Einstein’s Wrong Views of “Field”

I first noticed the huge discrepancy in Einstein’s misunderstanding of fields when I read him say in a paper that he converted inertia, gravity, and the motions of the clock into one field.

His specific quote is as follows: “Inertia, gravitation, and the metrical behavior of bodies and clocks were reduced to a single field quality.”

*This quote comes from Einstein’s paper “The Mechanics of Newton and Their Influence on the Development of Theoretical Physics”, 1927.

Inertia is not a field. Inertia is a quality. Whether you define inertia as mass, as a type of motion, or as a coordinate system, inertia is a characteristic of the particles. Inertia is not an entity itself. To say that “inertia” is a “field” would be like saying “wisdom” is a “fishing license.” Clearly this indicates that Einstein’s view of the “field” is vastly different from what Faraday meant.

Further, “the behavior of clocks” (whatever that specifically means) is more complex. A clock is a machine, with working parts. A machine cannot be a field. Comparing “inertia” to a field is bad enough, but to say that a complex machine such as a clock is a field is totally preposterous.

If he were a student in my class, I would give his paper a D, minus. And that grade would be generous – more likely I would simply hand it back to him.

On top of that, he said he combined those three completely different items into one “field”. It may be possible to combine different fields into one general field (as in a unified field theory, such as the one I have developed). However, in order to combine entities, the entities must be similar. Even if we called these entities something besides fields, how are inertia, gravity, and the behavior of clocks in the same realm? This is like trying to combine a fishing license, a cement block, and the concept of beauty. There are no relations. They cannot be combined in any form, and particularly not as a “single field”.

This is when I really understood that Einstein’s understanding of the term “field” is very different from the way Faraday (and myself) intended it.

In brief, Einstein’s field is not a physical entity, it is more of a measurement value. Then, further, his field is really an equation – and that is how he can combine factors. He is not combining physical entities, instead he is combining property factors, in a type of equation. But this is still not a true field.