But then, as a kid I always got excited about fairy tales and now feel the same excitement about science. If I ever have the time someday I want to write a book of physics fairy tales.

…and do we remember any of those boys for revolutionizing the way we think about our universe?

No.

-cvj

(Cue the stampede to list famous thinkers who were small boys in Gottingen at around that time…)

From what you write, and of course the wider perspective of the related links, KC saw something other then what resides in the mind but more in the heart, so it not so much that it is a publication at fault, but more the setting in stone of what as you point out is the perspective view on creativity. It being garnered to a segment of the entertainment industry. I agree with you here.

There is always the metaphorical danger of misinterpreting which is why science has to be so exact, but then, to see such culmination of genius to take it to another format in which to transfer “the myth” unbeknown to the population, a mathematical lead troop, toward a Lewis Carroll interpretation.

Why the “gedanken experiment” can be so “forecasting.”

Good post Clifford.

There is another quote attributed to Einstein that goes like “imagination is more powerful than knowledge”. I guess a large part of the motivation for special relativity came from the gedankens with light rays and fast observers.

This apply in QFT too: Feynman lifted the quantum fields from the pages to an arena where lines split and join in many ways.

It just seemed like something Einstein would say, he is well known for having similar aphorisms attributed to him (many perhaps incorrectly).

I think I agree with your overall thrust as well, many non-scientists do think of science as a very dry and boring process, we don’t do a very good job of conveying the excitement and passion of DOING science.