Leonardo noted link between gravity and acceleration centuries before Einstein
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
"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.
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...
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.
This 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...
Leonardo does not show any hint of even thinking about this.
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.
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.
This has been noted since the first goatherd swung a bucket of milk. Right?
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.