Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: March 15, 2023 03:17PM
I appreciate your participation. In honor of Einstein's birthday, and also to encourage you to 'stay tuned' in the face of opposition, I will add the following additional quotes for those wishing to understand Einstein's deepest feelings of the transcendent:
"One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what *is*, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the *goal* of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration towards that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence."
(Einstein, Out of My Later Years (1956) p. 11)
"Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions. In this way imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts. . . .
Yet, the process which I have indicated plays a very important part also in ordinary life. Indeed there is no doubt that to this process -- which one may describe as a spiritualizing of the emotions and of thought -- that to it man owes the most subtle and refined pleasures of which he is capable; the pleasure in the beauty of artistic creation and of logical trains of thought."
(Ibid. at 13-14)
"One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what *is*, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the *goal* of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration towards that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence."
(Ibid. p. 20)
COMMENT: In all fairness, Einstein also had his 'materialist' moments. His views when taken as a whole represent a classic example of the tension between materialist science, on the one hand, and human nature, human values, and the transcendent, rational, order of the universe itself, on the other hand. Unlike the vast majority of theoretical scientists today, he openly acknowledged this transcendence many times, and was clearly perplexed by this mystery.
Since it is his birthday, I will add a couple of further comments: Although it is true that Einstein was not to be admired as a 'family man,' he did not "abandon his children," as has been alleged in this thread. He was distant by nature, and generally uninvolved, but not disinterested. His first wife, Mileva received, as previously promised, his Nobel prize money, significant at the time, to assist in raising their children, and he kept in touch with his sons throughout their lives, including Eduardo, who suffered from severe mental health issues and was eventually institutionalized. Both of his sons were named in his will.
Moreover, Einstein's moral compass in political matters was not "junior-high level" or otherwise uninformed, as has also been alleged. He stood firm against the rise of Hitler and Nazism, in both word and deed, for example. He also was active in warnings about the atomic bomb. His embracement of Zionism might be controversial now, but at the time was consistent with his heritage and current events. He was imperfect, of course, but had no extreme moral flaws, as viewed by those who knew him best.