> Einstein writes hypothesis. Hypothesis gets submitted to peer review. Peer review passes and grows in acceptance.
This is ahistorical. The Annalen der Physik, where Einstein's four Annus Mirabilis papers were published, did not have peer review.
Only one paper by Einstein was peer reviewed. It was -- in effect -- rejected from Physical Review. While the paper ("Do Gravitational Waves Exist?", with Rosen) was mistaken (in its conclusion of "no"), even then the referee wrote that Einstein "is a man of good scientific standing, and it would seem to me that if he insists, he has more right to be heard than any single referee has to throttle!"
> papers were published, did not have peer review.
We post papers on ArXiv now and they don't have "peer review", except they do because our peers read them and talk about them, open issues on GitHub, exchange emails, and write blogs. If that isn't peer review, I don't know what is. Your definition of peer review is far too limited and not what science actually is doing.
However, I agree that in the context of this thread, post-publication peer review -- usually referred to by another name -- is very important, as it plays a strong role in the formation of consensus being discussed.
That's the usual case, but not the only case. Like you said, publication review didn't happen back then. But yet peer review has still been happening in science for thousands of years. People still judge researchers based on h-index, which just means number of citations. Yeah, publishing in high impact conferences helps influence that, but it isn't necessary to the process. But peer review (in the more broader sense) is still essential to the process of science. Publication review is really only one step in the peer review process.
This is ahistorical. The Annalen der Physik, where Einstein's four Annus Mirabilis papers were published, did not have peer review.
Only one paper by Einstein was peer reviewed. It was -- in effect -- rejected from Physical Review. While the paper ("Do Gravitational Waves Exist?", with Rosen) was mistaken (in its conclusion of "no"), even then the referee wrote that Einstein "is a man of good scientific standing, and it would seem to me that if he insists, he has more right to be heard than any single referee has to throttle!"