Comment by eru
14 hours ago
Einstein's 1905 Annus Mirabilis papers seem like they easiest of the bunch to just read through. I just pulled up 'Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen', the one about Brownian motion, and read the whole thing. It's only 12 pages and fairly accessible; more prose than equations.
(Of course, if you don't read German, you should get yourself a translation.)
See https://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstei...
I don't think I'm smart enough to casually read and understand original works on General relativity, but the Annus Mirabilis work seems much simpler. The famous E=MC2 paper is only three pages.
See https://myweb.rz.uni-augsburg.de/~eckern/adp/history/einstei...
About Gödel: if you are interested in the theorems, and not necessarily their original presentation, you can get plenty of rigorous modern treatments. It's very common for mathematicians to work out simpler proofs and more appealing presentations of famous results over time.
See https://dn721807.ca.archive.org/0/items/uber-formal-unentsch... if you want to give one of Gödel's work a go. It's only 26 pages. Footnote 48a is especially interesting. Overall the prose is crisp, but the notation is rather archaic to modern eyes.
I agree with your general sentiment, and your heuristic in general.
My point is that each of the material above (and i forgot to add the original Quantum Mechanics papers) were major watershed moments in science/mathematics and hence are not easy to read/understand. You need a good background in the subject matter(and mathematics) and/or somebody guiding you through them.
So what i do is try and find books which are written for the "educated common reader" by an expert who guides you through the original paper/book. It is still difficult to understand if you do not have the necessary background but at least you have a good starting point.
Some books in my collection;
1) Newton's Principia for the Common Reader by S.Chandrasekhar
2) Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study (Masterworks of Discovery) by Thomas Simpson
3) Einstein's Miraculous Year by John Stachel.
4) The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold.
What we need is for a group of professors to get together and start writing a series on explaining the original papers to the "educated common reader" i.e. not too trivial nor too overwhelming. I think there is a huge market for this since it humanizes how science is done in real life which is fundamental for motivation.
The Annotated Turing is great. Thanks for mentioning the others, I'll check them out. I've read a little of Einstein's original work (in longish excerpts) and it was a nice enough read I'd welcome more of it, especially with expert guidance.
You might also want to look at The Annotated Godel by Hal Prince which i mention in another comment.
We should read the original great works but with intellectual honesty to accept that some/most of it might be over our heads (depending on one's background) and not feel ashamed about it. The point is to not be completely clueless/ignorant but at least have some correct ideas even if it is a simplification/approximation. It is just one stage in the learning process and as we re-read little-by-little over time we begin to understand more and more. This is real education.
> My point is that each of the material above (and i forgot to add the original Quantum Mechanics papers) were major watershed moments in science/mathematics and hence are not easy to read/understand.
I must dissent. Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers are really quite approachable. You don't need a book to guide you through.
Though if you are having fun with the book, more power to you! Enjoy!
We have to agree to disagree then. You definitely need a good background in Physics to understand them.
For a general reader, even though they might not get the whole thing they can still get an appreciation for the whole from the commentary/details added by the editor.
The book contains the English translations of the 5 papers with Einstein's original introduction and a short discussion on each, a informative introduction and a foreword by Roger Penrose.