Einstein on Einstein : autobiographical notes and scientific reflections

**New perspectives on the iconic physicist's scientific and philosophical formation** At the end of World War II, Albert Einstein was invited to write his intellectual autobiography for the Library of Living Philosophers. The resulting book was his uniquely personal __Autobiographical Notes__, a classic work in the history of science that explains the development of his ideas with unmatched warmth and clarity. Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn introduce Einstein's scientific reflections to today's readers, tracing his intellectual formation from childhood to old age and offering a compelling portrait of the making of a philosopher-scientist. __Einstein on Einstein__ features the full English text of __Autobiographical Notes__ along with incisive essays that place Einstein's reflections in the context of the different stages of his scientific life. Gutfreund and Renn draw on Einstein's writings, personal correspondence, and critical writings by Einstein's contemporaries to provide new perspectives on his greatest discoveries. Also included are Einstein's responses to his critics, which shed additional light on his scientific and philosophical worldview. Gutfreund and Renn quote extensively from Einstein's initial, unpublished attempts to formulate his response, and also look at another brief autobiographical text by Einstein, written a few weeks before his death, which is published here for the first time in English. Complete with evocative drawings by artist Laurent Taudin, __Einstein on Einstein__ illuminates the iconic physicist's journey to general relativity while situating his revolutionary ideas alongside other astonishing scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century. Cover Contents Introduction I. Preliminaries 1. The Genesis and Scope of the Autobiographical Notes 2. Schilpp’s Enterprise: The Library of Living Philosophers 3. Historical Background: The Year 1946 4. Einstein’s Autobiographical Notes and Planck’s Scientific Autobiography II. The Autobiographical Notes—Commentaries 1. The Quest for a Unified Worldview 2. “Striving for a Conceptual Grasp of Things" 3. “My Epistemological Credo" 4. The Mechanical Worldview and Its Demise: “And Now to the Critique of Mechanics as the Basis of Physics" 5. The Rise of the Electromagnetic Worldview and the Field Concept: “The Transition from Action at a Distance to Fields" 6. Planck’s Black-Body Radiation Formula: “But the Matter Has a Serious Drawback" 7. Einstein’s Statistical Mechanics: Closing the “Gap" 8. Brownian Motion: “The Existence of Atoms of Definite Finite Size" 9. A Reflecting Mirror in Radiation Field: “The Mirror Must Experience Certain Random Fluctuations" 10. The Special Theory of Relativity: “There Is No Such Thing as Simultaneity of Distant Events" 11. The General Theory of Relativity: “Why Were Another Seven Years Required?” 12. Quantum Mechanics: “This Theory Offers No Useful Point of Departure for Future Development" 13. The Unified Field Theory: “Finding the Field Equations for the Total Field" III. Einstein and His Critics 1. The Physicists and Philosophers Who Contributed to the Volume 2. Einstein’s “Reply to Criticisms" A. Response to Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli, Walter Heitler, Niels Bohr, and Henry Margenau B. Response to Hans Reichenbach C. Response to Percy Bridgman D. Response to Henry Margenau E. Response to Victor Lenzen and Filmer Northrop F. Response to Articles on General Relativity and Cosmology (Edward Milne, Leopold Infeld, and Georges Lemaître) G. Response to Kurt Gödel IV. Einstein’s “Autobiographical Sketch” (1955) 1. Introductory Remarks 2. “Autobiographical Sketch”—An English Translation V. Concluding Remarks: Einstein the Philosopher-Scientist VI. Reprint of the English Translation of Autobiographical Notes References Index New perspectives on the iconic physicist's scientific and philosophical formationAt the end of World War II, Albert Einstein was invited to write his intellectual autobiography for the Library of Living Philosophers. The resulting book was his uniquely personal Autobiographical Notes, a classic work in the history of science that explains the development of his ideas with unmatched warmth and clarity. Jürgen Renn and Hanoch Gutfreund introduce Einstein's scientific reflections to today's readers, tracing his intellectual formation from childhood to old age and offering a compelling portrait of the making of a philosopher-scientist.Einstein on Einstein features the full English text of Autobiographical Notes along with incisive essays that place Einstein's reflections in the context of the different stages of his scientific life. Renn and Gutfreund draw on Einstein's writings, personal correspondence, and critical writings by Einstein's contemporaries to provide new perspectives on his greatest discoveries. Also included are Einstein's responses to his critics, which shed additional light on his scientific and philosophical worldview. Renn and Gutfreund "e extensively from Einstein's initial, unpublished attempts to formulate his response, and also look at another brief autobiographical text by Einstein, written a few weeks before his death, which is published here for the first time in English.Complete with evocative drawings by artist Laurent Taudin, Einstein on Einstein illuminates the iconic physicist's journey to general relativity while situating his revolutionary ideas alongside other astonishing scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century "Einstein begins his Autobiographical Notes with one problem he never quite solved: "What, precisely, is thinking?" To answer, he turns inward to the very shape of his thoughts, the ongoing struggle to connect local observation, or what he calls the "momentary and personal," to the larger "mental grasp of things." Einstein situates his greatest discoveries amongst the other twentieth-century breakthroughs in the field and closely examines how these discoveries punctuated and propelled his own intellectual development. The autobiography expands what we know about Einstein's childhood education, readings in philosophy, and journey to the theory of general relativity. In this book, Autobiographical Notes is accompanied by introductions, essays, and commentary by Hanoch Gutfreud and Jürgen Renn, who draw on biographical information, written correspondence, and their knowledge of Einstein scholarship to render these difficult texts accessible to readers. They have also collected critical writings by Einstein's contemporaries alongside Einstein's own responses to these interlocutors, as well as Einstein's Autobiographical Sketch, composed just before his death in 1955, which is published for the first time in English"-- Provided by publisher