Infinite Worlds and Alternate History

[Wicked Lurker]

I was wondering: is the kind of approach that many (or in fact, most) IW worlds take realistic?

The way it is now, it seems to imply that people are irreplaceable.
If Einstein dies in an alternate History there will be no Theory of Relativity, if Oppenheimer somehow doesn't make it there will be no A-bomb and so on.

I don't think that this is plausible. Throughout history there were countless cases where scientists came to the same inventions or ideas independent from each other. If one of those pioneers would drop out, another would ask the same questions sooner or later.

It is basically a function of TL. The more I can measure, the more holes I see in current theories. And sooner or later someone will try to clear these up and eventually lead to a new theory.

There are a few steps in history that are just pre-programmed by previous discoveries, and removing one of the most important innovators downstream will not stop progress, just slow it down until someone else takes his (or her) place.

So, in case you care: what's your opinion?

[Jürgen Hubert]

Actually, that's not the impression I get from most of the IW worlds (with a few exceptions - I think "Campell" is the most noteworthy example) - most world give the impression that if some important inventor/scientist/whatever wasn't around, their discoveries would only be delayed for some time.

And of course, there are a couple of quite different worlds with none of the "usual suspects" that do very well, technologically - Caliph is the best example of those. No Einstein, no Oppenheimer - but instead Muslim scientists who discovered the same principles many centuries earlier.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Wicked Lurker

I was wondering: is the kind of approach that many (or in fact, most) IW worlds take realistic?

The way it is now, it seems to imply that people are irreplaceable.
If Einstein dies in an alternate History there will be no Theory of Relativity, if Oppenheimer somehow doesn't make it there will be no A-bomb and so on.

If most IW worlds took that approach, no it wouldn't be, but rather few of them involve any such thing. I think people tend to miss that because parallels that involve innovations by somebody totally unknown in homeline history don't usually mention the name of the innovator, which makes it seem like only individuals that mattered on Homeline mattered anywhere.

Though I will note that in the special case of a close parallel diverging from Homeline with the non-appearance of Einstein it wouldn't actually be unreasonable for relativity to be delayed several decades - physics had been scratching at the problems it resolved for several decades already without solving them, it wasn't like Einstein had any information that wasn't around 20 years earlier.

[Ludo]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Though I will note that in the special case of a close parallel diverging from Homeline with the non-appearance of Einstein it wouldn't actually be unreasonable for relativity to be delayed several decades - physics had been scratching at the problems it resolved for several decades already without solving them, it wasn't like Einstein had any information that wasn't around 20 years earlier.

I read Einstein compiled the words of Poincarré and did not quote them. According to this reading, everything was already written of what he "discovered".

[William]

Originally Posted by Ludo

I read Einstein compiled the words of Poincarré and did not quote them. According to this reading, everything was already written of what he "discovered".

Interesting; I didn't know there were any conspiracy theories/charges of plagiarism running around relativity. I guess there's a conspiracy theory about anything. Anyway, it might make an interesting alt if Poincaré had come up with relativity first, but it's hardly credible history in our world. Poincaré's work is well known and Einstein's work was carefully examined by many peers.

France has its share of mathematical and scientific geniuses, and hardly needs its crop of claimants to other thrones; I forget which mathematician was their contemporary, but the French often hold up one of their own with Newton and Leibniz as a co-founder of calculus.

[Ludo]

This post either comes as an illustration of the thread's topic (history makes individuals vs. individuals make history) or condemns the thread to General Chatter...

Originally Posted by William

Interesting; I didn't know there were any conspiracy theories/charges of plagiarism running around relativity.

Well, it's not very polite nor very scientific or even clever as an attitude just to sweep aside in conspiracy bin something that you may not know anything about:

Originally Posted by William

Poincaré's work is well known and Einstein's work was carefully examined by many peers.

It appears you do here the same mistake (that's my feeling) as above: you take for granted the content of some lessons you heard so many times that you cannot but assume all that is true. You're not looking at facts, but at prejudices (from your own point of view, these ARE prejudices).

1905 Einstein's piece of writing is supposed to be the birth act of relativity.
BUT
Einstein mentionned close to no sources for this near piece of art (without a source, his writing can be seen as genial inspiration).
Poincaré wrote things that strangely look like Einstein's work, but in scattered articles AND without the flaw of giving light so much importance... Months before Einstein!

What if Einstein had just gathered some knowledge around and made it clearer, proposing a synthesis of other people's works? I mean, of course that would still be valuable work, but that would not be genial inspiration and Einstein would just have done what 99% of scholars do... Gathering knowledge and trying to produce marginal but new insights. Universities are full of would-be geniuses.

Put it on the top of the fact that Einstein was then looking for the one thing that would have University accept his application (he already had had to face several refusals), that all sounds like there are reality in the one hand - with grey middle men working hard to find marginal steps further in science knowledge - and mythology in the other hand - Einstein was a self-made genius with flashes of inspiration.

By the way, the guy who wrote the book I read about Einstein's "stealing" Poincaré's works was written by a university scholar, not a well-known one, but not a geek either, just a scientist. His name's Jean Hladik. His book is interesting and seems to be fact-based (all its references are clear and there are many). It's not translated, partly because many people despise it just when hearing its topic...

[daryen]

Originally Posted by Ludo

Well, it's not very polite nor very scientific or even clever as an attitude just to sweep aside in conspiracy bin something that you may not know anything about:
...
His name's Jean Hladik. His book is interesting and seems to be fact-based (all its references are clear and there are many). It's not translated, partly because many people despise it just when hearing its topic...

Let me get this straight. You take someone to task for not knowing about something he has never read, and probably can't since it isn't in his language, and yet you swallow someone's conspiracy theory completely whole, while admitting you haven't even checked it out?

Look, I don't really care whether Einstein was a plagerist or not. I don't care who is right. I don't care who is wrong.

But do not post messages that have a single, unsubstatiated reference point that can't even be accessed or read by the majority of the members of this board. That is rude, confrontational, and inappropriate. Save it for General Chatter. Or, better yet, don't bother until you actually have done research on the subject and can produce documented facts to back your position up.

[zogo]

On the subject of the thread:

There's actually a discussion on the causes of history, and therefore how it could be altered on Infinite Worlds 97-98. The perspective of the IW setting is of course that it varies from timeline to timeline.

Off Subject: Real scholars have perpetrated or even originated all of the various conspiracy theories about "who wrote Shakespeare's Plays" that doesn't mean they aren't ludicrous and bad scholarship.

I will concede that it is remotely possible that Einstein does not deserve credit for relativity, but the burden of proof is on ther person claiming that the history of science is manifestly wrong, rather than on people claiming that Einstien originated the work he is credited with.

[daryen]

Originally Posted by zogo

Real scholars have perpetrated or even originated all of the various conspiracy theories about "who wrote Shakespeare's Plays" that doesn't mean they aren't ludicrous and bad scholarship.

I will clarify: I am not saying the book referenced is (or is not) bad scholarship, nor am I saying the reference are (or are not) good. I am simply saying that asserting something as probable fact on the basis of a single unsubstantiated book is irresponsible.

Back on topic: Now, regardless of the validity of the book, real world conspiracy theories make great points of divergence for alternate history.

So, for example, suppose Einstein had been exposed early on as a plagerist, which discredited the Theory of Relativity he espoused. What would be the ramifications of that?

Even more back on topic: I haven't read IW to imply dependence on individuals for history to occur. So, if it wasn't Einstein, and the point of divergence didn't require the Theory of Relativity to be discredited, then it is likely someone else would have created the Theory independently.

What I do see IW do with individuals, is stress analogs. In other words, it expects significant individuals to be significant in all timelines in which they have a reasonable chance to appear. That is a reasonable literary device, as most referees and players will expect that anyway.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by daryen

Let me get this straight. You take someone to task for not knowing about something he has never read, and probably can't since it isn't in his language, and yet you swallow someone's conspiracy theory completely whole, while admitting you haven't even checked it out?

Look, I don't really care whether Einstein was a plagerist or not. I don't care who is right. I don't care who is wrong.

More or less repeating what I said before - relativity, particularly special relativity, ended up unifying and explaining a bunch of odd bits and pieces that had been floating around in physics for *decades*. And once you know what you are looking for its possible to extract special relativity from lots of earlier attacks on those bits and pieces. For that matter I'm pretty sure you can derive special relativity from Maxwell's equations if you know what you are looking for - that's why we have Relativistic Mechanics, but not Relativistic Electromagnetics, its already included in "classical" electromagnetic theory.
I wouldn't be at all startled to find Poincaire worked on one or more of those problems, and consequently generated something else from which you can extract relativity if you know what you are looking for. This is actually a fairly common phenomenon, and responsible for the (I believe false) proposition that most scientific "breakthroughs" would inevitably happen about when they did. In fact tangentially connected material and the essences of theories can hang about for decades or centuries without crystalizing into a simple convincing theory.