🚀 go-pugleaf

crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
: 
:      Riemann's attempts were widely considered to be failures.  It
:      is my contention that Einstein was fairly lucky to have been able
:      to study Riemann before 1900.  A priori there is no reason to believe
:      that riemannian geometry will be useful in that context at all.

Once you understand that SR is about the geometry of Minkowski space,
then, if you are as smart as Minkowski or Hilbert, you should be well on
your way to GR. Don't forget that hilbert discovered the Einstein
equation [using a variational principle] by himself. Of course it is
true that the idea of abolishing gravitation and replacing it with
curvature was due to Einstein, but this was due to Einstein's excellent
taste rather than to "physical insight". [Actually, "physical insight"
had not yet been invented at that time: renormalisation and suchlike
debauches lay,happily, in the future.]
Actually it is rather a pity that Hilbert did not beat Einstein to it.
Had he done so, we might have been spared all that confusion about "the
principle of covariance", "equivalence" etc.

:      I don't think I'm alone in this.  Maybe we should ask John Wheeler
:      to speculate?

He doesn't need to be asked.