Albert Einstein Books

Let us begin with motion—so common a word that we forget how subtle it is. When I watch a train pass, I may think the train moves while I stand still. But to a passenger on the train, I am the one moving backward. Which viewpoint is correct? Classical mechanics, following Galileo and Newton, tells u...

From Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

The special theory applies only when motion is uniform, free from acceleration. But nature is seldom so polite. A turning train or a falling apple feels forces beyond the reach of the special theory. To embrace these, I had to generalize the principle of relativity itself so that it included all obs...

From Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

Every great structure of thought begins with a simple image. In the seventeenth century, that image was the machine. Galileo, watching falling bodies and rolling spheres, dared to free his mind from the authority of Aristotle. He refused to see motion as the natural state of rest disturbed by force;...

From The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta

Out of those cracks arose the concept of the field, and with it, a revolution of vision. The great English experimenter Michael Faraday did not think in terms of mechanical particles alone. He saw around magnets and electric charges mysterious regions of influence. To him, these were not invisible s...

From The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta