• Gregory
    4.7k
    So we all know Einstein did not do his own experiments. He took data and interpreted it. Now, i believe his theories are philosophy. You can't prove from science that time exists. I believe it does but it might be just the measure in my head. My question is what Einstein's GR predicts and how, if time is a measure in our heads. Special relativity says things shrink and expand from different speads. It proved nothing about what humans experience psychologically going at various speeds. So SR for me is an unproven philo-psychological theory that says there is no objective length or perspective at all. But what about predictions? How did Einstein do this from data apart from his philosophy? Thanks
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    I just wanted to add that Einstein told Henri Bergson at a conference in France that "the Time of the philosophers is dead", so I am not 5'2 objectively he would argue. I am that height to my perception
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    You're looking for what is, without first having critically understood "is." Or, more likely you do, but have gotten turned around in an application that calls for a deeper understanding than that you're accustomed to.

    That is, on my understanding at least, what is, is what you decide is, for your own purpose. That leaves open the quality and utility of your decision. Einstein's are held to have been, and to be, pretty good decisions about what the is is.

    If you find deep in this a kind of self-supporting bootstrapping, then imo you're on the right path, a kind of scientific turtles-all-the-way-down, if you like.
  • A Seagull
    615
    My question is what Einstein's GR predicts and how, if time is a measure in our heads.Gregory

    Einstein said that Time is what a clock measures.
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Well he thought time was tangible. Nonetheless, 1) he didn't prove he discovered a new substance. 2) clocks can slow without time even existing outside our minds. It's possible motion exists on its own without the fourth "dimension of time"
  • A Seagull
    615
    Well he thought time was tangible.Gregory

    You're dreaming.
  • Wayfarer
    22.5k
    Now, i believe his theories are philosophyGregory

    Nonsense. His predictions were first of all validated by a famous set of observations lead by physicist Arthur Eddington.

    The Eddington experiment was an observational test of General Relativity, organised by the British astronomers Frank Watson Dyson and Arthur Stanley Eddington in 1919. The observations were of the total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 and were carried out by two expeditions, one to the West African island of Príncipe, and the other to the Brazilian town of Sobral. The aim of the expeditions was to measure the gravitational deflection of starlight passing near the Sun. The value of this deflection had been predicted by Albert Einstein in a 1911 paper, and was one of the tests proposed for his 1915 theory of General Relativity. Following the return of the expeditions, the results were presented by Eddington to the Royal Society of London, and, after some deliberation, were accepted. Widespread newspaper coverage of the results led to worldwide fame for Einstein and his theories.

    Subsequently there have been scores of experiments and observations which are nearly always accompanied by the headline 'Einstein Proven Right Again' (you can google it!) The astounding thing about Einstein's genius, is that he was able to make these predictions on the basis of nothing other than mathematics and his famous 'thought experiments'. But time and time again, his predictions have been validated against observation, so it is completely fallacious to claim otherwise.
  • Frank Apisa
    2.1k
    Don't have anything to add, but Einstein is a personal hero. I have 10 or more pictures of him facing me from across the room from where I am typing at my desk.

    I walk by his house in Princeton often...just to be near to it.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    Einstein was a mystic. I don't know how he got the predictions right, maybe he was a natural prophet and saw into the future. Aleister Crowley said white magic could do very strange things. But I'm saying that Einstein theories are even weirder. He said we live in a world where size is in the eye of the beholder. Extension is subjective for him. I think objects have to actually look a certain way, although you can't get to close or to far from the Christmas tree to perceive that. I think there are noises when nobody hears it
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