“Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such an authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they come to be stamped as “necessities of thought”, “a priori givens”, etc. The path of scientific advance is often made impassable for a long time through such errors. For that reason, it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long commonplace concepts and exhibiting those circumstances upon which their justification and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. By this means, their all-too-great authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, replaced by others if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason.”

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About Albert Einstein

German-born theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist known for developing the theory of relativity. He also made major contributions to quantum theory and was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on theoretical physics, especially his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is closely associated with mass-energy equivalence, expressed in the formula E = mc2, which comes from special relativity and has been called the world’s most famous equation. His work reshaped modern physics and continues to define how his name is remembered.

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Books by Albert Einstein

Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie

1917

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Mein Weltbild

1934

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Out of my later years

1492

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Relativity

1998

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The travel diaries of Albert Einstein

2018

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