Allen Esterson wrote:
> ...[Einstein] was not a very diligent student...tending to neglect
> his college work to follow up his own interests at home, e.g., the
> electromagnet theories of Clark Maxwell that were to have a great
> influence on his development of Special Relativity a few years later.
That should (of course!) have been the “electromagnetic field theories” of
Clark Maxwell.
Jim Clark mentioned to me the dubious (though apparently quite widespread
in the States) idea that Einstein was dyslexic in his childhood. I came
across this notion a few years ago and tried to track down the source.
There are loads of websites where it is stated as a fact. I think the
Dyslexic Society is responsible for disseminating the story. I eventually
found an article from "Essays of an Information Scientist", vol. 4, March
10, 1980, in which the author writes: "A psychiatrist Lloyd Thomson
suggests that some eminent people, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas
Edison, and bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, may have been dyslexic. He also
suggests that Einstein may have been dyslexic, though Einstein's
biographer, Ronald W. Clark, disagrees." [ref. given (below)] So it all
seems to have started from a vague "suggestion" in an obscure journal
("Language difficulties in men of eminence", Bull. Orton. Soc., 1969).
The original source from which the story evolved seems to have been
Einstein's own reminiscences in later life. Apparently he was late in
starting to talk, and his parents were concerned about this. It seems that
the fact that he was a quiet and reflective child, plus his relative
lateness in starting to talk, is all there is to it. A child who was top
of his class at the age of 7 in a German school around 1885 could hardly
have been dyslexic. Nor is it likely that a dyslexic child would be
lapping up science and philosophy books at the age of 13.
Another suggestion, mentioned in White and Gribbin’s otherwise excellent
book *Einstein: A Life In Science* (1993), is that of the Jungian analyst
Anthony Storr that Einstein had “schizophrenic tendencies”. This kind of
mind-state, according to White and Gribbin, was indicated by “Einstein’s
extreme distaste for authority, demonstrated by his rebellious stance at
school, his desire to remain stateless and his unequivocal hatred for the
German nation as well as his detachment from the personal by his total
lack of interest in clothes or creature comforts. The fact that Einstein
had a very poor memory [for events in his childhood] demonstrates a
subconscious attempt to eradicate a personal history and further detach
himself from the real world. In fact, Storr, in his fascinating study *The
Dynamics of Creation* goes as far as to suggest that if Einstein had not
been schizophrenic he could not have developed his theory of relativity
because its creation could only emerge from a person with a strong
detachment, a mind that did not want to identify with a physical presence
and could stand back and observe from outside.” [Ref. Storr, 1976, p. 86]
What is depressing is that someone like the physics-trained John Gribbin,
who has written numerous brilliant books for lay readers on many aspects
of science, should go along with such rubbish.
Incidentally, the release of Einstein’s personal letters has revealed a
young man who in his late teens had an eye for the girls (and they for
him!), at least twice being swept up by his passion for his current love.
The second of these passions, for his first wife Mileva, lasted into his
middle twenties, at precisely the time he was developing his ideas on
Special Relativity (he married her only two years before the publication
of his three famous papers in 1905). So much for Storr’s notion that only
someone detached from other people could produce the relativity theory.
This was also a period when he had an enthusiastic small circle of
like-minded friends who discussed ideas on philosophy and science. They
would get together at regular intervals, sometimes going on long hikes and
camping overnight. It was only later that he cultivated his detached
persona, no doubt partly arising from his basic self-sufficient
personality and partly from the mind-bending ideas of the nature of the
physical world that engrossed him for so much of his life.
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
