Einstein’s worldview – Part 5
So much for trying to get a glimpse of the mind of Einstein as scientist. But at this point, for anyone who has studied this man’s work and life in detail, a new thought urges itself forward. As in his science, Einstein also lived under the compulsion to unify – in his politics, in his social ideals, even in his everyday behavior. He abhorred all nationalisms, and called himself, even while in Berlin during World War I, a European. Later he supported the One World movement, dreamed of a unified supernational form of government, helped to initiate the international Pugwash movement of scientists during the Cold War, and was as ready to befriend visiting high school students as the Queen of the Belgians. His instinctive penchant for democracy and dislike of hierarchy and class differences must have cost him greatly in the early days, as when he addressed his chief professor at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute, on whose recommendation his entrance to any academic career would depend, not by any title, but simply as “Herr Weber.” And at the other end of the spectrum, in his essay on ethics, Einstein cited Moses, Jesus, and Buddha as equally valid prophets.
No boundaries, no barriers; none in life, as there are none in nature. Einstein’s life and his work were so mutually resonant that we recognize both to have been carried on together in the service of one grand project – the fusion into one coherency.
There were also no boundaries or barriers between Einstein’s scientific and religious feelings. After having passed from the youthful first, religious paradise into his second, immensely productive scientific one, he found in his middle years a fusion of those two motivations – his Third Paradise.
We had a hint of this development in his remark in 1918, where he observed the parallel states of feeling of the scientist and of the “religious person.” Other hints come from the countless, wellknown quotations in which Einstein referred to God – doing it so often that Niels Bohr had to chide him. Karl Popper remarked that in conversations with Einstein, “I learned nothing . . . . he tended to express things in theological terms, and this was often the only way to argue with him. I found it finally quite uninteresting.”
But two other reports may point to the more profound layer of Einstein’s deepest convictions. One is his remark to one of his assistants, Ernst Straus: “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.” The second is Einstein’s reply to a curious telegram.
In 1929, Boston’s Cardinal O’Connell branded Einstein’s theory of relativity as “befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and His Creation,” and as implying “the ghastly apparition of atheism.” In alarm, New York’s Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words.” In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” The rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist, and further declared that “Einstein’s theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism.” Einstein wisely remained silent on that point.
The good rabbi might have had in mind the writings of the Religion of Science movement, which had flourished in Germany under the distinguished auspices of Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Ostwald, and their circle (the Monistenbund), and also in America, chiefly in Paul Carus’s books and journals, such as The Open Court, which carried the words “Devoted to the Religion of Science” on its masthead.