摘要
In his younger years—from the time they were students together at the Zurich Polytechnic—Albert Einstein was good friends with Friedrich Adler. Adler, son of the cultured leader of the Socialist Party in Vienna, was, like Einstein, a physicist very much engaged with both epistemology and politics. They shared a fascination with Ernst Mach. Einstein and Adler even lived in the same building where their young children played together, and spoke often about their efforts in physics. Adler wrote his father that he and Einstein had seemingly “parallel lives”.Then, in the midst of World War I, on 21 October 1916, Adler assassinated the Prime Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Einstein rallied to his defense and, between death row and Berlin, Adler and Einstein began an extraordinary correspondence about the meaning and validity of relativity. At stake was the meaning of Einstein’s clock-coordination method, the existence of a privileged frame of reference, Mach’s criticism of absolutes, and the status of symmetry in kinematics. This presentation is an exploration of the heady mix of psychoanalysis, politics, physics and philosophy that followed, as the world stumbled deeper into war, and began grappling with the import of relativity.
In his younger years—from the time they were students together at the Zurich Polytechnic—Albert Einstein was good friends with Friedrich Adler. Adler, son of the cultured leader of the Socialist Party in Vienna, was, like Einstein, a physicist very much engaged with both epistemology and politics. They shared a fascination with Ernst Mach.
出处
《自然科学史研究》
CSCD
北大核心
2005年第B07期115-116,共2页
Studies in The History of Natural Sciences
