Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Peter wrote:-

> I wondered how many of these warning signs applied to Einstein's
> science, in his miraculous year just 100 years ago when he turned the
> scientific world upside down in a series of papers.. He was certainly
> working alone, outside the scientific establishment who he probably at
> least felt were conspiring against him by not giving him an academic
> post. The scientific effects were indeed at the very limit of detection,
> and he was proposing all kinds of new laws of nature. He did publish in
> a respected and presumably peer-reviewed journal. But would any journal
> have published such papers today, from an unknown patent clerk? I doubt it.

Einstein was not working alone. He published in Annalen der Physik,
journals in physics don't come any more respectable than that.
Effects he described such as the photoelectric effect were easily
measured. He gained a doctorate in 1905, the same year you mention.
While we can't re-run history I think there is every reason to believe
he would be published today.

The view presented above is a romantic one of a lone genius making
break-throughs. I don't know if ever was really true but its certainly
not true today whether it be physics or Hebrew. Even if we concede their
might be a lone worker in Hebrew who discovers the true workings of
the verbal system, they still have to be published and subject to
the scrutiny of the community of scholars before it will be accepted
as such. That's the way things are.

Bill Rea, IT Services, University of Canterbury \_
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