Einstein's Method
A scholarly inquiry...

This book begins by recognizing that our knowledge of physics currently exceeds our ability to explain it. The last century’s great achievements in physics—quantum mechanics and relativity—have left us with numbers of questions that remain essentially unanswered. How can a photon or a speeding electron exhibit both particle and wave characteristics? What is the physical basis of a “probability wave?” Why is the velocity of light a constant for all observers? These puzzling concepts of modern physics have elicited many explanations over the last century, some offered by physicists and some by philosophers. None have offered us an “aha” moment and none have met with general, much less universal approval.

Considering the brilliance of some of the thinkers—beginning with Einstein—who have grappled with these problems, it no longer seems likely that sheer brain power will suffice. There are too few markers for the correct approach, too many ways to go wrong and perhaps only one way to go right. What is needed to make progress in these matters is a heuristic approach; a methodology that will, via self-consistency, alert us when we make a wrong assumption. This book argues that the method we need is the method Einstein used.

So what is Einstein’s method and how did he use it?

Einstein’s method is fairly straightforward. It is a form of analysis, both conceptual and mathematical, that depends upon and utilizes the symmetrical relationship of the photon gas to the molecular (ideal) gas. In a series of papers between 1905 and 1925 Einstein made some startling advances in quantum theory by comparing mass quanta in the molecular gas to energy quanta in the photon (radiation) gas. For a fuller description of his approach, click the “Einstein’s Method” link to the left. The young Einstein was a serious student of both thermodynamics and molecular statistical mechanics and he used his “method” entirely within the realm of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. A fine example of this is his “Heuristic Viewpoint” paper of 1905 wherein he argues that the entropy decrease of radiation compressed in time and molecular quanta compressed in space supports the conclusion that radiation is composed of discrete energy quanta. The proposal here is that the method of analysis that Einstein used within thermodynamics can be extended to areas that he did not cover. Specifically, his method can be applied to an ontological inquiry into the problems raised by quantum mechanics.

What is ontology and how can an ontological inquiry help us regarding the problems of modern physics?

Traditional ontology is the study of those things that exist, but it is broadened in these pages to include things (entities) that also occur. Ontology is important because the great questions of physics often revolve around what exists and what occurs. Consider the case of a speeding electron encountering a double slit and then terminating by impacting a barrier screen. When interacting with the double slit the electron acts as a wave which implies that it occurs, but when terminating at the barrier screen the electron acts as a particle which implies that it exists. So this becomes a question of ontology: does the speeding electron exist, or does it occur, or is there and intermediate state or process that can reconcile these polar opposites? This experiment in physics challenges our very notion of an entity’s identity as an existence, or an occurrence, but not both simultaneously. Shall we side with Bohr and conclude that reality depends upon how we measure it, or shall we keep faith with Einstein and his belief that reality is fundamentally objective despite quantum obfuscation? Einstein’s method applied in new ways to the photon gas and the molecular gas provides new insights into these questions that have been debated for almost a century.