Einstein's Superpowers — LessWrong
There is a widespread tendency to talk (and think) as if Einstein, Newton, and similar historical figures had superpowers—something magical, something sacred, something beyond the mundane. (Remember, there are many more ways to worship a thing than lighting candles around its altar.) Once I unthinkingly thought this way too, with respect to Einstein in particular, until reading Julian Barbour's The End of Time cured me of it. Barbour laid out the history of anti-epiphenomenal physics and Mach's Principle; he described the historical controversies that predated Mach—all this that stood behind Einstein and was known to Einstein, when Einstein tackled his problem... And maybe I'm just imagining things—reading too much of myself into Barbour's book—but I thought I heard Barbour very quietly shouting, coded between the polite lines: What Einstein did isn't magic, people! If you all just looked at how he actually did it, instead of falling to your knees and worshiping him, maybe then you'd