Cracked Pots, defy the laws of physics

[Royston]

I noticed there's been discussion in this area, and I've just read this passage from my text book. I guess it made me chuckle, because I've always attributed the term 'crackpot', as slang, and not a term I'd expect to see in a text book. More to the point, it summarizes the same requirements we're used to reading, time and time again in response to a new 'theory.' It just seemed very apt, with all the recent discussion

 

We owe a debt of gratitude to Max Planck for immediately accepting Einstein's paper for publication in Annalen der Phsyik' date=' [/i']on his own authority. Planck read nearly all papers submitted for publication, and accepted anything he found interesting. Notably, he did not worry overmuch about the correctness of results if they seemed reasonable to him, as he believed this to be the responsibility of the author.

 

How could Planck know this was not the paper of a crackpot, like those every journal editor receives from time to time ? Because there were three essential features in it that the work of crackpots does not have:

 

1 Einstein pointed out exactly where the other theories were wrong and what general principles to put in their place, using normal physics terminology.

 

2 Einstein followed up his principles by standard mathematical methods that all physicists knew.

 

3 Results derived from this theory could be tested by experiment.

 

I didn't post this to provoke crackpot bashing et.c It just seemed a rather freaky (or not) coincidence that I read this passage, just an hour after reading some of the discussion in speculations.