"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science"
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Progress, Einstein suggests, doesn’t arrive wearing a lab coat and carrying better rulers. It arrives as a mental refusal to accept the menu of questions everyone else is ordering from. In a culture that likes to picture science as a straight, cumulative march of facts, he’s quietly moving the spotlight to a less comfortable hero: the person who dares to reframe the problem itself.
The intent is partly defensive. Einstein’s own breakthroughs didn’t come from polishing Newtonian machinery; they came from asking what the machinery couldn’t easily accommodate: What if time isn’t universal? What if gravity is geometry? Those weren’t “solutions” in the ordinary sense. They were acts of conceptual vandalism against the default assumptions of an era. So when he links “real advance” to “creative imagination,” he’s staking a claim that many gatekeepers resist: the scientist isn’t only a technician but also a storyteller of possible worlds, disciplined by evidence.
The subtext is a rebuke to routine. “Old problems” implies institutions can get stuck, rewarding incrementalism and treating unanswered questions as personal failures rather than signs the question is poorly posed. “New angle” is also a political phrase in academic life: a reminder that consensus can harden into dogma, and that breakthroughs often look, at first, like heresy or play.
Context matters: early 20th-century physics was drowning in anomalies. Einstein’s line captures that moment when the data wasn’t missing; the conceptual frame was. He’s arguing that the scarce resource in science isn’t information. It’s audacity.
The intent is partly defensive. Einstein’s own breakthroughs didn’t come from polishing Newtonian machinery; they came from asking what the machinery couldn’t easily accommodate: What if time isn’t universal? What if gravity is geometry? Those weren’t “solutions” in the ordinary sense. They were acts of conceptual vandalism against the default assumptions of an era. So when he links “real advance” to “creative imagination,” he’s staking a claim that many gatekeepers resist: the scientist isn’t only a technician but also a storyteller of possible worlds, disciplined by evidence.
The subtext is a rebuke to routine. “Old problems” implies institutions can get stuck, rewarding incrementalism and treating unanswered questions as personal failures rather than signs the question is poorly posed. “New angle” is also a political phrase in academic life: a reminder that consensus can harden into dogma, and that breakthroughs often look, at first, like heresy or play.
Context matters: early 20th-century physics was drowning in anomalies. Einstein’s line captures that moment when the data wasn’t missing; the conceptual frame was. He’s arguing that the scarce resource in science isn’t information. It’s audacity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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