About this blog

This blog takes as its title a little known quote from Albert Einstein. While Einstein is to be applauded for laying one of the two pillars of modern physics, general relativity (the other being quantum theory), it is easy for us to forget that Einstein's road to relativity was a long one and was marked with failures, sometimes caused by short sightedness on the part of Einstein. And this quote comes from one of those failures.

Einstein and Lemaitre

When Einstein first formulated the equations for relativity he could not get them to ballance, and he could not figure out why. In 1927, a young French speaking Belgian priest named George Lemaitre approached Einstein with a radical suggestion: if you assumed that the universe was expanding the equations for general relativity balance. However, the scientific orthodoxy of the day was, ironically considering the history of science (more about this in a later post), that the universe was not only static, but eternal.  Lemaitre (who is worthy of further consideration) was a doctoral student at MIT and was one of the few people who initially understood general relativity and was using it in his own research. But when Lemaitre suggested to Einstein that the universe was expanding and showed him his evidence Einstein responded “Vos calculs sont corrects; mais votre physique est abominable" (Your calculations are correct, but your physics are abominable). 

(This was not, in fact, the first time that Einstein had been approached with this suggestion and tried to suppress it. Alexander Friedman, a Soviet scientist, proposed an expanding universe in 1923-24, but that paper was suppressed by Einstein.  I want to talk more about this in a later post.)

Einstein was eventually forced to admit that Lemaitre was correct, and even called it one of the greatest mistakes he ever made. 

Why chose a quote from this story as the title of this blog? First, it touches on a number of topics which I want to write about here: science, philosophy (part of the reason that Einstein rejected an expanding universe), and theology (plus it is an episode from history). Second, I hope it will help serve as a reminder to be aware of how wrong we can be. 

This blog is also a place for me to commit to text things I think about when I have free time, usually in the shower. I do not expect to make many original statements here, but I hope to add one more voice on the side of thoughtful and informed blogs, particularly over topics that are misunderstood (e.g. the history of science).