General Relativity vs. The Egyptian Pyramids

As for the OP, I want to say Einstein but I wonder if that's just giving recent events more credit than they really deserve.

Einstein had the benefit of thousands of years of more math to work with. He had, relatively, greater access to great minds to inspire him. He had the advantage of a far superior schooling system in his early years.

The pyramids, in the context, of their timeline are really, really hard to put into perspective.

Einstein's Theory is great but he never had to actually make it a reality. The people who build the pyramids had to take their ideas based on their math and with their limited technology and created something that was the tallest man-made structure in the world for almost 4,000 years.
 
I have to go with Einstein, but it's hard to say why. The pyramids seem like a feat that is more reproducible by more minds.
 
panamaican said:
As for the OP, I want to say Einstein but I wonder if that's just giving recent events more credit than they really deserve.

Einstein had the benefit of thousands of years of more math to work with. He had, relatively, greater access to great minds to inspire him. He had the advantage of a far superior schooling system in his early years.

The pyramids, in the context, of their timeline are really, really hard to put into perspective.

Einstein's Theory is great but he never had to actually make it a reality. The people who build the pyramids had to take their ideas based on their math and with their limited technology and created something that was the tallest man-made structure in the world for almost 4,000 years.
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the ideas that build up General Relativity mainly come from 19th century mathematics...so its not like he really build knowledge from ancients....

you have to remember there was really nobody that had the same ideas that Einstein had for General Relativity, there were some mathematicians that had the mathematics down, but no one really had the general physical principles that Einstein had...

but im not asking about relative to their time or technology

i also don't know what you mean by "put into reality" Einstein was a physical theorist describing how gravity operates... It was however experimentally proven few years later and has been ever since
 
MoreKane said:
the ideas that build up General Relativity mainly come from 19th century mathematics...so its not like he really build knowledge from ancients....

you have to remember there was really nobody that had the same ideas that Einstein had for General Relativity, there were some mathematicians that had the mathematics down, but no one really had the general physical principles that Einstein had...

but im not asking about relative to their time or technology

i also don't know what you mean by "put into reality" Einstein was a physical theorist describing how gravity operates... It was however experimentally proven few years later and has been ever since
Click to expand...

But the ideas in 19th Century mathematics came from 18th Century and so on backwards in time.

But you're asking which is the greater intellectual and that does require some context of the time period under which the innovation occurred. Since the scope of the innovation has to be scored against what the other leading minds of the day were doing.

My point about putting it into reality is that while Einstein was theorizing, it was a purely mental task. The pyramids surely involved some level of theorizing at the conceptual level but those theories had to be translated in the ultimate physical structure. So how much credit do you give to the need to translate your mind's vision into reality. We see enough failed construction projects in this era to know it's not that easy. And then when you factor in the amount of time that passed before man surpassed the pyramids in height and longevity, it's extremely incredible.

I still slightly lean towards Einstein but probably because I don't know enough about the pyramid's era to say how far beyond it's contemporaries it really was.
 
panamaican said:
But the ideas in 19th Century mathematics came from 18th Century and so on backwards in time.

But you're asking which is the greater intellectual and that does require some context of the time period under which the innovation occurred. Since the scope of the innovation has to be scored against what the other leading minds of the day were doing.

My point about putting it into reality is that while Einstein was theorizing, it was a purely mental task. The pyramids surely involved some level of theorizing at the conceptual level but those theories had to be translated in the ultimate physical structure. So how much credit do you give to the need to translate your mind's vision into reality. We see enough failed construction projects in this era to know it's not that easy. And then when you factor in the amount of time that passed before man surpassed the pyramids in height and longevity, it's extremely incredible.

I still slightly lean towards Einstein but probably because I don't know enough about the pyramid's era to say how far beyond it's contemporaries it really was.
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that's a good point panamerican, sorry if it seemed to be argumentative with you

yes many of the mathematical ideas i agree are build up over time, but i will say, that the general physical principles seemed to be really unique to einstein at that time, at least that we know of

the pyramids are amazing, and its amazing how they did it at that time..

i think the pyramids were outstanding but they didn't change the fabric of science or reality that Einstein did with GR

but i certently understand your point and opinion panamerican
 
jamiehunter said:
Are you serious? My god you are stupid.
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img_0218.jpg


Sleds bro, totally
 
MoreKane said:
that's a good point panamerican, sorry if it seemed to be argumentative with you

yes many of the mathematical ideas i agree are build up over time, but i will say, that the general physical principles seemed to be really unique to einstein at that time, at least that we know of

the pyramids are amazing, and its amazing how they did it at that time..

i think the pyramids were outstanding but they didn't change the fabric of science or reality that Einstein did with GR

but i certently understand your point and opinion panamerican
Click to expand...

The thing is that you can't say that the pyramids didn't change the fabric of science or reality because we have no idea what type of thinking went into creating them or what impact they had on society after their creation.

For all we know, they had to invent a branch of math to understand the work needed and 5000 years later we take it for granted.

I always think of Newton and Calculus in this area. Before Newton, we didn't have Calculus. The man literally created an entire branch of mathematics. Hundreds of years later, we're teaching it to kids who haven't even left high school. 2000 years from now when math is whatever math will become, will those people think of calculus as groundbreaking? Probably not, plenty of people today aren't even impressed with it and yet it's a nearly incomparable act of brilliance. Time has blunted how impressed we are.

I tend to look at the pyramids from the same angle - how much innovation went into them that we just take for granted now because we've had access to it for millenia?
 
Relativity is still hard to understand. I've never fully wrapped my mind around the idea of space/time being like a stretchy fabric. Seems like somebody could come up with a better way to illustrate that concept.

And the pyramids. We still don't know exactly what they were used for. And we don't know exactly how they built it. And what's up with the Sphinx?
 
Kick Strickland said:
The pyramids at Giza supposedly lay on the exactly center lines (longitudinally and latitudinally) of all the land mass on Earth. Huge if true.

Great-Pyramid-Giza-Center-of-Earth.gif


The-Center-of-the-Earth.gif
Click to expand...

Center of the world's landmasses, not including Antarctica and using a distorted, inaccurate, off center projection maybe.
 
panamaican said:
The thing is that you can't say that the pyramids didn't change the fabric of science or reality because we have no idea what type of thinking went into creating them or what impact they had on society after their creation.

For all we know, they had to invent a branch of math to understand the work needed and 5000 years later we take it for granted.

I always think of Newton and Calculus in this area. Before Newton, we didn't have Calculus. The man literally created an entire branch of mathematics. Hundreds of years later, we're teaching it to kids who haven't even left high school. 2000 years from now when math is whatever math will become, will those people think of calculus as groundbreaking? Probably not, plenty of people today aren't even impressed with it and yet it's a nearly incomparable act of brilliance. Time has blunted how impressed we are.

I tend to look at the pyramids from the same angle - how much innovation went into them that we just take for granted now because we've had access to it for millenia?
Click to expand...
it's equally mindblowing to think Newton was primary a religious scholar and science was more of a side job to him
 
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