Eliminative Induction as a Method of Discovery: How Einstein Discovered General Relativity

Abstract

So began Einstein’s weary and consoling response of August 1915 to his correspondent Paul Hertz on a yet another proposal concerning the troubled and still incomplete general theory of relativity. Einstein had been working on the theory for eight years and within a few months would overcome his final obstacles, bringing to completion his greatest scientific achievement.’ My concern in this paper is to establish two theses about Einstein’s discovery of his general theory of relativity. The first concerns the heuristic methods he used to navigate the “chaos of possibilities”; the second concerns an important moral Einstein, the “mathematical ignoramus,” drew from the experience: