The ingredients were there to put them together into the theory of special relativity. The next ingredient is quantum mechanics, which wasn't really made quantitative in a convincing way until the 1920s. Both of these theories, special and general relativity, survive to the present day. Quantum field theory is just one of those systems that you can study within the framework of quantum mechanics.
Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/
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