The Foundation of Classical Physics:: Einstein
JohnEB
of the noted German journal Annalen der Physic received three hand-written
manuscripts from a relatively unknown patent examiner in Bern, Switzerland.
This patent examiner was the twenty-six-year-old Albert Einstein, and the
three papers he submitted would set the agenda for twentieth-century physics.
A fourth short paper, received by the journal in September 1905, contained
Einstein's derivation of the formula E=mc^2. Taken together, the four papers
changed our lives in the twentieth century and beyond.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/classical-physics/FBB1Cl3BXqc
JohnEB
A very readable book about Einstein's physics is Secrets of the Old One by Jeremy Bernstein.
In Secrets of the Old One, Jeremy Bernstein sets out to make Albert Einstein's revolutionary
contributions to modern physics comprehensible to general readers. Relying on nothing more
advanced than high-school mathematics, he not only explains the science but evokes the
scientific scene in which the young Einstein wrote his four revolutionary papers of 1905.
Working very nearly alone and with apparently complete self-confidence, in spite of the
skepticism or indifference of the physics establishment, the twenty-six-year-old Einstein
managed to reveal hidden workings of "The Old One"--the name he sometimes used to refer
to the deity. In the course of this amazingly fruitful year, Bernstein shows us, he had
set out the principles that would eventually turn the world of ninteenth-century physics
on its head, and establish the course of physics for the twentieth century and beyond.
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Old-One-Einstein-1905/dp/0387260056#_
John Williams
Probably due to having my interest piqued reading that Einstein believed in "Spinoza's God" I read through Spinoza's phlosophy. "The Ethics" is a grind but after a few times it becomes clear that if you accept his premises everything else logically follows. I found "On the Improvement of Understanding" much more interesting though, because it does not tell you the premises and then conclusions and instead it is a philosophy about how to think not what to think, and then how to know you are not believing falsehoods and/or fictions. I believe that these types of ideas are what drove Einstein and that that and his separation from the establishment, who could not then pollute his thought process, is in very large measure a contributor to his successes in rooting out the truth.
Have you ever read Spinoza's "On the Improvement of Understanding" or "The Ethics".