Happy Birthday Einstein!
Listen to my podcast about Einstein here!
In celebration of this human, I wanted to share some important ideas he believed in, as well as some of his great influences.
Einstein believed in a blend of science and nature; helping us understand that feeling awe towards nature is healthy AND scientifically aligned. In fact, the further we get away from feeling connected with nature, the more we divert from the science that nature has to share with us. Through his writings and letters, we learn his general views on humanity, and see how he profoundly changed the way we see ourselves.
Some quotes from Einstein:
“Either you see magic in everything, or nothing.” - Einstein
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
“A storm broke loose in my mind.”
“Kind fate allowed me to find a couple of nice ideas after years of fevorous labor.”
“The creations of our minds should be a blessing and not a curse to mankind.”
Some News headlines about Einstein
Einstein proves stars bend light
Einstein Discovers what light is made of
Lights are askew in the heavens. Science triumphs.
Funny quotes about Einstein
“He’s been talking the finer points of his theory, and I’m quite certain he understands it” ;)
Lifetime, 1879-1955
1879: Einstein born in Germany, then moved to Switzerland
1899: Physics was in crisis. The physics developed from Galileo (1642 AD) was suppressed due to the idea that the sun was supposed to revolve around the earth… bc, you know, our god chose humans and everything about humans is sacred above everything else...
Physicists couldn't use the study of heat to explain a series of phenomena that had been recently discovered in the lab and in the skies. (again, for religious reasons)
But there was also trouble with understanding light and its propagation. After a debate that lasted for hundreds of years, people were convinced that light was a wave. The other option, defended by Issac Newton (1727), was that light was made of little bulletlike particles.
The idea that matter is made up of particles brings us back to an Epicurean idea the church saw as blasphemous, taking us back to 341 BC. (discussed below, under Einstein’s influences)
1921: Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of Light
1935: Granted permanent residency in America, later citizen
While he was visiting America in 1933, Hitler came to power and started a “war of extermination” against his fellow Jews
1944: On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Roosevelt
alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research. Einstein supported the Allies but generally was against the idea of nuclear weapons
1955: Einstein died on April 18
He left a piece of writing ending in an unfinished sentence. These were his last words: In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings.
Einstein was working on a unified field theory when he died. Unified field theory is an attempt to reconcile and explain all the forces in physics to one underlying principle that governs them. Turns out he was never able to simplify it all into a single unique algorithm.
NPR on Einstein’s Light Theory
in summary, before Einstein, it was considered FACT that light was a wave. In the March paper of 1905, Einstein directly challenged the orthodoxy of physics. Einstein proposed that light was not a continuous wave, but consisted of localized particles. Einstein wrote:
"According to the assumption to be contemplated here, when a light ray is spreading from a point, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever-increasing spaces, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta that are localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or generated only as a whole."
This sentence has been called "the most 'revolutionary' sentence written by a physicist of the 20th century."
A Letter
In 1936 Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could:
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural being. However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”
Einstein’s views
In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:
“…I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never again left me.”
“The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many people whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.”
Einstein expressed his skepticism regarding the existence of the popular modern gods, such as the god of Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), often describing this view as "naïve".
Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in determinism and his rejection of free will.
“Religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." This letter was sold in 2018 for $2.9 million.
Einstein saw religion, at its most mature, originates in a deep sense of awe and mystery. A primitive understanding promotes fear, and another is in desire for love. Einstein saw science as an antagonist to a religion based on fear or need, but as a partner if the religious sentiment is awe. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be.
“Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect.
In his book Ideas and Opinions (1954) Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."
“The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. “
“We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.”
“The most beautiful and deepest experience one can have is the sense of the mysterious. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and subliminity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religousness.” This is science!
Influences: Spinoza
Albert Einstein stated "I believe in Spinoza's God".
So let’s dive into Spinoza, born in 1632, during the “Age of Reason” in Portugal
Also Jewish, like Einstein, and neither very devout. Spinoza challenged the power of religious authorities, Jewish and Christian alike. He questioned the un-historical origin of the Bible, and the nature of the kind god celebrated in his time. Although he was called an atheist, he never argues against the existence of a god.
When people of the 1600’s accused one another of atheism, it usually meant they challenged the way people were taught to see god.
His works were banned by the Dutch and later in the Roman Catholic Church.
He has been called "the renegade Jew who gave us modernity." It takes a rebel to look at the world differently!
Einstein did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist."
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.”
“The fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot hear the music of the spheres."
“It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension. Such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."
“If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no". He conceded that "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds".
Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me." He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups.[8][9] Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science. His understanding that THIS life is important made him entirely opposed to something like the atomic bomb, used to destroy THIS life.
Einstein believed in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". (Epicurian notion, below)
All the aspirations "exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions" which "come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.
“I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.”
"My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems."
Influences: Epicurus
Epicurus, 270 BC, atomic theory and pursuit of happiness, origins of science
First accepted by the church, then later rejected. Despite their contradictory claims, both Epicureans and Christians would profess to adhere to the same standards of behaviour
I had a feeling Einstein would like Epicurus. Of course he would: gods are silly, pursuit of simple pleasures, and atomic theory.
Turns out he wrote the preface for the German transaltion of the ancient Greek poem that came out in 1923, and ofc that the church tried to bury.
In it Einstein wrote: “For anyone who is not completely submerged in the spirit of our age, who feels instead like a spectator as the world goes past him, especially, from time to time, vis-à-vis the intellectual attitudes of his contemporaries — on him will Lucretius’s poem work its magic” (Lucretius 1923–24, 2, p. VIa).
first philosophical Greek institute that allowed women to take part in learning.
Epicurus strongly advocated friendship as an important root for a happy and fulfilling life, and thus, his school provided the community with the opportunity to interact and form constructive relationships. Epicurus has played an extremely vital role in the progress of science as a discipline. Epicurus was the first Greek philosopher to attempt to break free society from religious superstitions by preaching that God does not punish or reward humans, and that a man’s sole objective should be to form a self-sufficient and happy life by surrounding oneself with reliable and cherished friends. Epicurus was a strong advocate of free will. The development of a pleasant and comfortable life, in his view, was the core purpose of life.
Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. This was far from the indulgence of excesses used by its church critics in the next thousand years in an effort to suppress these ideas.
Like Democritus before him, Epicurus taught that all matter is entirely made of extremely tiny particles called "atoms"
Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, cites the gradual wearing down of rings from being worn, statues from being kissed, stones from being dripped on by water, and roads from being walked on in On the Nature of Things as evidence for the existence of atoms as tiny, imperceptible particles.
A few quotes from Epicurus in rare surviving fragments
“We are born only once and cannot be born twice, and must forever live no more. You don't control tomorrow, yet you postpone joy. Life is ruined by putting things off, and each of us dies without truly living.”
“Enjoying comes along with learning.”
“Anyone with many good reasons to leave this life is an altogether worthless person.”
Take that, religious extremists, jihadists, who beleive in the afterlife as more important than this life, and use innocent civilians as sheilds (aka Hamas, and other islamists who are forbidden by religion to question their religious books)
“We need not the appearance of health but true health.”
“The passion of love disappears without the opportunity to see each other and talk and be together.”
“The pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning."
Einstein
Einstein clearly regards this ability to take a detached view of our time is an intellectual advantage, and maybe even a necessity in our time.
Science requires this sort of analysis, yet we are so averse to questioning the current dogma of everything: religion, politics, food science, medical treatments, education, vaccines…
This refusal to be subjugated to the present and the ability to observe with detachment is an integral aspect of the truly modern style of scientific thought. So today, even more than in 1923 when Einstein wrote his foreword, the flexibility and dynamism of ancient thought is attractive,
“Death is as powerless as the gods.”
We are made of the same stuff as the stars, and that matter flows through us every second of every day, according to the impersonal laws of Brownian motion.
What the great minds of the past have given us is a world more filled with wonder and beauty than any conceived by some gap-toothed priest squinting in the dark. The world revealed by Lucretius in his rediscovered poetry is far richer and more beautiful than any conceived of by princes and popes. And it’s made even more beautiful by the fact that this is provably the world that we live in.
No gods. No divine plan. No fear. Just the gorgeous unfolding process of the natural world, as seen in the swirling motes of dust in an ancient library.
Poggio discovered in the monastery library was an ancient copy of De rerum natura. This poem, written in the first century BC, was made to explaining Epicurean philosophy to the Romans. The works of Epicurus himself are mostly lost. Much of what we know about Epicurean philosophy comes from this rediscovery of the poem in 1417.
Epicurus didn’t believe in any gods. While Lucretius does not deny the existence of gods in his poem, he argues that the gods are content with the universe as it is and don’t concern themselves with human affairs. We need not fear divine interference in our lives.
And from Lucretius, and through him Epicurus, comes an echo of one of the most profound leaps of logic in the history of knowledge. In De rerum natura, the world is composed of atoms.
The church saw Epicureanism as dangerously atheistic and had tried to suppress this crucial scientific insight.
In Lucretius’ universe, there is no need for gods to direct the fates of men. The motion of atoms determines everything.
After nearly fifteen hundred years of obscurity, De rerum natura quickly spread throughout Europe and became an essential part of any scholar’s education.
Montaigne quoted Lucretius nearly a hundred times in his Essays. Thomas Jefferson owned five copies in the original Latin as well as translations into English, Italian, and French.
The “PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS” in the American Constitution is fully in thanks to this idea from thousands of years ago, one that the Constitution writer, Thomas Jefferson, highly regarded, and was unique and antithesis to any Christian outlook on life that had a foundation on suffering as the ultimate ideal (think of monks that fully deprived themselves, and were not allowed to get enjoyment out of what they were reading, etc).
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the history of thought might look entirely different if Poggio hadn’t stepped into that dusty library one day.
it was a twenty-five-year-old Albert Einstein who calculated the formula to describe the way the atoms move and dance.
As a poet, Lucretius isn’t afraid to delve deeper into what an atomic understanding of the universe entails. “Everything passes from one state to another,” he writes. “Nothing stays like itself.”
You can read Lucretius’ entire text, translated into English, here. and a Pulitzer prize winning story about it in a book called Swerve.
Cicero’s “On Ends”, his narrative on key aspects of Epicurean philosophy:
The error of praising pain and condemning pleasure arises because people do not pursue pleasure intelligently.
The Stoics were wrong to condemn pleasure on the grounds that it is only active and physical, because they ignored the fact that pleasure also comes from mental contemplation.
The Stoics are foolish in their characterization of virtue as the only good, and their divorce of virtue from pleasure.
Fortune has but little power over the wise man.
Friendship is essential for living happily.
The philosophy of Epicurus is more clear and plain than the sun itself in establishing that pleasurable living is the goal of life, and how to achieve it.
In a rare departure from Democritus's physics, Epicurus posited the idea of atomic "swerve" (παρέγκλισις parénklisis), one of his best-known original ideas. According to this idea, atoms, as they are travelling through space, may deviate slightly from the course they would ordinarily be expected to follow. Epicurus's reason for introducing this doctrine was because he wanted to preserve the concepts of free free will and ethical responsibility.
"It is this slight deviation, at indeterminate times and places, which keeps the mind from being forced to endure and suffer like a captive in chains."
Timeline of a transition to “Science”
In Europe, the Religious to Scientific Era’s went something like this:
Middle Ages>Religious Reformation>Inquisition>Renaissance>Age of Reason
More detailed:
Middle Ages: religious fever/forced conversions into Christianity/Catholicism
Reformation: church undergoing changes due to corruption/differing opinion
Today, there are over 45,000 of versions of Christianity (yes, THOUSANDS)
Inquisitions: law process led by the Pope to brutally combat heresy
(ie. any other religions aside from “the right kind of” Christianity were illegal)
Renaissance: scholars and artists celebrating the beauty and splendor of nature (1300’s-1600s)
Enlightenment, the Age of Reason
Important Dates
476 AD-1450 AD: During the Middle Ages, only priests could read and write
English as a language was just forming, still “Old English” into the 1150’s
1300’s-1600’s: Renaissance in Italy (artwork centered around religion)
transition from the Middle Ages to modernity.
The Renaissance found scholars and artists celebrating the beauty and splendor of the natural world
Although Renaissance culture was becoming less religious, religion was still important to daily life, especially in Italy, where the seat of Roman Catholicism was located. A good portion of Renaissance art depicted scenes from the Bible or was commissioned by the church.
1500’s: Christian (and Protestant) Reformations to reform the Catholic church
Various Christian/Catholic religions focusing on eternal salvation (the afterlife), forced conversions
Portugal lax with new “Christians” (converted by force) practicing Judaism in private.
1536-1821: Portuguese Inquisition, many new “Christians”practice Judaism in secrecy.
1600’s Renaissance in England
1632: Spinoza born jewish in Portugal
during the Portuguese Inquisition (religious persecution)
1640: Spinoza’s uncle, Uriel Da Costa battles for freedom of thought and speech, he questioned Catholic and Jewish traditions of his time, leading to him being excommunicated twice with harsh social exclusion.
1600’s-1800’s: Enlightenment, a period of intellectual and philosophical fervor
in the American colonies it led to the American Revolution and the USA
scientific interest after hundreds of years of religious restriction on science
1790’s: The age of Reason
Thomas Paine was critical of traditional Christianity. He saw it as corrupt and rooted in superstition. His pamphlet 'The Age of Reason', published in the late 1790s, was an intellectual attack on the Christian religion.
especially the 1700’s in France & England, characterized by a critical approach to religious, social, and philosophical matters that seeks to repudiate beliefs or systems not based on or justifiable by reason.
1900’s: Age of “Science”
Professionals had to be trained through specific schools (women not allowed)
World Wars brought manufacturing and USA emerged as world power (when women joined the workforce as men went to fight)
2000’s: Modern research shows us that nature is biologically appropriate.
The new science shows that WE ARE PART OF NATURE. We learned that hurting the environment hurts our health.
Explorations into science, and questioning of past dogmas with access to information and freedom as never seen before
Research shows best things for health are not pharmaceuticals
Big pharma is a business to keep people somewhat sick (aka chronic, with no cure) to spend most money on pills for maximum amount of time> $profit
Underlying push since the 1970’s to be more natural, to go organic (stop spraying toxic chemicals on food), and to realize that awe in science and nature is HEALTHY.
Science leads us to be more interested in nature, revealing nature as more intelligent than we ever imagined. interest in the ecosystem, which is part of us.
We learned that we cannot be TOLD about religion in just a passive way to feel part of it. We need more than being told of the past passion of the church to feel invigorated. We want to read the books ourselves, and learn ABOUT the books w are reading, and who wrote them. We question the books that have been written and re-written for specific colonialist propoganda. We need to find our own passions. We question everything.
Finding a passion is GOOD FOR US, and following our instincts (rather than repressing them), is important.
Back to Epicurus→ enjoying calm “pursuit of happiness” ia key. (as stated in our constitution written during France’s break from the church)
This idea of questioning science of the day continues… we learn to fight the urge to be handed easy “conveniences”, and finding a way back to nature
getting kids and self off screens
working with hands for fun (and studies show getting outside is healthy!!)
learning about ourselves (her-story, not just his-story once forced on us)
eating REAL food and not just stuff in packages (real food tastes better too)
question vaccine schedules when the science does not match the instruction
In following the tradition of any people who changed the world, we had to view the world differently. We have to be open to learning, continuously. And we can do so WHILE living a pleasant life, just using what we know about the human body and the world around us to be the most at ease in it. And maybe slowly, fixing the large systems to actually be up to date so we make it easy on the people who do not have the time to research to be able to live their best lives.
Further Reading
Swerve (on Epicurus, Pulitzer Prize winner, and one of my favorite books of all time)
