Mr. Albert Einstein:

Mr. Albert Einstein (well-known for his ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ quote) had this to say, in 1920, when reminiscing about the birth of his relativity theory in 1907:

• [Mr. Albert Einstein] ‘There occurred to me the ‘glücklichste Gedanke meines Leben’, the happiest thought of my life ... for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists – at least in his immediate surroundings – no gravitational field. Indeed, if the observer drops some bodies then those remain relative to him in a state of rest or uniform motion, independent of their particular chemical or physical nature (in this consideration the air resistance is, of course, ignored). The observer therefore has the right to interpret his state as ‘at rest’. [italics in the original] (page 178, ‘Subtle Is The Lord’, by Abraham Pais; ©1982 Oxford University Press).

The observer (irregardless of the ... um ... the ‘right’ to subjectively interpret what is actually occurring as being a state of rest) is, of course, falling at a rate of thirty two feet per second per second because of the very gravitational field Mr. Albert Einstein somewhat solipsistically intuited/imagined did not exist for such a person.

He also intuitively/ imaginatively attributed reality to a mathematical device (‘quanta’) devised by Mr. Max Planck to solve a hypothetical problem (known as the ‘ultraviolet catastrophe’) about a perfect, and thus non-existent, black-box radiator – which statistical solution was never intended to be taken as being real until Mr. Albert Einstein appropriated it for his own purposes – and thus was quantum mechanics spawned.

Mr. Werner Heisenberg, of the uncertainty principle fame, dispensed with the main plank of science – causality (cause and effect) – altogether:

• ‘The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory’. (page 88, ‘Physics and Philosophy, the Revolution in Modern Science’, by Werner Heisenberg; ©1966 Harper and Row, New York).

Now, quantum theory may be a lot of things – a mathematical model useful for predicting certain events for instance – but, being sans causality, science it surely ain’t.

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