Einstein on Einstein

Autobiographical and Scientific Reflections

Hanoch Gutfreund, Jürgen Renn

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691200118
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia della scienza

New perspectives on the iconic physicist's scientific and philosophical formation At the end of World War II, Albert Einstein was invited to write his intellectual autobiography for the Library of Living Philosophers. The resulting book was his uniquely personal Autobiographical Notes, a classic work in the history of science that explains the development of his ideas with unmatched warmth and clarity. Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn introduce Einstein's scientific reflections to today's readers, tracing his intellectual formation from childhood to old age and offering a compelling portrait of the making of a philosopher-scientist. Einstein on Einstein features the full English text of Autobiographical Notes along with incisive essays that place Einstein's reflections in the context of the different stages of his scientific life. Gutfreund and Renn draw on Einstein's writings, personal correspondence, and critical writings by Einstein's contemporaries to provide new perspectives on his greatest discoveries. Also included are Einstein's responses to his critics, which shed additional light on his scientific and philosophical worldview. Gutfreund and Renn quote extensively from Einstein's initial, unpublished attempts to formulate his response, and also look at another brief autobiographical text by Einstein, written a few weeks before his death, which is published here for the first time in English.Complete with evocative drawings by artist Laurent Taudin, Einstein on Einstein illuminates the iconic physicist's journey to general relativity while situating his revolutionary ideas alongside other astonishing scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

PART II

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES COMMENTARIES

1

THE QUEST FOR A UNIFIED WORLDVIEW

Does the product of such a modest effort [of the theoretical physicist] deserve to be called by the proud name of a theory of the universe? In my belief the name is justified; for the general laws on which the structure of theoretical physics is based claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon whatsoever.… The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.

—Einstein, “Motives for Research,” an address delivered on Planck’s sixtieth birthday, 26 April 1918)¹

The quest for a unified world picture was extensively discussed in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Specifically, Max Planck and Ernst Mach, later joined by Max von Laue, published essays bitterly debating the issue of the “Unity of the Physical World Picture.” In 1912, thirty-four scholars signed a manifesto (Aufruf) published in the leading physics journal, Physikalische Zeitschrift, on behalf of the Society for Positivistic Philosophy, calling for the development of “a comprehensive Weltanschauung,” and thereby advancing toward “a noncontradictory total conception [Gesamtauffassung].”² Among the signatories were Ernst Mach, David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Sigmund Freud. This was the first public statement signed by Einstein, and he took this challenge more seriously than the other signatories. For him, the search for a unified worldview became a constant, lifelong commitment reflecting a deep intellectual and psychological necessity.

In an address delivered in 1918 in celebration of Max Planck’s sixtieth birthday, Einstein describes in poetic language what drives totally committed and persevering scientists in their work.³ He asks who will remain if those who do science “out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power” or for “purely utilitarian purposes” would be expelled from the temple of science by the guardian angel. What brought the others to the temple of science is a “finely tempered nature [that] longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.” Among them are the theoretical physicists whose supreme task is “to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.” This demands a persevering commitment, and what it requires to undertake such work is “akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.” Einstein addressed these words to Planck, but they apply even more so to himself. He had undertaken a lifelong journey in search of a simple, unified worldview and was guided by the belief that “[t]he aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension, as complete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations. (Seeking, as far as possible, logical unity in the world picture, i.e., paucity in logical elements.)”⁴

The Autobiographical Notes, more than any other text that Einstein wrote, attest to his “escape from the personal” in search of the ultimate picture of the physical world. The forty-five pages of this text are presented as a flowing sequence of concepts, ideas, and dilemmas, not divided into chapters or sections. They are written in a telegraphic, occasionally witty and simplified style. The discussion of different topics is highly interwoven, but there is an underlying timeline. Einstein came into the world of physics as a student at the time when the mechanical worldview was losing ground to the rising electromagnetic one. As a young scientist, he contributed to clarifying all the issues and puzzles that were on the agenda of physics in those days and started two revolutions—the quantum theory and the theory of relativity. He believed that the final comprehensive theory of physical reality would be based on the field concept of general relativity. He devoted the last ten years of his life, isolated from the rest of the physics community, to a despairing effort, fluctuating between optimism and pessimism, to find such a worldview. He did not achieve this goal but believed that this would be the future task of physics. The Autobiographical Notes show how his life effort led him to this belief. Actually, it puts all the weight of a life’s effort behind this goal, which amounted to nothing less than the creation of a comprehensive scientific worldview.

Our commentary essays are not intended to replace Einstein’s text. The topics to which we devote separate chapters are highly interwoven in Einstein’s narrative, sometimes beginning abruptly in the course of discussion, without even starting a new paragraph. We attempt to guide the reader through the convoluted path of the evolution of his ideas and to show how it led to his expectations toward the end of his life.

Einstein once warned us: “If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don’t listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds.”⁵ Reading the Notes, we do not have to rely only on his words. The text amply illustrates what he actually did. And where it does not, or deviates from the actual events, we complement his autobiographical reminiscences of the different chapters in his scientific life with his essays and correspondence from the time of their appearance and interpret any discrepancies that occur.

The Autobiographical Notes focuses on Einstein’s scientific world picture, but his ideas, opinions, and actions in science and outside of science are part of a more general worldview, which he himself attempted to present in several collections of articles, letters, and addresses, which he chose and compiled. We can find a concise summary of his general worldview in a three-page essay, “The World as I See It,” from 1931—a collection of statements and reflections on the nature of the human being, the meaning and purpose of life, the preferred social order, and also on science, art, and religion.⁶ It can be summarized as follows.

Einstein’s political ideal is democracy. He strongly believes that an autocratic system of oppression soon degenerates and that dictators, even the most benevolent ones, are always succeeded by scoundrels. This is why he passionately opposes such political systems as he sees in Russia and Italy. On the other hand, he values the German political system at that time (the Weimar Republic) for its democratic constitution and the extensive provision that it makes for the individual in case of illness and need. Einstein regards class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort, based on force. He abhors the military system. He is committed passionately to social justice and social responsibility. Ideals of kindness, beauty, and truth give him courage to face life cheerfully. He believes that a simple, unassuming life is physically and mentally good for everybody, and he feels contempt for luxury, possessions, and external success as the goals of human efforts. Life would seem empty without the quest for the eternally unattainable in art and science. The most beautiful experience is the mystery we sense facing art and science. It is this experience that Einstein equates with true religiosity, contrary to the notion of religion based on the concept of an anthropomorphic God who rewards and punishes his creatures. Einstein does not believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense. People act under external compulsion and also under inner deterministic necessity; thus, free will is an illusion. He quotes Schopenhauer: “A man can do what he wants, but cannot want what he wants.”⁷

These are the ideas and principles that guided Einstein throughout his whole life.

NOTES

1. 1. CPAE vol. 7, Doc. 7, p. 44.
2. 2. For a discussion of this episode in the history of science, see “The Unified Weltbild as Supreme Task,” in Gerald Holton, Einstein, History, and Other Passions (Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press, 1995), 37–39. For more on the manifesto, see Gerald Holton, “Ernst Mach and the Fortunes of Positivism in America,” Isis 83, no. 1(1992): 27–60, 37–39.
3. 3. Einstein, “Motives for Research,” CPAE vol. 7, Doc. 7.
4. 4. Einstein, “Physics and Reality,” reprinted in Ideas and Opinions: Based on “Mein Weltbild,” ed. Carl Seelig (New York: Bonanza Books, 1954), 290–323, here 293.
5. 5. Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics, The Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered at Oxford, June 10, 1933; reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, ed. Seelig, 270–276, here 270.
6. 6. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions, ed. Seelig, 8–11.
7. 7. Cited in Ideas and Opinions, ed. Seelig, 8.

2

“STRIVING FOR A CONCEPTUAL GRASP OF THINGS”

In a man of my type, the turning point of the development lies in the fact that gradually the major interest disengages itself to a far-reaching degree from the momentary and the merely personal and turns toward the striving for a conceptual grasp of things.

—Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, p. 7 [p. 158]¹

At the beginning of Einstein’s Autobiographical Notes, the reader encounters Einstein as a living philosopher as he sits down, in a particular moment of his life, to reflect about himself, allowing the reader to look over his shoulder. The text thus makes it immediately evident without further explanation that such reflections are the essence of this life but also that the man who has dedicated his own life to the task of thinking is nevertheless ready to share this experience with his readers.

Einstein then makes this intention explicit, admitting that he needed to be convinced to write his autobiographical notes by the series editor, Paul Schilpp, but emphasizing that doing so complies with his own convictions. Designating his notes as his “obituary” marks a distance from what he writes, indicating that what he offers is a simplified and perhaps embellished picture, in any case a snapshot of a life in flux, a recurrent theme in the sequel of the text. He does not refer to his notes in autobiographical terms. Several years earlier he wrote: “Autobiographies mostly arise out of narcissism or negative feelings toward others.”²

Einstein’s Autobiographical Notes makes hardly any direct references to concrete biographical events. The only names he mentions are those of scientists. He does not mention places, rendering this text highly non-geographic. Therefore, the few passages in which he does report on his life beyond the development of his scientific ideas deserve all the more attention. What immediately springs to notice is that all of them are way stations on his path to an intellectual life and all of them are from his childhood days. As Einstein himself makes explicit, the watershed in his development, the development of a man of his type, was a gradual disengagement of his interest from “the momentary and the merely personal” and a turning toward “the striving for a conceptual grasp of things” (Notes, p. 7 [p. 158]). But how did this dis...