Read/Listen to Einstein

Walter Isaason does amazing work to detail out Einstein’s life and focus. There is this great imagery of the train station just outside the patent office. After a couple well-thought examples, you feel the influence of Einstein watching time unfold hour by hour. There are so many train and clock watch examples, it beats you over the head to start considering, “Can anything happen simultaneously?” But some level, one event happened first. (So chicken and the egg story should conclude as egg was first. Not all eggs are chicken eggs, so they shared some genetic material with something before that laid eggs. The first “chicken” might have been one of the first things to grow a feather. Silly right?)

It’s a fun science exercise that had me thinking about the size of not just the world we are in but how we are tiny compared the rest of existence. One of favorite thoughts derived was the universe is finite yet ever expanding. So it’s oxymoronic to assess the universe as infinitely finite. I picture it as a balloon engulfing all things then all things forever pressing on the edge, thus driving it out further. It’s pointless, but nonetheless, helped me understand how important being open to science studies can be for development of critical thinking. We lack the ability to learn for ourselves and just take another’s word. I read this and didn’t need to agree to any of it, but it did help me start the process of how can I start to test things? How should I pose questions? Why do I want to know?

I had several conversations about ideas in this book. All went a little different, but I was excited to hear other’s thought.

Here are some things that came up during discussion:

1. Albert had a first-born daughter that kind of disappeared. It’s weird.

2. Thinking a ridiculous thought is the first step to understanding more about it

3. If you burned all books, the science would be rewritten.

4. Sometimes the act of studying something changes the outcome, just by watching it.

5. If you shot a gun while standing on the edge of universe, it would travel the complete circumference of reality and return to you. But you would be long dead before it came back. (history)