Albert Einstein: Revolutionär oder “Bewahrer des Alten”?

Abstract

AbstractAlbert Einstein: Revolutionary or “Preserver of the Old”? Usually, Albert Einstein and his contributions to the special and general theory of relativity, to cosmology and to quantum physics are considered as “revolutionary”. However, Einstein himself named only one of the papers published in his annus mirabilis 1905 as “very revolutionary”, namely the paper about the light quantum hypothesis. He neither considered his papers about atomic theory nor the papers about the “Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” as “revolutionary”. In the special and general theory of relativity Einstein did not see the redemption of Newtonian physics but rather its completion. In cosmology which was started off by Einstein's “Cosmological Considerations” in 1917 he adhered to the assumptions of a static and spherically closed universe which originally were introduced by him. His influence on the quantum theory can hardly be overestimated as he was the first to take Planck's light quantum hypothesis as serious physics. Moreover he introduced the concepts of probability and chance into quantum theory. Nonetheless he remained sceptical about quantum physics since he considered it as an incomplete and preliminary description of physical reality. Taking this into consideration one has to state that Einstein saw himself rather as a “preserver of classical physics” than as a revolutionary.