Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
Simple answer to that is, "Why do people climb mountains" 
If you don't challenge a prevailing paradigm, you get no progress or at least no progress worth writing home about. That's precisely what Einstein did himself...as did others. |
A theory or paradigm that is challenged is perceived as "unhealthy" in the first place otherwise why challenge it.
Einstein is a case in point. He didn't wake up one day and decided to overturn Newtonian physics "because it was there", he took it on board as observation saw an impasse between Newtonian physics and electrodynamics.
And what he ultimately did was to show that Newtonian physics wasn't incorrect but extended it in the form of SR and GR theories.
GR will go the same way in the form of a Unified Field Theory
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Steven