Once Galileo had provided empirical evidence that Copernicus’s Sun-centered system was correct, and once Newton had codified the math, scientists came to understand that equations on paper could do more than approximate reality: If you could find it in the heavens, you could capture it on paper—the point Kolb was trying to make. Then Einstein came along and reversed that process. If you could write it on paper, you could find it in the heavens.* If your equations told you that time passed differently for two observers moving in relation to each other, or that gravity bent light, then that was
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