Nikola Tesla Quotes
Einstein’s relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.
Nikola Tesla, 1856–1943, Serbian Born Physicist, Inventor & Electrical Engineer, Quoted in New York Times, July 11, 1935
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We have two opposite dynamics operating today. On the one hand the scientific breakthroughs like Quantum Mechanics and genetic engineering widen the intellectual gap immensely between the average person (and politicians) and the scientist—at a time when society must make enormous decisions on scientific matters. On the other hand, there have never been so many people before educated in the sciences. There are many (not a majority) high school students who today understand Relativity and even well and broadly educated non-science college graduates are often familiar with Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and other scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. The world as a whole has never had so many scientifically literate people as today, nor has it ever had so many scientifically illiterate people today.
This quotation was a milestone on scientific and technological development. For the first time in human history the smartest and most creative and visionary people, could not understand or comprehend the direction in which science and technology was moving. It now took people with specialized mathematical capability. Experience and intuitive insight was actually counter-productive in understanding the world as it was being revealed. Intelligence, creativity, perseverance and hard work, for the first time was insufficient. Education and training was the new requirement in addition to the others.
Actually “normalcy” was not a theory but a slogan or a codeword. See {624061}.
In almost every age and with each new advancement of science there have been those experts, acknowledged or self-styled, who have maintained that the advancement was not valid, useless or prematurely stated. Even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was subjected to attack long after it had essentially been established.
There have always been critics and scientists differing on the most significant findings of science. Even as late as 1931, there were those who would oppose Relativity.
Gross and the Nazi official party line completely rejected what some called “Jewish Science” the new world of Theoretical Physics that had grown out of Einstein’s early 20th century work. Although Einstein and most of the great German physicists fled Germany for America, England and Scandinavia, there were Heisenberg and enough left that Germany was probably capable of development of an atomic weapon. But since such a weapon would have been based on politically unacceptable “Jewish science,” no one would dare suggest it seriously. Ironically, Gross actually thought that The Theory of Relativity was only a theory which by that time, it was not and had been validated by physicists the world over—including Germany. The German scientists were directed at traditional German technology to develop jet airplanes and long range rockets, both of which they developed successfully. It was however too late to make a difference, and if these weapons were strong enough to defend Germany from invasion, the first Atomic bombs would have been dropped on Germany as that was the plan and the major purpose of development. Only the collapse of Germany under the allied attacks, moved the target from Germany to Japan.
Born was a refugee who escaped to England from Nazi Germany.
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
