Quora answer: Has Einstein been more of a philosopher/thinker than other of his contemporaries?

Einstein was a thoughtful physicist. In those days there were many physicists who were not afraid to think more broadly, something they have lost the knack for these days. In those days physicist training included philosophy. So they really knew the tradition. Physicists today have more or less lost touch with the core of the Western tradition because they don’t know the tradition as they used to. And Analytic Philosophy did not help by seeing itself as the handmaiden of science, there fore abrogating the responsibility of physicists to know their own tradition. So basically we get a lot of bad metaphysics dressed up as physical theory as a result. If you cannot run tests to disprove something then it is metaphysics not physics no matter how much math you mix into it to dazzle others with your fancy footwork. But because Einstein thought hard about the physics experiments of his day via speculative “thought experiments” he managed to shift the paradigm of Physics as pointed out by Kuhn. But while creating a revolution himself in physics he could not accept the implications of Quantum Mechanics that was appearing from a different direction also in his own time.