Einstein (52 page)

In America Einstein had often been regarded officially as a leader of the Jewish people. When the World’s Fair was opened in New York in 1939–40, Palestine was represented by a pavilion. Since it was customary, at the opening of a pavilion, for the ambassador of the particular country to deliver an address, the question arose who should deliver such an address at the opening of the Palestinian pavilion. The choice did not fall upon a political leader of the Zionists, nor on a rabbi, but instead on Einstein, who was thus officially recognized as a kind of spiritual leader of the Jews.

To understand Einstein in its attitude to the Jewish people, one must understand his attitude to traditional Biblical religion and to religion in general. Would not a man like Einstein, whose unsparing criticism had removed the last remnants of medieval semi-theological conceptions from physics, assume a purely critical attitude to the religion of the Bible? Ever since his arrival in America this aspect of his personality has been much in the limelight. In this country people are more interested than in Europe in the problem of the relation between science and religion, and they feel more strongly the need for a mutual understanding between them.

Einstein’s attitude toward traditional religion is related in turn to his divided attitude to social relations in general. When I first became acquainted with Einstein, around 1910, I had the impression that he was not sympathetic to any kind of traditional religion. At the time of his appointment to Prague he had again joined the Jewish religious community, but he looked at this act rather as at a formality. At this time, too, his children were about to enter elementary school, where they would receive religious instruction. This was a rather difficult problem as he belonged to the Jewish religion and his wife to Greek Orthodox. “Anyway,” said Einstein, “I dislike very much that my children should be taught something that is contrary to all scientific thinking.” And he recalled jokingly the manner
in which school children are told about God. “Eventually the children believe that God is some kind of gaseous vertebrate.” This was an allusion to a saying of the German scientist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel that was then current.

At that time a superficial observer would easily have settled the question of Einstein’s attitude to religion with the word “sceptical.” Perhaps characteristic of this attitude is a remark that Einstein made to an orthodox Jew whom he once met at a police station in Prague, where I had gone with him to obtain a visa for a passport. The man asked Einstein if he knew a restaurant in Prague where the food was strictly kosher — that is, prepared according to the ritualistic precepts. Einstein mentioned the name of a hotel that was known to be kosher. The man asked Einstein: “Is this hotel really strictly kosher?” This annoyed Einstein somewhat and he said seriously: “Actually only an ox eats strictly kosher.” The pious man was hurt and looked indignantly at Einstein. The latter, however, explained that his statement was not offensive at all but quite objective and innocent: “An ox eats grass, and that is the only strictly kosher food because nothing has been done to it.”

Einstein’s attitude reflects often the immediate response of a genius which is similar to that of an intelligent child. The world is not judged in the traditional way, but as reason suggests. If this judgment is expressed without any of the traditional euphemisms, it is often called “cynical”; but it should be called rather “sincere with a sense of humor.”

Einstein was once told that a physicist, whose intellectual capacities were rather mediocre, had been run over by a bus and killed. He remarked sympathetically: “Too bad about his body.”

On another occasion Einstein was invited by a committee organized to honor a well-known scholar to take part in the celebration of his seventieth birthday and to address the gathering. Einstein replied to this committee: “I hold the man whom you are honoring in high esteem and I like him very much. For this reason I will arrange a dinner in his honor all alone at my home on his birthday. Since no audience will be present, I will simply keep the speech to myself. Wouldn’t it be more convenient for you and the scholar whom you are honoring if you did the same?”

His manner of speech is often an expression of the urge to make the serious things in the world tolerable by means of a playful disguise, a form of behavior that is ultimately the basis of all artistic activity. The use of such caustic words was for
Einstein an artistic way of coming to terms with the world, like the playing of a Mozart sonata, which also represents the evil of the world in a playful manner. In a certain sense all of Mozart’s music might be called “cynical.” It does not take our tragic world very seriously and reflects it in gay, youthful rhythms.

To understand Einstein’s views on religion seriously it is good to start from his conception of physical science and of science in general. As I have already repeatedly emphasized, the general laws of science, according to Einstein, are not products of induction or generalization but rather products of free imagination which have to be tested by physical observations. In his Oxford address Einstein asks:

“If it is the case that the axiomatic basis of theoretical physics cannot be an inference from experience, but must be free invention, have we any right to hope that we shall find the correct way? Still more — does this correct approach exist at all save in our imagination?”

To Einstein the physical theory is a product of human inventiveness, the correctness of which can be judged only on the basis of its logical simplicity and the agreement of its observable consequences with experience. This is exactly the description of a theory and the criterion of its validity which has been advocated by the
Logical Positivists
. To them the belief in the “existence of a correct theory” means the “hope to make a certain invention.” The expression “the correct form of a theory” has no more meaning than “the correct form of an airplane” what is obviously a meaningless expression.

But here Einstein deviates definitely from the conception of Logical Positivism. In his Oxford lecture he replied to the question whether there is a “correct way” as follows :

“To this I answer with complete assurance that in my opinion there is the correct path and, moreover, that it is in our power to find it. Our experience up to date justifies us in feeling sure that in nature is actualized the idea of mathematical simplicity.

“It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which give us the key to the understanding of the phenomena of nature. Experience can, of course, guide us in our choice of serviceable mathematical concepts; it cannot possibly be the source from which they are derived.

“In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it to be true that pure thought is competent to comprehend the real as the ancients dreamed.”

Here Einstein even goes so far as to use the language of idealistic philosophy, of the advocates of an aprioristic knowledge —
that is, knowledge independent of experience — although he has been a decided opponent of this philosophy. Nevertheless, in order to emphasize as strongly as possible his opposition to some oversimplifications current under the name of “positivism” he employs a mode of expression that can easily be misunderstood by those who have only a superficial knowledge of Einstein’s views.

The difference between Einstein’s views and those “dreams of the ancients” to whom he felt related is the following: According to the views of the ancient philosophers the power of intuition suffices to advance propositions that do not need to be tested by experience. But this is not what Einstein actually means. He means that the inventive faculty presents us with various possibilities for the construction of mathematical theories, among which only experience can decide.

The conviction of which Einstein spoke, and for which, naturally, no cogent reasons can be given, is the following: among the theories there will some day be one which in its logical simplicity as well as in its simple representation of observation will be so greatly superior to all rival theories that everyone will recognize it as the best in every respect. This conviction is nothing but an expression of scientific optimism. It is an expression of belief in a certain constitution of observable nature, which has been often called a “belief in the rationality of nature.”

The existence of such logical pictures of nature is a characteristic that is not self-evident, but which we recognize by experience and which we may call the “rationality of nature,” if we prefer to employ the terminology of traditional philosophy. This terminology is usually employed when one wishes to express one’s sympathy with certain feelings that are customarily expressed with great beauty in the language of that philosophy. Amazement at this
rational aspect of nature turns
into admiration; and this admiration is, in Einstein’s opinion, one of the strongest roots of religious feeling.

When we speak of the existence of a logical system that corresponds to natural processes, the term “existence” means in everyday language only that there are thinking beings similar to men which can imagine such a system. If we speak of the “existence” of such a system without relating it to a thinking being, it is an obscure mode of expression. If we do connect it with a thinking being, we imagine more or less vaguely a being similar to man with superior intellectual capacities. Consequently, to speak of the “rationality” of the world always means
to think vaguely of a spirit superior to man and yet similar to him. In this way Einstein’s conception of nature is related to what is usually called a “religious” conception of the world.

Einstein knows very well that this is not a statement about nature that is in any way scientific, but that it expresses a feeling aroused by the contemplation of nature. In this connection he once said:

“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the sower of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of devoutly religious men.”

According to Einstein’s conception, it is particularly the scientist in the field of natural science, and especially in the field of mathematical physics, who has this mystical experience. Here is the root of what Einstein calls “cosmic religion.” He once said:

“The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest, deriving from behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions, the devotion, without which pioneer creation in scientific thought cannot come into being can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work, turned away as it is from immediate practical life, can grow.

“What deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world, what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world, there must have been in Kepler and Newton!”

In recent years the view has frequently been put forth that the physical theories of the twentieth century, especially Einstein’s theory of relativity and the quantum structure of energy, have a great significance for the mitigation of the conflict between religion and science. Since Einstein has spoken of a “cosmic religion” based on science he has been often quoted as an advocate of that view. This, however, is a great misunderstanding. With his clear insight into the logical structure of a scientific theory, he has never encouraged the religious interpretation of recent physics which became current by the popular books of such scientists, as Jeans and Eddington.

For Einstein religion is both a mystical feeling toward the laws
of the universe and a feeling of moral obligation toward his fellow men as well. Nevertheless, the strictly logical-empirical character of his thought prevents him from assuming a scientific or apparently scientific link between these two feelings. We may feel a hint of it in music, which expresses what cannot be formulated in words.

This feeling, however, has been misunderstood by some people, since Einstein has never placed any importance on the formal aspects of religion. It was striking how readily Einstein used the word “God” as a figurative expression, even in physics. It will be recalled that he had repeatedly expressed his rejection of the statistical conception of physics with the statement: “I cannot believe that God plays dice with the world.” It is certain that the word “God” is used here only as a figure of speech and not in a theological sense. Other physicists, however, do not employ this figure of speech with equal readiness. One of Einstein’s finest remarks, which is recorded on a wall in the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, expresses his conception of the nature of physical science by means of the same figure of speech. Einstein wants to say that from a mathematical standpoint the system of physical laws is very complex, and that to understand it very great mathematical capacities are required. Nevertheless, he has hope that nature actually obeys a system of mathematical laws, and that the human mind can find these laws if it allows itself to be led by its scientific judgment. All this is expressed by the aforementioned remark:

“God is sophisticated, but he is not malicious.”

In the fall of 1940 a conference was held in New York to discuss what contributions science, philosophy, and religion could make to the cause of American democracy. Einstein was among those asked to address the conference. At first he did not want to write anything, as he disliked to attract public attention to himself, especially in political matters. Nevertheless, as the aim of the conference appealed to him, he allowed himself, even though he would not appear and speak in person, to be induced to send a written contribution, entitled “Science and Religion.” In it he said :