Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00034)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "netemara888" <netemara888@y...> 
wrote:
> I am not a scholar of Einstein but I did read that huge biography 
> about him and the thing that gives credence to his being influenced 
> or impressed by something outside of himself is that he came up 
with 
> the theory of special relativity purely by putting himself in the 
> place in his mental dimension.

You are right that this is a commonly received story. It is easily 
shown, however, that many of the ideas in Einstein's theory were 
already known before he wrote his first paper and that he synthesized 
them into something which came to more than the sum of its parts. So 
the story that he merely visualized himself in an elevator car in 
outer space does not tell the whole story.