Einstein made his discoveries on the basis of the past

Einstein’s Relativity Theory: The Copernican Process of 1815-1915 and the Emergence of the Theory of Gravitation

Even Einstein’s celebrated masterpiece, his general theory of relativity in 1915, is presented as the outcome of an incremental and complex Copernican process in which the results of classical physics were reinterpreted by a shift of emphasis. The time-honoured notion of a gravitational force disappeared when existing knowledge about gravitation was combined with special relativity.

Einstein applied his mastery of statistical mechanics to cross boundaries between these fields. His work remained in physics, however, and he paid no attention to other areas of science, such as chemistry, astronomy or geology, as some others were doing at the time. Physicists from Germany and Israel studied heat and physics, while the other studied chemistry and physics to deduce the Layers of Earth.

Einstein also deployed a deductive approach. He made laws out of this using mathematical deduction and intuition. For example, his assumption of the constancy of the velocity of light led to relativity theory, and his conviction in the existence of atoms informed his paper on Brownian motion.

Einstein said that scientists should act as socially and morally responsible citizens, but maintained that science can’t justify these statements. This was accepted at the time, but it is controversial today. The doctrine is challenged by referring to nothing less than the survival of humanity. They claim that there is an interdependence and inseparability of scientific and moral judgments because of global warming. Einstein is a role model in the modern context of science and social responsibility, in my opinion, but their attempt to elevate him is unconvincing.

Heilbron was a driving force in making the history of science a discipline of its own. For 27 years, he shaped the field as editor-in-chief of the journal then called Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences. He saw his editorial work to be a way to teach others how to argue in a manner that was worthy of his high standards. Scholars whose work he edited remember gasping at how vigorously he would cut into, rearrange and rewrite their prose. His writing was funny, insightful and acerbic. He didn’t shy away from expressing sharp views when he spoke in public. Both colleagues and students remember how he cared about them.

Heilbron knew how institutions helped and supported a scientist. In Lawrence and his Laboratory, for instance, a 1990 book he wrote with fellow science historian Robert W. Seidel, he laid bare the world of physicist Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of the ‘cyclotron’ particle accelerator whose work led to the setting up of National Laboratories in Berkeley and Livermore, California. By putting discussions of nuclear science and radioisotopes cheek by jowl with descriptions of the building and financing of institutions, the book set the stage for similar histories in other areas of ‘big science’.

And Heilbron’s 1999 study The Sun in the Church discussed how, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the Catholic church sought to resolve astronomical questions regarding solar motion using meridian lines laid into cathedral floors. Turning the narrative of hostility between religion and science on its head, Heilbron built an empirical case for how church clerics had contributed to the triumph of heliocentric theory. And he did it with precision and verve.