Sean Carroll: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. Because we all give Einstein a lot of credit. But then we also, partly based on fact, but partly to make ourselves feel better, tell ourselves a story about how later in life, Einstein couldn’t keep up. There were younger people doing quantum mechanics and quantum field theory and particle physics, and he was just unable to really philosophically get over his objections to that. I think that that story about the latter part is completely wrong, almost 180 degrees wrong. I think that Einstein understood quantum mechanics as well as anyone, at least up through the 1930s. I think that his philosophical objections to it are correct. He should actually have been taken much more seriously about that. What he did, what he achieved in trying to think these problems through is to really basically understand the idea of quantum entanglement, which is important these days when it comes to understanding quantum mechanics. Now, it’s true that in the ’40s and ’50s he placed his efforts in hopes for unifying electricity and magnetism with gravity. That didn’t really work out very well. All of us try things that don’t work out. I don’t hold that against him. But in terms of IQ points, in terms of trying to be a clear-thinking physicist, he was really, really great. What does greatness look like for a physicist? How difficult is it to take the leap from special relativity to general relativity? How difficult is it to imagine that, to consider spacetime together and to imagine that there’s a curvature to this whole thing?…

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