Einstein's Superpowers
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Einstein's superpowers. There's a widespread tendency to talk and think as if Einstein, Newton, and similar historical figures had superpowers. Something magical, something sacred, something beyond the mundane. Remember, there are many more ways to worship a thing than lighting candles around its altar. Once I unthinkingly thought this way too, with respect to Einstein in particular, until reading Julian Barber's The End of Time cured me of it. Barber laid out the history of anti-epiphenomenal physics and Mach's principle. He described the historical controversies that predated Mach, all this that stood behind Einstein and was known to Einstein when Einstein tackled his problem. And maybe I'm just imagining things, reading too much of myself and of Barber's book.
But I thought I heard Barber very quietly shouting, coded between the polite lines, What Einstein did isn't magic, people. If you all just looked at how he actually did it instead of falling to your knees and worshipping him, maybe then you'd be able to do it too.
Barber did not actually say this. It does not appear in his book text. It is not a Julian Barber quote and should not be attributed to him. Thank you.
Maybe I'm mistaken or extrapolating too far, but I kind of suspect that Barber once tried to explain to people how you move further along Einstein's direction to get timeless physics, and they sniffed scornfully and said, Oh, you think you're Einstein, do you? John Baez's Crackpot Index, Item 18. 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided without good evidence. Item 30. 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate. Barber never bothers to compare himself to Einstein, of course, nor does he ever appeal to Einstein in support of timeless physics.
I mention these items on the crackpot index by way of showing how many people compare themselves to Einstein and what society generally thinks of them. The crackpot sees Einstein as something magical, so they can compare themselves to Einstein by way of praising themselves as magical. They think Einstein had superpowers, and they think they have superpowers, hence the comparison. But it is just the other side of the same coin to think that Einstein is sacred and the crackpot is not sacred. Therefore, they have committed blasphemy in comparing themselves to Einstein. Suppose a bright young physicist says, I admire Einstein's work, but personally, I hope to do better. If someone is shocked and says, what?
You haven't accomplished anything remotely like what Einstein did. What makes you think you're smarter than him? then they are the other side of the crackpot's coin. The underlying problem is conflating social status and research potential. Einstein has extremely high social status because of his record of accomplishments, because of how he did it, and because he's the physicist whose name even the general public remembers, who brought honor to science itself. And we tend to mix up fame with other quantities. And we tend to attribute people's behavior to dispositions rather than situations. So there's this tendency to think that Einstein, even before he was famous, already had an inherent disposition to be Einstein.
a potential as rare as his fame and as magical as his deeds. So that if you claim to have the potential to do what Einstein did, it is just the same as claiming Einstein's rank, rising far above your assigned status in the tribe. I'm not phrasing this well, but then I'm trying to dissect a confused thought. Einstein belongs to a separate magisterium, the sacred magisterium. The sacred magisterium is distinct from the mundane magisterium. You can't set out to be Einstein in the way you can set out to be a full professor or a CEO. Only beings with divine potential can enter the sacred magisterium, and then it is only fulfilling a destiny they already have. So if you say you want to outdo Einstein, you're claiming to already be part of the sacred magisterium.
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