1
R. Grubic, “Einstein’s Faith,” from Cosmos or Chaos: Theodicy, Love, and Existential Choice
(2004).
The renowned physicist and iconic genius Albert Einstein is universally recognized as a
revolutionary thinker who played one of the primary roles in the demolition of the Newtonian
paradigm. He conducted his work at a period in history in which scientists—with Einstein at the
forefront—were questioning tenets which had long been regarded formerly as fixed, eternal
laws. This made for a trademark Kuhnian paradigm shift. “The fundamental concepts of
mechanics had ceased to be looked upon as fundamental constituents of the physical cosmos,”
Einstein wrote; “the very foundations of physics” had “become problematic.”1 “It was as if the
ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon
which one could have built.”2
The cosmos would never look the same after him: Einstein
fundamentally changed our conceptions of matter, energy, space, gravity, time, and even
causality. His papers on relativity have been called “the pyramids of modern civilization,” its
most “imposing intellectual monuments.”
Einstein helped open the portal to a dramatic new
world-view which would make the Newtonian and Laplacian model seem infantile.3 Einstein,
certainly unwittingly, can also be considered the father of quantum theory (he even gave quanta
their name4) and the sciences of complexity, as well as the modern scientific discipline of
cosmology, as these could have hardly been conceivable without his trailblazing thought.
However, the man was hardly an iconoclast and doggedly retained a Newtonian spirit. He would
1 Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown Publishers, 1983), 259, 290.
2 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edition (Chicago: University of
Chiacgo Press, 1970), 83; Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boston: Shambhala, 1991), 52.
3 Kuhn, 6, 101; Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Random House, 1992),
171; David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order, and Creativity (Toronto: Bantam, 1987), 29.
4 Capra, 66; Jammer, 220-222.
2
not concede that it was an either/or choice between his ideas and Newton’s, and many others
have followed his lead.5 Einstein is thus best described as a transitional figure between cosmos
and chaos.
Properly construed, there is a continuum between freedom and necessity, the concrete
and the abstract, and chaos and cosmos, on which any thinker can be placed. Like so:
____________________________________________________
Chaos
Cosmos/Order
Concrete Reality
Abstraction
Freedom
Necessity6
Einstein has to be located closer to the side of order, as he opted more for determinism and
predictability, and steadfastly continued to support the idea of a universe whose secrets could be
revealed by careful observation and the application of pure reason. What he sought was a new
and improved (that is, a more accurate and mathematically rigid) system which shared all the
essential attributes and values of the Newtonian cosmos. Einstein faithfully and some say
quixotically held on to the hope of a unified field theory—the so-called “Holy Grail” of modern
physics—and insisted that the universe was entirely comprehensible and coherent.7 Here again
in slightly modified form is the age-old philosophical quest for the One, stubbornly renewed by a
thinker who had ironically uncovered so much glaring evidence for the Many. The explanation
for this is not hard to find. As is fairly well known, Einstein blindly resisted all that quantum
theory represented, rejecting its probability and measured chaos while defending the notion of a
completely decipherable, orderly cosmos. He seemed to appreciate that having probability at the
root of physical science creates, arguably, an instability in the construct and plants a demon seed,
5 Kuhn, 98.
6 Freedom and necessity can, of course, be intermixed to various degrees and still correspond to
order.
7 Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimenions, and the Quest for the
Ultimate Theory (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), ix-x, 15; Jammer, 57.
3
undermining the entire effort. The introduction of the unknown and chaotic is unbearable to
some, and understandably so. Time and again, otherwise fearless minds have fallen back on
faith and forced the system. A paradigmatic example of this is Albert Einstein.
Two of Einstein’s revolutionary contributions were the theories of special relativity and
general relativity. The former asserts that there can be no absolute knowledge of a physical
event that involves objects in motion.8 While the underlying physical laws are essentially the
same, the results, that is, the measurements, differ when one or both observers are in motion,
varying with velocity. Put simply, context is everything. Objects, for example, become shorter
and flatter as they increase in speed and distance from the observer, and time moves slower for
bodies in motion.9 This is true for both clocks and heartbeats: the oft-noted “twin paradox”
theorizes that a twin who comes back from high-velocity space travel will be younger than his
brother. Aside from the laws of nature, the only constant in Einstein’s cosmos is the speed of
light.
General Relativity, meanwhile, explains gravity as the warping of the spatial fabric by
mass and movement, which in turn alters time. This is in marked contrast to Newton’s model,
where gravity was somewhat satisfactorily described but far from explained in such a universal
manner. To describe space and time now conceived as elastic or curved, Einstein employed the
Riemannian field geometry of curved bodies rather than that of the rigid, inertial, and flat
coordinate system associated with Descartes and Euclid.10
The Newtonian world-view recedes in the face of a universe where mass is inseparable
from energy (and all matter is revealed to have essentially wave-like or “quantum” properties)
8 Incidentally, his initial work in this area had to do with electrical and magnetic effects.
9 Capra, 165-166, 170-171. Special relativity has been confirmed many times over, in
experiments in optics, particle physics, and nuclear physics (Jammer, 193).
10 F. David Peat, The Philosopher’s Stone: Chaos, Synchronicity, and the Hidden Order of the
World (New York: Bantam, 1991), 145; Weinberg, 100; Capra, 174-175. Einstein and others since him
have even set about to gauge the overall curvature of space, the very shape of the universe itself. See
Bohm and Peat, 74; Capra, 167-169.
4
and space is inseparable from time. After Einstein, “Time is space.”11
This is obviously a
more holistic vision of the cosmos. Time itself is dramatically reconstrued, no longer considered
a universal or absolute One but rather a relative Many. In Einstein’s new universe, time is in
effect an illusion, and there theoretically can be no such thing as simultaneity or even the simply
understood Now.12 Space and time, once viewed as absolute, are now “merely elements of the
language a particular observer uses for describing the observed phenomena.”13
Moreover,
since it is the mass of matter and its gravity which gives space-time its shape, matter and space
are “inseparable and interdependent parts of a single whole” (as if they ever could be otherwise),
in what amounts to a cosmic field theory: “the field,” Einstein states, “is the only reality.”14 As
Max Jammer puts it, “After Einstein, the void ceased to exist, and space itself became a field.”15
The inference to be made here, one which Einstein presumably could not countenance, is that the
nature of the universe is dependent on what appears to be the purely chance distribution of
matter throughout space, and is only known through the relative position of the observer.
Science with Einstein takes giant leaps forward, but along shifting sands. At the same time that
some of the eternal mystery has given way, as gravity and matter are better understood, the
cosmos recedes further from the reach of concrete, objective observation.
Einstein was not unaware of the radical philosophical implications of his thought. Ever
the acute epistemologist, he seemed to understand that all axioms, theories, and systems, logical
11 Bohm and Peat, 74; Capra, 167-169.
12 Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Touchstone Books, 1984), 120, 128;
Stephen F. Kellert, In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), 53; Kuhn, 184; Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos,
and the New Laws of Nature (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 1; Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers,
Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984), 17, 214; Weinberg
140.
13 Capra, 63.
14 Ibid., 208, 211, 221; Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (New York: Vintage, 1980),
100. And, it follows, Time needs matter. See Jammer, 248.
15 Jammer, 209.
5
or otherwise, are artificial human constructions,16 abstractions which distort the nature of reality
and the reality of nature. Einstein had a genuine Heideggerian feel for the ontic (the reality
beyond words), while thankfully avoiding the clumsy jargon of Sein und Zeit.
No
representational language, he knew, can capture pure experience, and therefore even the most
carefully crafted theory is ultimately hypothetical.17 The drive for logical unity inevitably leads
away from the more direct truth of sensory experience, which itself cannot entirely capture the
real.18
The system is the product of reason and will; Einstein spoke of the “passion” for
understanding and comprehension which taints observation.19 All-encompassing models force
simplicity where there is none. Einstein acknowledged the social-psychological desire for unity,
simplicity, and consistency, and the security that is offered by a comprehensible cosmos. Shaped
by such creaturely motives, all theories are thus in essence speculative and precarious.20 Our
minds weave impressive webs, but the ontic—the Real—eludes capture.21
The “truth,”
scientific or otherwise, is ever relative and imprecise. Furthermore, although he often contradicts
16 He refers to these as “free creations” or “free inventions” of the intellect. Einstein, 234, 272,
323-324.
17 Ibid., 323-324, 336.
18 Einstein admitted as much: “[T]he supreme task of the physicist is the discovery of the most
general elementary laws from which the world picture can be deduced logically. But there is no logical
way to the discovery of these elemental laws” (preface to Max Planck, Where is Science Going? [New
York: W.W. Norton, 1932], 12, as quoted in Jammer, 134).
19 Einstein, 342.
20 Ibid., 349.
21 Or, as Prigogine similarly offers, drawing upon Whitehead, “[A] large part of the concrete
world around us has until now ‘slipped through the meshes of the scientific net’” (189). Karl Popper also
describes theories as nets, in a compelling passage from The Open Universe (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1982): “I see our scientific theories as human inventions—nets designed by us to catch the
world. To be sure, these differ from the inventions of the poets, and even from the inventions of the
technicians. Theories are not only instruments. What we aim at is truth: we test our theories in the hope
of eliminating those which are not true. In this way we may succeed in improving our theories—even as
instruments: in making nets which are better and better adapted to catch our fish, the real world. Yet they
will never be perfect instruments for this purpose. They are rational nets of our own making, and should
not be mistaken for a complete representation of the real world in all its aspects; not even if they are
highly successful; not even if they appear to yield excellent approximations to reality” (42-43).
6
this view, certain writings of Einstein defend the notion that there can be no final word for
physics, a discipline which is at best provisional and incomplete.22 As Sartre maintains, “Truth
always remains to be found, because it is infinite” and that “all works remain unfinished”
because of this.23 Einstein suggests that even geometric principles and physical laws are in a
certain sense arbitrarily chosen.24
In the final analysis, however, Einstein evidently resolved to close his mind to the full
implications of these ideas, preserving a hope in the cosmos and the Newtonian project. Special
Relativity to his mind was not the invitation to uncertainty as it was for Heisenberg, or a call to
subjectivism.25
And General Relativity amounted to a successful endeavor to sensibly
incorporate gravity into the system.26 In other words, for Einstein there was Relativity but no
relativism.27
The universe presents a more intriguing puzzle than originally thought, but
Einstein had faith that its mysteries could be logically solved and mathematically
communicated.28 The architect of the theory of relativity was himself a realist and at heart a
positivist who had nothing but distaste for the subjectivism hinted at in quantum theory. As
Prigogine discusses, Einstein placed observable data, immutable physical laws, and the God of
22 Einstein, 261, 266, 269, 323-324.
23 Jean-Paul Sartre, “Self Portrait at Seventy,” in Life/Situations (New York: Pantheon, 1977),
17-18; see also “Justice and the State” (Ibid., 194), and idem, Nausea (New York: New Directions, 1964) ,
13.
24 Einstein, 236.
25 Ibid., 282.
26 As Count Harry Kessler wrote of Einstein, “What he does not understand is why people have
become so excited about it,” the “it” being the theories of relativity. The Diary of a Cosmopolitan
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), 157, as quoted in Jammer, 36; see also p. 37.
27 Jammer, 33.
28 Einstein, 295; see also Davies, 221.
7
natural law at the center of his system rather than the Heisenbergian observer.29 The puzzling
but ultimately sensible truth of the cosmos would be what it is with or without human beings.
Despite relativity, Einstein believed in a truth and reality “independent of the human factor,”
and physics was the attempt to grasp reality as it is.30
While nature, Einstein thought, most often says “no” or “perhaps” to the questions the
scientist poses,31 he did not believe the cosmos to be defiantly silent or eternally cryptic. Or so
he hoped: Einstein hardly concealed his inability to think the unthinkable.
Asking himself if
“we can ever hope to find the right way,” he responds,
I answer without hesitation that there is, in my opinion, a right way, and that we
are capable of finding it. Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that
nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas. I am
convinced that we can discover by means of purely mathematical constructions
the concepts and laws connecting them with each other, which furnish the key to
the understanding of natural phenomena. . . . I still believe in the possibility of a
model of reality—that is to say, of a theory which represents things themselves
and not merely the probability of their occurrence.
He adds that he “cannot forego the search for a more complete conception”; to do so would be
“very contrary to my scientific instinct.” Einstein still longed for perfection with “passionate
devotion,” for a system that possessed the utmost in simplicity and economy.
The belief that these two objectives can exist side by side is, in view of the
primitive state of our scientific knowledge, a matter of faith. Without such faith
I could not have a strong and unshakable conviction about the independent value
of knowledge.32
29 Prigogine, 5; Prigogine and Stengers, 218, 293; see also Popper, 91. Weinberg likewise
emphasizes Einstein’s positivism, but notes a second hand account from Heisenberg that Einstein later in
life admitted “that every theory in fact contains unobservable quantities. The principle of employing only
observable quantities cannot be consistently carried out” (180).
30 Jammer, 71.
31 Prigogine and Stengers, 43.
32 Einstein, 274, 318, 323-324, 357.
8
The classical Newtonian elements of Einstein’s transitional paradigm are easily seen.
Like Newton and Galileo, Einstein relied on mathematics and a sense of mathematical elegance
in his methodology. It was along these lines that Einstein defined himself as a rationalist,
“someone who searches for the only reliable source of Truth in mathematical simplicity,” 33 and
it is hard to argue with results like E=mc2. Additionally, his model retained the notion of a static
universe where Time had no real significance, consistent with Newton’s views and those of
Spinoza, who by several accounts was Einstein’s favorite philosopher.34 (Einstein even wrote
an oddly romantic poem dedicated to Spinoza which begins, “How much do I love that noble
man/More than I could tell with words/I fear as though he’ll remain alone/With a holy halo of
his own.”35) In defending these notions, Einstein takes a significant step backwards from one of
the real insights of thermodynamics, that of the irreversible and evolutionary quality of natural
processes—of change.36 Although warped and four-dimensional, Einstein’s space is still too
much of a Newtonian vacuum. As F. David Peat summarizes, “Time in Einstein’s relativity is
frozen. His space-time picture is not dynamic, contains no principle of generation or anything to
indicate the flow from past into present.”37 Time for him had “no objective meaning.” For
example, commenting on a friend’s passing, and just weeks before his own, Einstein wrote to the
family, “Now he has departed a little ahead of me from this quaint world. This means nothing.
For us faithful physicists, the separation between past, present, and future has only the meaning
33 Jammer, 40.
34 Prigogine, 15, 176. In Order out of Chaos, Prigogine and Stengers describe Einstein’s model
as “Spinoza’s vision translated into physics” (215). See also Weinberg, 244.
35 Jammer, 43, 267. Jammer also notes, however, that “Einstein has never quoted a specific
statement by Spinoza as a source or inspiration for an idea of his own. . . . It is legitimate to say that
Spinoza influenced Einstein, but this influence expressed itself mostly in strengthening and articulating
conceptions that had previously been germinating in Einstein’s mind” (147).
36 Popper, 2-3.
37 Peat, 129. According to Prigogine, citing Kurt Gödel, Einstein began to subscribe to
past/future asymmetry and to accede to a less elastic view of non-repeatable time (165).
9
of an illusion, though a persistent one.”38
Such is the Newtonian denial of death. The real
lesson of relativity, however, is not of Time’s meaninglessness, as Einstein would have us
believe, but of its centrality in matters of perception. More importantly, to repeat an earlier
point, ethics and freedom—and for that matter, existence—only make sense in a temporal
world.39 To paraphrase Heidegger, Time is the existential grid and the grill onto which we are
so rudely thrown.
Karl Popper categorized his friend Einstein as a reductionist and determinist in the
Newtonian and Laplacian mold, meaning that Einstein believed that a “mathematically exact
description of the initial state of a closed physical system” would allow for a precise account “of
the system at any given future instant of time.”40 Past, present, and future in this view are fixed
like the sequence of frames on a reel of film, which obviously raises important philosophical
questions regarding the scope of human freedom and free will.
Einstein’s deterministic
outlook—again influenced by Spinoza—extended to the entire cosmos, from the stars to atoms
and everything in between, including man and God.41 He went so far as to state, “I do not at all
believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external
compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity.”42
As Popper saw it, Einstein’s
determinism goes beyond the confines of hard (or even hardheaded) science, and possesses the
character of a metaphysical belief or religious faith in the overall order and orderliness of the
cosmos.43
38 Albert Einstein-Michele Besso Correspondance 1903-1955 (Paris: Hermann, 1972), 537-538,
as quoted in Jammer, 160-161; see also pp. 164-171, 177; Davies, 128; Peat, 129.
39 Prigogine, 58.
40 Popper, 31-32, 91; see also Prigogine, 11, 14; Prigogine and Stengers, 226.
41 Jammer, 58, 147.
42 Einstein, Essays in Humanism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1985), 114-115, as quoted
in Jammer, 73-74; see also pp. 85-86.
43 Popper, 89.
10
As has been said, relativity in Einstein’s estimation did not undermine the fundamental
consistency or symmetry of the laws of nature. Despite the variations in measurements, the
essential form of the laws remains the same.44 The basic, general principles transcend the
context. “Within the creativity of the universe,” he maintained, “forms, orders, and laws tend to
return to themselves.”45
Quantum mechanics, of course, suggests otherwise, but Einstein
rejected this and held on to the hope for both a unified and final theory. He did not waver in his
belief in a cosmos and in the One, refusing to allow that there might be separate rules in physics
for the large and small or for the different fields, which would make for a divided universe (or
the possibility of multiple universes).46
Abraham Pais, one of Einstein’s many biographers,
wrote that Einstein’s attitude was “that there is a law and one must find it,” and that this quest
was almost an obsession for the last thirty years of the physicist’s life.47 Max Jammer points to
Einstein’s “indomitable striving throughout his later lifetime for ‘oneness’ in physics” as a sign
of a kind of religious and Spinozistic faith. “[I]n spite of innumerable disappointments, he never
ceased to believe that there ought to exist such a theory.”48 Not surprisingly, Einstein defended
the “wonderful” ideas of natural simplicity, beauty, harmony and symmetry in science, all of
which made for a biased world-view that tainted his work.49
For example, the lingering
asymmetry of general theory was to his mind “a blemish to be removed.” 50 His infamous
pursuit of the cosmological constant, a mathematical device used to uphold the notion of a static
44 Weinberg, 142-143.
45 Peat, 144-145.
46 Greene, 3-4; Popper, 139; Prigogine and Stengers, 2; Jammer, 52, 57.
47 Weinberg, 17.
48Jammer, 57.
49 Davies, 221; Weinberg, 140, 224.
50 Popper, 57.
11
cosmos, was an outgrowth of such faith and an example of good old-fashioned fudging.51 After
Hubble proved that the universe was in fact expanding, “Einstein came to regret mutilating his
equations by introducing the cosmological constant.”52 Following Ernst Mach, Einstein had
great difficulty imagining an inefficient or uneconomical universe.53 Paradoxically, Einstein
went to complex, contorted lengths to preserve an overall vision of simplicity, and in doing so
was forced to deny change and freedom.
Prigogine comments derisively that “Einstein
attempted to maintain the unity of nature, including mankind, at the cost of reducing us to mere
automata” and of losing sight of the true nature of Time and of the real.54
Observers as sharp as Einstein, less influenced by wishful thinking, can gaze at the same
universe and find the complete opposite of simplicity, symmetry, and harmony, and appreciate
reality and the truth in their sublime ugliness. It is evident how the psychological weakness of
fear—of the Many and the Unknown—and what may be construed as either the strength or
weakness of faith color Einstein’s physics. Here was a thinker unready to live in an expanding
universe. His model of cosmic order was forged in the fire of the tumultuous first half of the
twentieth century, and several scholars posit that it was in many ways a direct response of a
Jewish-German emigré to a social-historical context of severe crisis. “In order to be of any value
at all,” for Einstein, “physics had to satisfy his need to escape the tragedy of the human
51 Jammer, 62-63, 148.
52 “Einstein in 1915 operated under the assumption that the field equations should be chosen to
be as simple as possible. The experience of the past three-quarters of a century has taught us to distrust
such assumptions; we generally find that any complication in our theories that is not forbidden by some
symmetry or other fundamental principle actually occurs. It is thus not enough to say that a cosmological
constant is an unnecessary complication. Simplicity, like everything else, must be explained” (Weinberg,
223-224). Weinberg, nonetheless, always hoping for a final theory, seems to defend the basic conception
of the cosmological constant. Presently, based on certain astronomical evidence that is hard to decipher,
there is a renewed interest in the prospect of a cosmological constant in physics. The recent declarations
are not particularly persuasive, however, and speak more to an interest in removing this one wart from the
canonized image of Einstein and satisfying the same hopes and psychological compulsions for a cosmos
documented throughout this work.
53 Prigogine and Stengers, 53.
54 Prigogine, 15.
12
condition,” according to Prigogine. This amounted to “a denial of the very reality that physicists
endeavor to describe.”55 Stephen Toulmin, comparing Descartes’ “quest for certainty” with
Einstein’s, argues that “[f]or Einstein as well, science was a means of avoiding the turmoil of
everyday existence.”56
The vacuum of space can itself be a sacred canopy, and the abstract
realm of formulas and theory an escape, as Einstein put it, from “noisy, cramped quarters toward
the silent high mountains.”57 He flees for the high ground, away from the chaotic mire of the
abyss. Confessing as much, Einstein recalled of his turn toward science as a youth,
The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed
that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and admire had found inner
freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. . . . The road to this paradise
was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise, but it
has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.58
Einstein could not follow through with the full ramifications of his ideas or accept the
more radical theses of quantum mechanics because he simply was afraid to step into the darkness
of chaos. This is so despite the fact that quantum theory in large part grew from his own studies
of the properties of light and of special relativity—and is what one might call the bastard child of
his thought.59 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, as has been said (3.4), in particular can be
viewed as a corollary of special relativity. Einstein, however, refused to embrace the chance and
uncertainty that serve as the magmatic cornerstones of quantum mechanics, especially the
55 Ibid., 187. In this regard, “Einstein repeatedly stated that he had learned more from Fyodor
Dostoevsky than any physicist.”
56 Ibid., 184.
57 Einstein, 225; see also Prigogine, 185.
58 Einstein, “Autobiographical Notes,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P.A. Schilpp
(Evanston, IL: Library of Living Philosophers, 1949), 33, as quoted in Jammer, 28.
59 Einstein is said to have remarked to Leopold Infeld, “Yes, I may have started it but I always
regarded these ideas as temporary. I never thought that others would take them much more seriously than
I did” (L. Infeld, Albert Einstein: His Work and its Influence on Our World [New York: C. Scribner’s
Sons, 1950], 110, as quoted in Jammer, 222).
13
extreme subjectivism which marks the Copenhagen Interpretation. This compelled him to enter
into a losing and somewhat desperate experimental duel of sorts with Niels Bohr regarding the
hybrid properties of photons and the wider implications of quantum theory; similarly he tried
and failed to disprove Heisenberg’s indeterminacy relations.60 “God does not play dice” with
the universe, Einstein insisted, attempting to defend at once himself, Newton, and his beloved
Spinoza, and he was confident that quantum mechanics would soon be replaced a deterministic
scheme.61 Likewise, he refused to accept the idea of non-local causality that Bohr’s work
suggested, calling it “spooky.”62 Despite the mathematical and empirical evidence, Einstein
postulated the existence of “local hidden variables” or, better still, a unified theory that made use
of unseen additional dimensions, an approach taken up by superstring theory.63 Bohr’s position
was later experimentally verified by J.S. Bell, proving Einstein wrong. Though the seemingly
instantaneous communication and extreme interconnectivity implied by Bohr’s and Bell’s work
can be seen to support Einstein’s field theories, it contradicted his vaunted mathematical barrier
against exceeding the speed of light.
Einstein scornfully disregarded the “telepathy-like
relations” of Bell’s experiments.64 While Einstein begrudgingly admitted that quantum theory
“had seized hold of a good deal of truth,” he finally dismissed it as beguiling, incomplete, and
obstructive in the search for a new uniform basis for physics. He simply could not tolerate the
fundamental place of ambiguity in the quantum model of nature, finding this “too absurd to
contemplate.”65 To him, “[t]he more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.” 66 In
60 Jammer, 53.
61 Ibid., 85, 222, 228-229.
62 Robert Anton Wilson, The New Inquisition (Phoenix: New Falcon, 1986),109.
63 Jammer, 233.
64 Capra, 311-313; Jammer, 235.
65 Einstein, 315-316, 319; Bohm and Peat, 84-85, 104; Jammer, 224. “Einstein’s Mouse” refers
to his scoffing at the idea implied in quantum theory that any observer, even a mere mouse, refashions the
universe just by looking at it. See Wilson, Quantum Psychology, 40, 187.
14
all this, Hawking succinctly points out, however, “Einstein was confused, not the quantum
theory.”67 Einstein was not a gracious loser, and as a result once close friends like Bohr
eventually ended their dialogues with him.68 Weinberg reflects that “Einstein was unusual in
rejecting quantum mechanics altogether; most physicists were simply trying to understand it.”69
Einstein, exercising the prerogative of physicists and laymen alike, clearly did not want to
understand.
This closed-mindedness speaks to deeper motivations, and it seems to be true that
Einstein was more disturbed by quantum theory’s metaphysical implications than anything else.
His writings resound with declarations of faith similar to his insistence that God does not play
dice. Courageously exploring the regions beyond faith, Hawking says in response to Einstein
that apparently God not only plays dice but “throws them where they cannot be seen.”70 Few
others allow their minds to consider the unthinkable, the chance that not only is there no God but
also no enduring natural or physical law. (For this reason, it is unlikely that quantum theory,
with its postulates of uncertainty, can ever make a dent in the mind of the public at large or
holistically on an individual life.) While Einstein lived in a radically different-looking universe
than most of us, a more complex world with much vaster horizons and head-splitting arithmetic,
it was nevertheless, he believed, a sensible, decipherable cosmos. Evoking Schleiermacher, he
writes reverently of the “cosmic religious feeling” that allows the mind to sense the universe as a
66 Letter to Heinrich Zangger, 20 May 1912, in Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, vol. 5
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 467, as quoted in Jammer, 221.
67 Stephen Hawking, lecture at Amsterdam Symposium on Gravity, Black Holes, and String
Theory, 21 June 1997, as quoted in Greene, 108.
68 Davies, 108-111; Bohm and Peat, 84-85, 104.
69 Weinberg, 72.
70 Errol Morris, dir., A Brief History of Time (videocassette) (Los Angeles: Paramount, 1993).
15
whole.71 All roads lead to Rome: The stratospheric route of immense intelligence in the end
meets with the more well-traveled, plebeian paths of faith. The scientist’s conviction that “the
rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order,”
Einstein himself admits is “akin to religious feeling.”72
He possessed what can be termed a
scientific theodicy. No matter how much it is beset by evil, suffering, and injustice at the human
level, such a universe is always—at least psychologically—a place of comfort and security, law
and order.
Einstein and Religion
Quite a few studies have been done on Einstein’s religious beliefs and attitudes toward
religion, and it is a subject he addressed quite often in his writings.73 Einstein has been regarded
as an atheist by some, pantheist by others, while numerous commentators, with good reason,
have also referred to Einstein’s “profound religiosity.”74 He described himself, enigmatically
and oxymoronically enough, as a “deeply religious nonbeliever,” although “nonreligious
believer” would have fit just as well.75
Einstein was not by any means what one might call traditionally religious. Although he
went through a rather passionate religious phase as a youth and received the bare bones of a
religious education both at school and to a lesser extent at home, Einstein for the most part was
raised in a decidedly secular atmosphere. His parents did not observe traditional Jewish rituals
71 Einstein, 13-14, 38, 46.
72 Ibid., 38-40, 46; Jammer, 55.
73 I find Max Jammer’s thoroughly researched Einstein and Religion to be most authoritative on
this subject and rely on it for the following section, in addition to Einstein’s own autobiographical
writings.
74 Jammer, 4, 95-97, 99, 132, 151.
75 Ibid., 157.
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or dietary restrictions, although young Albert voluntarily abstained from eating pork and
carefully followed other Judaic customs. The “beauty and splendor of nature,” the wonders of
music, and the teaching he had received from the Bible convinced him as a boy of the reality of
God. Later Einstein referred to this stage of his life as a “religious paradise.” By the age of
twelve, however, under the influence of “popular scientific books” and a young medical student
who had become a friend of the family, Einstein had more or less rejected religion entirely,
symbolized by his refusal to be bar mitzvahed. He recalled,
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 fantastic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth
is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing
impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this
experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any
specific social environment—an attitude which has never again left me, even
though later on, because of better insight into the causal connections, it lost
some of its original poignancy.76
Einstein’s work and his place as a prominent public figure brought him into contact with many
religious figures in the course of his life, and found him addressing theological conventions and
religious organizations on several occasions.77 But, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Einstein
as either a youth or an adult “never attended religious service and never prayed in a synagogue
or at any other place of worship. He visited such places only to participate in social events,”
even during his trip to the Holy Land in 1923.78
and organized religion.
Einstein was rather hostile toward churches
He did not want his sons to receive religious education in school,
especially if the goal “was to teach religious ceremonies or formal rituals instead of the
development of ethical values.”79 Einstein also made very explicit his desire not to be buried in
accordance with Jewish tradition, but rather to be cremated and his ashes scattered.80
76 Ibid., 15-27, 141.
77 Ibid., 92, 151.
78 Ibid., 8, 27.
79 Ibid., 51.
17
At the heart of this all was a revulsion toward the naiveté, fear, superstitiousness,
escapism, mass indoctrination, and blindness that he felt characterizes popular religion.81
Einstein formulated a tripartite evolutionary scheme concerning the development of religion, one
that was strongly functionalistic in tone. To his thinking, primitive religions, the first type, were
based entirely on fear and ignorance. The intermediate type, meanwhile, represents the rise of
ethical religion, with a “social or moral conception of God” who “rewards and punishes, who
comforts in distress and preserves the souls of the dead,” arising from the human “desire for
guidance, love, and support.”82 This projected, personal God also seemed to Einstein naive and
ultimately unnecessary.83 Einstein had little patience for any mythic expressions of belief.
“‘Religious truth,’” in the revealed sense, he wrote, “conveys nothing clear to me at all.” And,
he added, “[i]t is this mythical, or rather this symbolic, content of the religious traditions which
is likely to come into conflict with science.”84
The consummate stage of religion is that of
“cosmic religious feeling,” free from any anthropomorphisms, dogma, or Church. This is the
God recognized by the great religious figures and eminent scientists of history, and by the kinds
of saints often viewed as atheists by their less-enlightened contemporaries, among whom
Einstein lists Spinoza, Demokritus, and Francis of Assisi (!).85 “God of the Gaps” positions,
where God is used to explain and cover “those domains in which scientific knowledge has not
80 Ibid., 27.
81 Ibid., 19-20, 39, 69, 94-95, 122.
82 As quoted in Jammer, 77.
83 Jammer, 121.
84 Einstein, 49-52; see also Jammer, 116.
85 Jammer, 1, 78-79, 117.
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yet been able to set foot,” were to Einstein vestiges of primitive ignorance which he considered
“not only unworthy, but also fatal.”86
At the same time, Einstein was supposedly respectful of “sincere religious convictions of
whatever denomination,” and, according to his apologists, “did not think that religious faith was
a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign of intelligence.” 87 Einstein claimed, for instance, in his
studies of Christianity to have been “enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.” Asked
in a 1929 interview if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, Einstein replied
“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His
personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”88 But clearly Einstein,
either as a man of science or as a Jew, could not accept Jesus as Christ, so this supposed
fascination counts for little. To his credit, Einstein humbly did not try to proselytize anyone to
his religious views89 (whatever they were exactly), but this was clearly with the hope that people
on their own would come to know his impersonal, deistic God, and unite. In 1947 Einstein sent
this message to the National Conference of Christian and Jews:
If the believers of the present-day religious would earnestly try to think and
act in the spirit of the founders of these religions, then no hostility on the basis
of religion would exist among the followers of the different faiths. Even
conflicts in the realm of religion would be exposed as insignificant.90
Religion was without question a preoccupation of Einstein’s. The Swiss writer Friedrich
Dürenmatt made the remark, “Einstein used to speak so often of God that I tend to believe he has
been a disguised theologian.”91 Steven Weinberg, however, labels Einstein’s alleged religiosity
86 As quoted in Jammer, 232.
87 Jammer, 96.
88 Ibid., 22.
89 Ibid., 8, 151.
90 Message to the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1947), as quoted in Jammer, 150.
91 Dürrenmatt, Albert Einstein (Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1979), 12, as quoted in Jammer, 7.
19
as at best vague and metaphorical.92 Einstein’s frequent use of religious language and imagery
is in many ways strictly symbolic and little more than an idiosyncratic cultural vestige or
anachronism, as when he speaks of scientists earning the good graces of the “Angel of the Lord”
and driving the “unworthy” from
the “Temple of Science.”93
However much the Old
Testament may have influenced Einstein’s more colorful utterances, there was no sense of a
personal, living, or even free God for this new Moses. Whether conceived as the Creator of the
universe or not, God for Einstein was either subordinate to natural law or identical to it. He
famously wondered whether God had any choice in creating the universe,94 and his answer
presumably would be no. Asked what his reaction would have been had there been no empirical
confirmation of the general theory of relativity, Einstein answered, “Then I would have been
sorry for the dear Lord—the theory
is
correct,”
indicating
how he placed laws and
mathematical principles over God.95 In his opinion, the universe is ruled not by the will of some
capricious supernatural being but rather deterministically by physical law.96
And yet he still refers constantly, almost obsessively, to “God.” Einstein describes this
deity as “Spinoza’s God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists,” not “a
God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings” and doles out rewards and
punishments.97 As he said, “We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and
92 Weinberg, 242.
93 Prigogine and Stengers, 20; Jammer, 49, 132-133, 137-138, 234.
94 Jammer, 245, 265. Einstein famously wondered, “What I am really interested in is knowing
whether God could have created the world in a different way” (E. Streit, “Assistent bei Albert Einstein,” in
C. Seelig, Heile Zeit—Dunkle Zeit [Zürich: Europa Verlag, 1956], 72, as quoted in Jammer, 122-124; see
also 234; Davies, 222).
95 “Reminiscences of Einstein,” in H. Woolf, ed., Some Strangeness in the Proportion (Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980), 523, as quoted in Jammer, 53.
96 Jammer, 43-44. 74.
97 As quoted in Weinberg, 245; Jammer, 43, 47, 49, 73, 80.
20
lawfulness of all that exists.”98 Spinoza’s “God” basically represents the cosmic order itself,
possessing no anthropomorphic, anthropathic, or ethical qualities whatsoever.99
Einstein
explained his position as follows:
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept
which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal
outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration
for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony
which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly.100
To know the inner workings of Nature is to know God, the Divine Mind that reveals itself in the
world of experience.101 Given this notion of God, Einstein is thus better labeled a pantheist or
deist. Witness comments like,
I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of
him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards
good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His
universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.102
Such a God cannot even be regarded as free, let alone omnipotent. Although he did not have
Einstein necessarily in mind, Hawking makes an accurate, if understated, criticism that “I think it
could be misleading to call such a Being ‘God,’ because this term is normally understood to have
personal connotations which are not present in the laws of physics.”103 Einstein’s God is no
God, and this mystery no real mystery.
Certain reviewers have detected the influence of Judaism and particularly that of the
Medieval theologian Moses Maimonides in Einstein’s reluctance to personify God, connected to
98 Einstein, letter to E. Büsching, 25 October 1929, as quoted in Jammer, 51.
99 Jammer, 137-138.
100 Einstein, letter to M.W. Gross, 26 April 1947, as quoted in Jammer, 137-138.
101 Einstein, 261-262; Jammer, 121, 132, 148.
102 Einstein, from W. Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (Brookline
Village, MA: Branden Press, 1983), 132, as quoted in Jammer, 122-123.
103 Letter to the editors of American Scientist, as quoted in Jammer, 264.
21
the age-old prohibition against graven images and so forth. This ignores the fact that the God of
the Jewish tradition, however impossible to represent in image or even word, remains personal
and active in history and is far from being an intellectualized abstraction.104 Einstein’s God
frankly seems much more Aristotelian than Jewish. The Nazis, nevertheless, with their typical
venomous absurdity, attacked the theory of relativity as “a typical product of ‘Jewish Physics’
which tries to deprive true physics or ‘Aryan Physics’ of its foundations,” and attempted to show
the influence of the Talmud on Einstein’s work.105 Most Jewish leaders, meanwhile, recognized
that Einstein’s “religious views are diametrically opposed to Judaism.”106 A comparison to
Marxism and its relativistic, deconstructionist analysis of superstructure would have probably
have been a more fruitful angle of approach, had the Nazis opted to link Einstein with National
Socialism’s other great enemy.107 Either way, Einstein’s world-shaking views gave plenty of
fuel for anti-Semites who have never needed much to ignite their racist hatred.
Einstein’s thought was controversial and caused quite a stir among various religious
groups of his day. He took great pains to distance his own religious views from atheism. But,
again, with such an impersonal God that would itself be subordinate to the laws of nature,
Einstein might as well have been an atheist. Still, he was surprised and even angered that his
denial of a personal God was construed as atheistic.108 Rabbi Hyman Cohen, a contemporary,
agreed that “Einstein is emphatically no atheist. He believes in a God.”
“But,”
Cohen
continues, “in renouncing a personal deity,” Einstein “removes the Supreme Being so remotely
from the sphere of human comprehension as to make His influence on the individual’s conduct
104 Jammer, 47.
105 Ibid., 58.
106 Ibid., 99.
107 Ibid., 30.
108 Ibid., 82-83, 95-97, 149-150.
22
negligible. To use mathematical terminology, he reduces the infinite to an infinitesimal of the
highest order.”109 In his overview of this argument, Jammer adds,
Einstein’s declaration that he believes in the God of Spinoza can be of no use to
anybody who is religious. If God, according to Einstein, is not concerned with
the actions and prayers of man, Cohen continued, it is obviously of no use to
pray to him. . . . Einstein’s confession is but a confession of “practical atheism,”
because there is no difference between there being no God to bother about man,
and there being a God who does not concern himself with the fates and actions
of human beings.110
Einstein in fact dismissed prayer as foolish, even irreligious;111 the laws of nature can hardly
listen. His impersonal, science-bound conception of God is hardly comforting or inspiring. One
Catholic priest asked in criticism whether anyone would be willing to lay down his or her life for
the Milky Way, which is essentially what Einstein’s God is.112
In the cosmological sense, on the other hand, it is correct to describe Einstein as
profoundly religious.
The aforementioned “cosmic religious feeling” is very much in the
tradition of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fasciens. This involves not only a reverential
awe and humility before the mysteries of the universe and order of the cosmos, 113 but also for
Einstein a faith and amazement in the ability of human reason to decipher that order—to know,
partially but progressively, the Divine Mind and the harmony of the universe.114 The human
capacity to understand the cosmos to Einstein is a miracle and gift of grace. His well-known
declaration was that the most incomprehensible thing about the cosmos is that it is
comprehensible. In all the above respects Einstein called himself “a deeply religious man.”
109 As quoted in Jammer, 99.
110 Jammer, 49-50.
111 Ibid., 92, 149.
112 Ibid., 82.
113 Ibid., 52, 73, 82, 93, 114, 126, 148, 155. The correspondence with Schleiermacher should
again be noted.
114 Ibid., 42, 74, 121-122, 148-149.
23
Yes, you can call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of
nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there
remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force
beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in
point of fact, religious. . . .115
I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the
position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many
languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does
not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written.
The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but
doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most
intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged
and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited
minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. . . .116
[W]e have to admit that our actual knowledge of these laws is only an
incomplete piece of work, so that ultimately the belief of the existence of
fundamental all-embracing laws also rests on a sort of faith. All the same, this
faith has been largely justified by the successes of science. On the other hand,
however, every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes
convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly
superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers
must feel humble. The pursuit of science leads therefore to a religious feeling
from the religiosity of more naive people.117
Einstein held that “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious,” and it is this
emotion which is the source of “true” science, art, and religion, all of which further cultivate a
cosmic religious feeling.118 In other words, religion, in Einstein’s limited sense, is both the
beginning and end of science—both the mystery and the order discovered underlying it. Rabbi
Hadas offers, “If we translate Einstein’s terms into the formal language of religious expression I
115 Einstein, from H. G. Kessler, The Diary of a Cosmopolitan, 322, in Jammer, 39-40, 74.
116 As quoted in Jammer, 48.
117 Einstein, letter to P. Wright, as quoted in Jammer, 92-93.
118 Jammer, 68-69, 73-74, 78, 84, 92, 134. “I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in
the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would note
fruitful” (A. Einstein, “Science and God,” Forum and Century 83 [1930]: 373-379, as quoted in Jammer,
32).
24
have a feeling that Einstein’s cry in a wilderness of worlds and aeons is the self-same cry that
comes from the heart of all religious folk.”119
Given the prominence of “cosmic religious feeling” in his thought, it is perhaps more
appropriate to consider Einstein as a mystic, at least in the limited, rationalistic Troeltschian
sense, or simply as “poetic.”120 His methods as a physicist even relied on a mystical type of
intuitive flash; as “he started with unspecifiable feelings and a succession of images out of which
more detailed concepts eventually emerged,” rather than with the strict mathematics one might
expect, despite his persistent claims of strict rationalism.121
(The connection between
mathematics and mysticism, it is worth noting, has historically been a close one, as with thinkers
like Pythagoras.)
Einstein, like most mystics, combined a deep cosmic sensitivity and
religiousness with a general disregard for traditional religious institutions and expressions.
However, he vehemently dismissed, as we have seen, both the notions of a personal God and
human immortality or life after death, typical mainstays of a mystical worldview.122 For all his
quasi-religiousness, it is difficult to even consider him spiritual. Einstein’s first wife Elsa
laughed in disbelief on one occasion when someone referred to her husband as mystical. He
himself wrote off the mystical and spiritualist trends of his day as symptoms of “weakness and
confusion,” and insisted that his cosmic religious feeling had “nothing to do with mysticism”:
“Mysticism is in the fact the only reproach that people cannot level at my theory.” 123 These
119 As quoted in Jammer, 99.
120 Davies, 7.
121 Bohm and Peat, 7; Jammer, 40, 216. William A. Wallace offered that “the essential
contribution of Einstein is to cancel out the excessive mathematical realism of Galileo, while still leaving
open the possibility of a type of physical certainty and proof as conceived by Thomas Aquinas.” Einstein
responded to this, “I have not read all the works of Thomas Aquinas, but I am delighted if I have reached
the same conclusions as the comprehensive mind of the great Catholic scholar” (As quoted from W.A.
Wallace, “St. Thomas, Galileo, and Einstein,” Thomist 24 (1961): 1-22, in Jammer, 216).
122 Jammer, 70-72, 143, 220, 236.
123 As quoted in Jammer, 125-126, 236.
25
protests have more weight if one keeps in mind Einstein’s rationalism and objective realism, as
Jammer explains:
[I]f mysticism denotes immediate intuition of, or insight into, a spiritual truth in
a way different from ordinary sense perception or the use of logical thinking,
Einstein was never a mystic. He never maintained that any knowledge—of the
holy or the profane—could be attained through extrasensory perception or
spiritual insight. He never conceived of his “cosmic religious feeling” as a
substitute for rational thinking.124
But in some cases, however subtly, it was—as rationalism and realism were for Einstein articles
of faith which allowed intuition and prejudice to replace rational thinking. Rationalism here
becomes irrational. Einstein saw no contradiction in declaring, “I have faith in the universe, for
it is rational. And I have faith in my purpose here on earth. I have faith in my intuition, the
language of my conscience.”125
The marks of both Einstein’s quasi-religiousness and anti-religiousness are traceable in
his scientific thought. A healthy amount of skepticism and free-thinking were necessary for him
to be able to offer a radically different version of the cosmos (here is the influence of Hume),
but this was juxtaposed with a faith to continue to believe in the existence of a higher order (the
mark of Spinoza, Aquinas, and Kant).126
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Thomas
Davidson, inquired of Einstein “what effect relativity would have on religion.” Einstein’s rather
short-sighted response was “None. Relativity is a purely scientific matter and has nothing to do
with religion”; Einstein “emphatically denied any relation between his theory and theology.” 127
The theory does present challenges to religious worldviews, however, whether intentionally so
or not.
Erwin Schrödinger noted relativity’s theological implications in regard to Time,
124 Jammer, 126-127.
125 Einstein, from W. Hermanns, 94, as quoted in Jammer, 220.
126 Jammer, 29, 41, 147.
127 Ibid., 15, 247.
26
particularly as to the Western conception of God as an agent in history, 128 although this is a bit
of stretch and easily handled by any deft theologian (e.g., by imagining God as both within and
beyond the temporal realm). Siegmund Stent goes so far as to describe the Einstein-Bohr debate
as “ultimately a clash between two opposing religious worldviews,” with Einstein representing
“the traditional monotheistic viewpoint of Western science” and Bohr a more Eastern stance.129
As some see it, relativity allows for a completely new model of relatedness between God and
man (i.e., energy and matter), where the two together form a field. (This does not seem any
different from what has always been the case, actually.) So it is that “[t]he field concept could
be used in theology to make the effective presence of God in every single phenomenon
intelligible,” akin to the Holy Spirit.130
As the previous pages have made clear, a religiousness is evident in Einstein’s adoration
of Spinoza, his absolute faith in determinism and the God of physical laws, his stubborn
rationalism/realism, and his obdurate, almost desperate resistance to quantum indeterminacy.131
As he said to the Indian philosopher-mystic Rabindranath Tagore, “I cannot prove that my
conception is right, but that is my religion.”132 Einstein’s decision was to continue to have faith
in the prospect of the eventual revelation of a metaphysical system, or what he calls a “miracle
creed.”133 His conscious resolution was to believe that nature was not ruled by blind chance,134
128 Ibid., 159, 164-171; see also pp. 48, 188.
129 Ibid., 233. To illustrate, upon receiving the honor of knighthood the Danish physicist chose
the Daoist yin-yang symbol for his coat arms (235).
130 Wolfgang Pannenberg, “The Doctrine of Creation and Modern Science,” Zygon 23 (1988): 321, as quoted in Jammer, 208; see also 206-210.
131 Jammer, 45-46, 53, 58.
132 R. Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932), as quoted in
Jammer, 71; see also p. 223.
133 Einstein, 342.
134 Ibid., 334-335.
27
the equivalent in physics of Ivan Karamazov’s thought that if there is no god, then anything—
everything—is permissible. If quantum theory is accurate, this is more or less the case. As his
work suggests, Einstein seemed to know more than even he could admit, and he is an
emblematic thinker for our study. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is not, to
contradict Einstein’s well-known aphorism, that it is comprehensible, but rather that it might not
be. Having thought his way, if not to the paralyzing edge of the abyss (where we all are to begin
with), then to the dizzying point of recognition, much like Kierkegaard, Einstein “retreats” and
chooses faith. Similar to Karl Jaspers and H. Richard Niebuhr, for all his fearless thought, in the
end he retains a belief in the One (or the transcendent All-Encompassing, Umgreifend, in
Jaspers-speak) and has even more faith that this One beyond the Many is humanly
perceptible.135 While philosophical monotheism may be the most economical and elegant
worldview, the truth, however, may just as well be the Many, or even None.
Einstein’s Ethics
Unlike Kierkegaard, who in the end is a cloistered philosopher, at best a gadabout,
Einstein, to his credit and akin to Camus, resolved to fight passionately for social justice.
Einstein was a man of conscience to say the least, a committed, vocal, anti-militarist Zionist, and
ardent defender of human rights. Although he did not believe that science could “define, let
alone commend, ethical values,” being limited to a description of what is and not what should
be, Einstein was no moral relativist.136 And despite his deterministic view of the cosmos that
compromised any sense of human free will, he felt that “man must conduct his moral life as if he
were free.”137 Moral conduct could be fostered without the aid of organized religion—“it is a
purely human affair,” which could and should be “based effectually on sympathy, education, and
social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.” His vaunted “cosmic religious feeling,”
135 Jammer, 52.
136 Ibid., 33, 52, 69, 94, 134.
137 Ibid., 87.
28
he felt, was sufficient to instill humility, “superpersonal” selflessness, personal integrity, and
global concern, traits possessed by those Einstein would call truly religious.138
It is difficult to call such a strict determinist as Einstein either a humanist or a theist—
despite his labeling himself the former and his propensity for glib God-talk—as neither men nor
God in his imagined cosmos are free. The laws are everything. However, the humanist tag is
appropriate in several crucial aspects, for in tune with Dostoevsky and Jaspers, Einstein in the
midst of the Void also crafts a communitarian social ethic which sought to preserve the integrity
of the individual as well as the intellect.
His reminders of the scientist’s social/moral
responsibility are particularly relevant in our technological age, and cannot be praised enough.
Einstein was a true voice of reason, in the fullest sense of the expression. To an ethicist, his
synthesis of individualist and communitarian perspectives is especially intriguing and
instructive. In doing all of these things he, as we shall see, more or less emulated the Buddha,
and all others who opt for cosmos in the face of chaos but do not turn away from society in
doing so. He should be severely criticized for not taking his thought further philosophically but
commended and praised for taking it so much beyond the norm ethically.
138 Einstein, 40; see also Jammer, 87-88, 93-94, 137-138. It is particularly interesting to explore
the possible systematic connection between Einstein’s theories of relativity, his social ethics, and his
relational views of human nature—of a self as social animal that cannot fully exist apart from community.
“Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society”
(Einstein, 156; see also p. 62). Einstein seems to match particularly well with Heidegger (see 3.3).
Accepting this link between physics, metaphysics, and ethical philosophy in a given era, the question
which remains is whether nihilism, anarchism, or deconstructionism—or perhaps this dissertation—are
necessarily the companion ethics to quantum theory. Perhaps it can be said that quantum mechanics,
unlike Einstein’s relativity, once and for all makes humanism impossible, and is the final defense of the
arbitrary god—the randomly behaving particle being the ultimate wink of His eye.