ohh I did hear that, I didn't know that was associated with autism actually, I have absolutely no clue what exactly asperger's syndrome is =P
I had scored well into the genius spectrum in various tests as a kid, and I have done some of the most downright idiotic things. Oddly enough, including looking into the sun. When I was 3 I once shot myself in the eye with a cork gun, to see how bad it could hurt a kid since it was safe for them to use. Fuckin' hurt.
Well I dont think intelligence is simply a line of "Stupid---------------Genius" You can understand every scientific theory but then be unable to work a washing machine. Or be in the genius spectrum and shoot yourself in the eye
he was smart enough for his day. none of us are born infallable. that's just the way science works. =^^= .../\...
What this sounds like to me... its a test of one of the consequences of general relativity, known as gravitational lensing, in which the sun's gravity bends light which travels within a decent multiple of its scharzschild radius. well, to test general relativity, during a total solar eclipse, i forget the year, but it was before 1920, photographs of the appearing stars were taken to determine the angular difference of starlight passing by the sun. Hey, what do ya know, the angular displacement of light traveling orthogonal at the suns surface gets bent by 1.75 arcseconds, just what GR predicted.
Well it has been said that all great artists and some scientists are touched by madness. Einstein was more than a great scientist, he had a way with words too. Try googling EINSTEIN and FAMOUS QUOTES, see what you find.
People like to label brilliant people as having disorders in order to explain to themselves why they didnt come up with the idea in their own lives. 'Oh he descovered that because he spent all his time on intense things, surely my life has had more human experiences than his'. while that may be true, there is nothing to suggest einstein had anything wrong or right with him. His parents were very smart, and he worked at a patent office. He watched as thousands of patents were designed by people to use a phenomenon that they didnt even understand. by seeing how they all worked, and by using LOGIC, einstein was able to gain the insight required to move physics to the 'next level'. Newton also used logic, however Newton may have had some mental differences, and I say this simply because he really did fit the descriptions of those with aspergers - he was very serious and rarely involved himself with the social side of life - laughter, inebriation, intimacy, etc. However, what we must remember about Newton was that he spent many years in voulentary isolation, communicating with few people, and almost totally regarding all the things he did in his isolation - which obviously had nothing to do with people or social interaction. When he came out of it all, he would have considered himsef to have found many great truths of the universe, and felt a lot of pride around that. His bitterness in isolation mixed with his pride for the things that he acheived in the absence of sociality, may have contributed to his behaviour later in life, which was often described as intensely coherent but utterly stale. Newton would have been the one to do these experiments such as looking into the sun. This was for the purpose of observing dark-spots, the stain in your vision that you get after looking at light. Before newton, the nature of light was unknown, and thus, the way that it interacted with our eyes was too. So Newton did not only try to manipulate light externally, but also understand light in terms of how he could change his vision - which was the primary way of even detecting light at all. He was learning things by looking into the sun. i doubt he did it again