A bit of context

Quantum Mechanics alongside the General theory of Relativity are theories developed in the first half of the 20th century that have shattered both common sense conceptions of the world and more technical “laws of Nature” that scientists of the time (and to some extent of today) were holding as unquestionable truths. The way they came about and the conceptual ripples these theories have generated in their wake are however quite different.

While General Relativity may have benefitted from various contributions from both the mathematical and physical communities, for the purpose of this post, I will be bold enough to claim that its conceptual inception is mostly due to A. Einstein. As far as I am aware, the way people understand General Relativity today is not very different from Einstein’s original paper back in 1915: there is a clear connexion between the mathematics and “objects out there”…