it's not enough to see connections between seemingly unrelated things.
You have to have a sufficiently open and free mind to be able to discard beliefs of generations of scientists. Including your own, implanted through instincts.
Great point and you said it well. Darwin was much the same, many of the ideas he discusses were already out there, but he brought them together in a novel, united, coherent, and compelling way that really made the idea of evolution stand on its own feet.
Darwin connected the specialization of finches to two bodies of existing work — animal husbandry and the nest hierarchy of biology, by explaining they’re both outcomes of reproductive selection.
Einstein connected the idea of Galilean relativity to Maxwell’s equations to explain why Michelson-Morley behaves how it does.
Which itself is a derivative of the "great chain of being" ontology which tried to explain the continuous gradation of structures in the world. Ideas like "missing link" appear within this worldview before Darwin's theory[1].
When I read about special relativity I notice how many equations and concepts had names of other people. It seemed like Einstein combine various observations and ideas
into a single coherent framework.
I would say that Newton had an insight unprecedented in the history of science: that phenomena as seemingly unrelated as the fall of an apple from a tree and the motion of the moon and planets are caused by the same physical laws.
Leonardo does not show any hint of even thinking about this.
But that is certainly not what is being claimed here. What TFA says is that they think Leonardo correctly realised that falling things accelerate, as opposed to fall with a constant speed as (the ancient) Aristotelian physics prescribed.
To go all the way to the (Einsteinian) equivalence principle from that is huffing great man hopium in the extreme: Leonardo is certainly not as user of reference frames, and the equivalence principle simply does not exist without them. Another problem is that he didn't know of inertia, what with being of the Aristotelian school.
I wonder why the choice to refer to him as "Leonardo", rather than "da Vinci"? Given that the latter appears to be the more common way of referring to him as the author of many of his other works?
"da Vinci" just means "from (edited, thanks) a town called Vinci." It doesn't actually identify him (even though everyone knows who you're talking about.)
It's a cool article but as the comments point out, it's one heck of a stretch to compare these early notes to anything done by Einstein, or even Newton.
> Referring to "Leonardo da Vinci" as "da Vinci" is like listing Lawrence of Arabia in the phone book as "Of Arabia, Mr. L,"
or
> The mistake of referring to Leonardo as "da Vinci" is so entrenched, I'm afraid it's uncorrectable. I have had to fight with editors about this: You say "Leonardo," and they want to say "da Vinci," thinking it's his last name — thinking it's the same as saying "Reynolds." They think that, when you say "Leonardo," you're saying the equivalent of "Joshua." Actually, to say "da Vinci" is to say "of Orange," instead of "William."
Leonardo's full name at birth was simply Leonardo. As an illegitimate child, he was fortunate that his father, Ser Piero, acknowledged him and let him be known as Leonardo di ser Piero.
Leonardo was born in Anchiano, a tiny hamlet near the slightly-larger hamlet of Vinci. Ser Piero's family, however, were big fish in the little Vinci pond, and so tagged "da Vinci" ("of" or "from Vinci") after their names.
When he became an apprentice, in order to distinguish himself from other various Tuscan Leonardos in 15th-century Florence, and because he had his father's blessing to do so, Leonardo was known as "Leonardo da Vinci."
When he traveled beyond the Republic of Florence to Milan, he often referred to himself as "Leonardo the Florentine."
Eventually, Leonardo became very famous. He became so famous, in fact, that for the past 500 years he has had no need of a last name (as with "Cher" or "Madonna"), let alone any indication of his father's home town.
In art historic circles he is simply, as he started out in this world, Leonardo.
"Da Vinci" as in "The Da Vinci Code" is kind of cringeworthy for anyone who traffics in Leonardo.
I seem to recall him being referred to primarily as "da Vinci" in my childhood, long before that book was ever written.
> for anyone who traffics in Leonardo.
Interesting. That choice of phrasing makes "Leonardo" sound, to me, like a constructed shibboleth intended to gatekeep those who aren't "in the know". That's probably a slightly uncharitable take (sorry) but it was the first implication that just slapped me in the face.
> In art historic circles he is simply, as he started out in this world, Leonardo.
I wasn't aware that Ars Technica was aiming at the art historic circle crowd. ;-)
Not trying to gatekeep. The fact is there are subcultures in which Leonardo da Vinci comes up in conversation far more than others. In those (particularly art history), Leonardo is most common
Socialites who "trafficked in Leonardo" back in the 90s likely pulled the reverse stunt (anyone in the know calls him Da Vinci) after a famous giant rat gave the name Leonardo to a mutant turtle ninja, as Leo was among the rats four favorite artists. TMNT was so popular in the 90s that if you said "I like Leonardo more than Michelangelo", and were not currently standing inside an art gallery, everyone would assume you were talking about Ninja Turtles. If you said "I like Da Vinci more than Michelangelo" people would understand you were saying I like the artist Leonardo Da Vinci more than the ninja turtle Michelangelo ;)
> "Da Vinci" as in "The Da Vinci Code" is kind of cringeworthy for anyone who traffics in Leonardo.
"Traffics in Leonardo" might be the most pretentious thing I've ever seen written down in my entire life, especially when saying that referring to Leonardo Da Vinci as "Da Vinci" is somehow cringeworthy
They say that when you're famous you lose the given name, when you're more famous it's the only name you go by.
In this case is it maybe dependent on country? I know that he was Da Vinci, but always heard mostly "Leonardo" alone. (also Miguel Ángel y Rafael)
People saying that "Da Vinci" only means he was from Vinci, come on, that's the case for a lot of family names and it's because, you know, people that started with such name came from such place.
As was said in an earlier comment, that wasn't his family name. That would be "di Ser Piero", if even that could be considered a family name. In this case it did simply mean ".. from / of Vinci". As in "Paul. You know Paul? No, not that one. I mean Paul from Bristol."
The biography I read on Leonardo da Vinci, is simply titled "Leonardo: The Artist and the Man". Leonardo is a unique enough name to non-Italian audiences that using it alone in reference to a inventor/scientist/artist is no less clear than "da Vinci".
I am not sure what exactly "bouwen" means in Dutch, but the verb "to build" in English usually means the process of constructing something by humans or animals [1] [2]:
Even for humans it does not take math to build a nuclear reactor, you could pile a bunch of fissile material in a heap and it would happily do its thing.
I really don't know what you are trying to get at here, unless you want to keep playing definition games which isn't all that interesting, regardless of what my native language is.
It takes mathematics to design a nuclear reactor for humans to build, perhaps. But you don't demand that the construction workers building your house all be architects.
There is, but historical context matters: it's very hard to have your works typeset in LaTeX if you lived before LaTeX was been invented; in the exact same way it's impossible to write out the theory when the notation for writing out theories hasn't been invented yet.
Instead, as modern day investigators, we need to go through the material and figure out whether the writing was "just notes" or whether it was an "actual attempt at some kind of formal description using whatever system of formalization was available to the author at the time".
You can't frame historical science in terms of modern science practices. Or even science practices from a mere 100 years after an author's death.
He's really probing high school physics here, not General Relativity. He's anticipating Galileo and Newton at best. This isn't the Equivalence Principle.
76 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadThis was also interesting to read:
'One of the sketches showed an isosceles right triangle with "Equatione di Moti" written along the hypotenuse. Gharib was curious about the meaning of the phrase, but it was in old Italian and also written backward in Leonardo's trademark "mirror writing." '
According to Wikipedia[0], one of the hypotheses for his motivation to write like this was to have better recall of the material.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_writing#Notable_example...
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" - Newton
I'm sure Einstein would have no problem with applying such a quote to himself.
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...
This doesn't prevent me from kicking the kubernetes can down the road instead of coming up with more general relativity. Maybe it's the lust that's insufficient.
The right person at the right place at the right time -- the time is maybe the biggest one. It's not just Einstein who revolutionized physics, his contemporaries did too
Seems he was in fact super smart and educated at good schools / universities in the countries he lived in. As you'd expect from someone who revolutionised parts of science.
His promise was recognized very early.
There is also a quip by mathematicians and physicists that he just wasn't that good at math. I heard this a few times in undergrad physics, and the proof was typically that while he had good insight, his field equations for GR, Einstein said were neigh impossible to solve, but Schwarzchild and a few others almost instantly had solutions. Einstein was really good at math with regards to normal people, but when you compare with great mathematicians and physicists (Gauss, Euler, Von Neumann, etc), he was probably on the lower end.
https://www.cantorsparadise.com/the-wall-of-albert-einsteins...
From the perspective of something like a Tardigrade we are definitely well into a “singularity”.
From the perspective of a rock the Tardigrade itself is matter experiencing a “singularity”.
Which turns out to work, now called LIGO, if you apply relativistic and quantum corrections.
You have to have a sufficiently open and free mind to be able to discard beliefs of generations of scientists. Including your own, implanted through instincts.
Darwin connected the specialization of finches to two bodies of existing work — animal husbandry and the nest hierarchy of biology, by explaining they’re both outcomes of reproductive selection.
Einstein connected the idea of Galilean relativity to Maxwell’s equations to explain why Michelson-Morley behaves how it does.
Which itself is a derivative of the "great chain of being" ontology which tried to explain the continuous gradation of structures in the world. Ideas like "missing link" appear within this worldview before Darwin's theory[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being#Scala_Nat...
Leonardo does not show any hint of even thinking about this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
To go all the way to the (Einsteinian) equivalence principle from that is huffing great man hopium in the extreme: Leonardo is certainly not as user of reference frames, and the equivalence principle simply does not exist without them. Another problem is that he didn't know of inertia, what with being of the Aristotelian school.
This has been noted since the first goatherd swung a bucket of milk. Right?
They don't refer to Einstein as "Albert".
It's a cool article but as the comments point out, it's one heck of a stretch to compare these early notes to anything done by Einstein, or even Newton.
Surely if it means that everyone knows who you're talking about, it does actually identify him.
Probably more so than "Leonardo" does. There are plenty of famous people called "Leonardo", but only one who is known as "da Vinci".
or
> The mistake of referring to Leonardo as "da Vinci" is so entrenched, I'm afraid it's uncorrectable. I have had to fight with editors about this: You say "Leonardo," and they want to say "da Vinci," thinking it's his last name — thinking it's the same as saying "Reynolds." They think that, when you say "Leonardo," you're saying the equivalent of "Joshua." Actually, to say "da Vinci" is to say "of Orange," instead of "William."
(Both from Cutting in line: What would 'Of Nazareth' do? at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003151.h... a post about plagiarism including of these examples.)
I, for one, welcome any deviation from the assumption that everyone's name is of the form "Given-name Surname".
Leonardo was born in Anchiano, a tiny hamlet near the slightly-larger hamlet of Vinci. Ser Piero's family, however, were big fish in the little Vinci pond, and so tagged "da Vinci" ("of" or "from Vinci") after their names.
When he became an apprentice, in order to distinguish himself from other various Tuscan Leonardos in 15th-century Florence, and because he had his father's blessing to do so, Leonardo was known as "Leonardo da Vinci."
When he traveled beyond the Republic of Florence to Milan, he often referred to himself as "Leonardo the Florentine."
Eventually, Leonardo became very famous. He became so famous, in fact, that for the past 500 years he has had no need of a last name (as with "Cher" or "Madonna"), let alone any indication of his father's home town.
In art historic circles he is simply, as he started out in this world, Leonardo.
"Da Vinci" as in "The Da Vinci Code" is kind of cringeworthy for anyone who traffics in Leonardo.
I seem to recall him being referred to primarily as "da Vinci" in my childhood, long before that book was ever written.
> for anyone who traffics in Leonardo.
Interesting. That choice of phrasing makes "Leonardo" sound, to me, like a constructed shibboleth intended to gatekeep those who aren't "in the know". That's probably a slightly uncharitable take (sorry) but it was the first implication that just slapped me in the face.
> In art historic circles he is simply, as he started out in this world, Leonardo.
I wasn't aware that Ars Technica was aiming at the art historic circle crowd. ;-)
"Traffics in Leonardo" might be the most pretentious thing I've ever seen written down in my entire life, especially when saying that referring to Leonardo Da Vinci as "Da Vinci" is somehow cringeworthy
In this case is it maybe dependent on country? I know that he was Da Vinci, but always heard mostly "Leonardo" alone. (also Miguel Ángel y Rafael)
People saying that "Da Vinci" only means he was from Vinci, come on, that's the case for a lot of family names and it's because, you know, people that started with such name came from such place.
They even occur in nature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
1. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/build
2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/build
(As opposed to say "Valley created by glacier", or "The Sun was formed through the gravitational attraction of cosmic dust particles")
I really don't know what you are trying to get at here, unless you want to keep playing definition games which isn't all that interesting, regardless of what my native language is.
Instead, as modern day investigators, we need to go through the material and figure out whether the writing was "just notes" or whether it was an "actual attempt at some kind of formal description using whatever system of formalization was available to the author at the time".
You can't frame historical science in terms of modern science practices. Or even science practices from a mere 100 years after an author's death.