Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time Book

A revealing picture of why the young seem to come out with the great new ideas. Contrasting a young Einstein to an established Poincare, Galison shows how the accumulated knowledge of the latter kept him from appreciating the full significance of special relativity as envisioned by the unencumbered Einstein. We see that the nascent ideas that would form the concept of special relativity were all around. Poincare embraced many of these new thoughts but kept trying to tie them into the accepted dogma of the ether. Einstein had no need of old ideas that couldn't be observed, so was free to create brand new explanations of phenomena, in this case, the nature of time and ultimately space-time.

Some of the book is rather dry reading, recounting the late 19th century drive for standardization and synchronizing clocks. Although it is interesting to realize that our space based GPS system is simply the culmination of this effort to precisely set location and aid navigation. More importantly this background is key to understanding how Einstein and Poincare developed their science and why one made a critical breakthrough while the other was hamstrung by old ideas. It made me wonder about physics research today with so much focus on trying to find particles to complete the existing standard model, for example, one that would explain dark energy. Somehow the search just seems like Poincare trying to fit relativity into the ether. Even though the concept of ether had no experimental support and the standard model has much, it is still a model and will undoubtedly be replaced in time by a better one, probably with ideas from someone young who is not trying to fit the new into the old.

Galison also does a nice job of showing how three different areas of study converged in the formation of the theory of special relativity: Physics, philosophy and engineering. All three were changed forever as Einstein's discoveries helped spawn a wholesale change in attitude towards inquiry and development in these disciplines that would clearly distinguish the twentieth century from the nineteenth. If you can put up with a little tedium as Galison digs into the international conventions to determine the meter, the prime meridian and time zones you will be well rewarded by this book. You will have a feel for the world of science, philosophy and technology that gave us Einstein and his great discoveries that in turn would lead to quantum mechanics and modern physics. Highly recommended.