Einstein (2 page)

In 1912 I became Einstein’s successor as professor of theoretical physics at the University of Prague; and in 1938, when I came to the United States, I again met Einstein, who had already been here for five years. I conceived the idea of taking advantage of this physical proximity to prepare an account of his life and work. When I told Einstein about this plan he said:
“How strange that you are following in my footsteps a second time!”

Before we arrived in the United States my wife often told me that I had now written so many books and papers palatable only to a small number of specialists that for a change it would be good for me to write a book more people could enjoy. As a matter of fact, I have frequently regretted the wide gap yawning between the books written for specialists in science and those for the large community of educated men and women. I had been looking for an occasion to make a contribution toward bridging this gap. I longed to write a book that could help make understandable the work done by contemporary scientists and to do so by providing more insight into the psychological and cultural background of scientific research than regular scientific books, even of the popular brand, can offer.

All these circumstances encouraged me to write this book. Many specialists have tried to dissuade me, pointing out that I would have only a choice of two evils. Either I would write to be understood by the public at large and the book would become trivial and be criticized by the scientists; or I would write it to please the specialists, but then it would be incomprehensible to others.

Such arguments did not deter me, because I did not believe there was such a fundamental difference between layman and specialist. Every specialist becomes a layman as soon as he leaves his own very narrow field. This book deals with so many fields of human life and thought that no one can be a specialist in all of them. Consequently I believe that I may, with a clear conscience, write for the laity without appearing superficial to the specialist, because in reality the complete specialist does not exist.

By training and occupation I am a mathematician and physicist, not a writer. Through this occupation one develops an aversion to exaggerations of all kinds. One acquires enthusiasm only for what is directed toward the search for truth and its presentation in a comprehensible and polished form.

In so far as pure facts are concerned, I have made partial use of earlier biographies of Einstein. The portrayal of Einstein’s personality and of his position in our time, however, derives from my study of the writings of Einstein’s friends and enemies, and in large measure from personal conversations with Einstein himself.

The picture of Einstein as presented throughout this book is
the one I have derived from my own impressions. It is in no way Einstein’s autobiography. I describe Einstein just as a scientist would describe any other remarkable, rare, and mighty natural or historical phenomenon. Only thus can justice be done to a great man.

In a recent biography of one of the greatest physicists the statement occurs: “After he printed his new principles, the students on the college campus said as he passed by: there goes the man who has written a book that neither he nor anyone else understands.” This appears in a biography not of Einstein, but of Isaac Newton, who in our day has so often been contrasted as an example of lucidity with the “incomprehensible” Einstein.

A contemporary of Newton extolled him in a poem that culminated in the lines:

And in our day the following lines were added:

This characteristic of “incomprehensibility” played a large part in the popular Einstein legend. In New York an insurance agent whom I told of my intention to write this book, astounded, said: “I hope you won’t try to convince me that you can understand Einstein.” When I asked why he considered it impossible, he replied categorically: “We use the word ‘Einstein’ as equivalent to ‘incomprehensible.’ When we want to say something is incompŕehensible, we say ‘That is Einstein.’ That is why it is meaningless to say you understand Einstein.”

An alleged remark by Einstein to the effect that only twelve people in the world understand his theory has become widespread. The question must be raised whether one ever actually understands anything, and whether what is called incomprehensible does not depend on the demands that one makes. Anyone who wonders that great popularity should be combined with incomprehensibility must realize that both have an important characteristic in common: the quality of being unusual.

Whatever is unusual is incomprehensible, but at the same time it possesses the power of attraction. And in the popular mind this “unusual” quality has always been linked with Einstein.

One wintry day I arrived in Princeton. The streets were piled high with snow that was already beginning to melt. There were no busses or streetcars, and I wanted to get to the residence of a mathematician who lived at some distance from the road, at 270 Mercer Street. I inquired of a man who was shoveling snow where this house might be. The man looked up from his work and, with considerable astonishment, said: “270? That’s Einstein’s house.” As Einstein lives at 112 Mercer Street, I assured him that it was definitely not Einstein’s house. “Well,” he said, “we always call No. 270 Einstein’s house. If you don’t believe it, hop on my truck and take a look at the house.” I was happy to get any vehicle in that weather and so we rode down to No. 270.

It was a house with a flat roof in the style of modern European architecture, like that of the Bauhaus, and was actually quite different from the other houses on the street, which were all more or less colonial in style. The snow-shoveler said triumphantly: “Doesn’t this house look queer — very different from all its neighbors?” I could only answer: “But the house in which Einstein really lives, No. 112, looks exactly like the neighboring houses from the outside.”

Many people have no idea to what branch of human knowledge the theory of relativity actually belongs. During the twenties, in Prague, I visited one of those popular lectures on Einstein’s theory which were so common then. There I met a Catholic theologian with whom I was acquainted, who introduced me as a physicist to a Bishop who was present. “Oh,” said the Bishop, quite amazed, “are the physicists also interested in Einstein’s theory?” Later we shall see that this question was indeed strange, and yet not as inappropriate as appears at first glance.

The public at large has always considered Einstein “incomprehensible.” A somewhat closer examination of popular conceptions of Einstein’s theories, however, reveals that there was something that people believed they understood. Obviously,
anything completely incomprehensible cannot be admired. Generally, however, this nucleus of “comprehensibility” is found to be an enormous triviality. During the twenties I once arrived in a small town in Bohemia inhabited by the Sudeten Germans who were later to acquire such prominence. I arrived at the inn in the evening and found the guests smoking their pipes and drinking beer. When they learned that I was a physicist from Prague, one of them remarked he had heard that I occupied myself with Einstein’s theory. He said to me: “These Einsteinian theories are not new in our town. They were known here long before Einstein. For twenty years our municipal doctor used to come to this inn, light his pipe, and take his first drink of beer with the words: ‘All is relative.’ Einstein did not say more.”

In New York I once heard a passenger ask a bus conductor how far it was to Washington Square. The conductor replied emphatically and with some pride: “According to Einstein, ‘far’ is a relative idea. It depends on how much of a hurry you are in.”

On another occasion I listened to a lecture by a well-known popularizer of Einstein’s theory. He illustrated everything with slides. One picture showed a student in a classroom listening to the professor’s boring lecture. The student looked at the clock and sighed: “This is going to go on for a long time yet. Ten more minutes — an eternity.” The next picture showed the same student on a bench in the park talking with a beautiful girl. “I can stay only ten minutes longer,” says the girl; and the student sighs: “Ten minutes — it will pass like a flash.”

It was in 1927, however, that I had my most remarkable experience of this kind. It is of greater interest because it enables us to learn something about the role of Einstein’s theories in politics. At that time I happened to be traveling by train from Moscow to Leningrad. I entered into conversation with a fellow traveler, who turned out to be a professor of political philosophy. Having heard vaguely that the Einstein theory of relativity, which was already often opposed in Germany as “Bolshevism in physics,” had been characterized by a number of Soviet scientists as “bourgeois” and “reactionary,” and as the strangest rumors circulated about conditions in Russia, I did not know whether this was true. Consequently, I welcomed my chance meeting with this traveling companion and I conversed with him on various problems of political and scientific philosophy, so far as my knowledge of Russian permitted. Finally, half in fun, I said: “I would be grateful if you could answer a question
for me. I cannot understand how Einstein’s theory of relativity is decried in some countries as ‘bolshevistic,’ and the same theory is opposed in Russia as ‘antibolshevistic.’ ”

My companion reflected for a moment and then replied categorically: “In the capitalist countries the relativity theory maintains that the capitalistic economic system is only ‘relatively right.’ On the other hand, in Soviet Russia Einstein’s adherents claim that the Communist system is only ‘relatively right.’ As a result the relativists are quite rightly condemned everywhere.”

Many people have sensed the greatness of Einstein’s theories; but men also want to have a reason for the homage that they give. Frequently it is difficult to attain an intellectual understanding of some great achievement, and yet one wants to explain why it is great. As a result, instead of indicating the actual reason for the greatness of the achievement, some superficial, trivial reason is given. Naturally this is not the real reason for the greatness of a man like Einstein.

Despite the superficiality of the reasons given, the widespread admiration for Einstein’s theory can be understood only by considering Einstein’s position in history. Einstein’s theories appeared at an important turning-point in human thought on the universe. People looked with amazement on the revolution occurring before their eyes, and felt that Einstein’s theory was a particularly characteristic aspect of this revolution — its nucleus, so to say.

Around 1900 it became continually clearer that even in inanimate matter chemical and physical processes did not occur in accordance with the laws that were valid for a machine, if one understands the word “machine” in the sense in which it is used by the engineer. Explanation of nature in terms of a mechanical analogy, however, had been a characteristic element in the emancipation of the human mind from the bonds of the Middle Ages. In consequence, the collapse of the “mechanical theory of the world” was often interpreted as a failure of this emancipation. It became an argument for a return to the Middle Ages in all aspects of life. More and more people began to doubt whether the progress prophesied by liberalism on the basis of
this mechanical science of the nineteenth century would ever be capable of eliminating completely, or even of alleviating substantially, the material and spiritual troubles of mankind. As a result, this feeling of “bankruptcy” in nineteenth-century science went hand in hand with a similar attitude toward liberalism.

Before and after 1900 there appeared characteristic intellectual movements opposed to “materialism” and “liberalism.” On the one hand, there was an outcry for a return to the organismic philosophy of the Middle Ages, a trend that in its political form later led to fascism. On the other hand, attempts were made to develop dynamic and organismic forms of materialism, thus giving rise to the various forms of Marxian socialism.

All these philosophical and political groups appealed to the revolution in science for their intellectual basis, and thus in greater or lesser degree to the work and the person of Einstein. Thus, from the standpoint of the history of ideas, he was linked to the roots of fascism and of Marxism. For the same reasons Einstein is linked with those tendencies of the twentieth century which have operated toward a revival of religion, in opposition to the “materialistic” and “atheistic” convictions of eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century science, which were based primarily on the physical science of these periods. Any lessening in the prestige of this science meant a greater prestige for those tendencies which seemed to be directed toward a “new order” in the world.

Einstein is of Jewish descent. At many turning-points in history the Jews have played the part of a scapegoat, so that the fate of this people reveals, as with a magnifying glass, much about the life and the problems of a period. For this ancient people juts into our own time like a rock from some primordial age, and because of its stubborn maintenance of ancient traditions has repeatedly aroused the antagonism of other peoples. With amazement and often with surprise the world sees this ancient stock, from which Jesus had once sprung and which was believed to be dead, producing again and again prophetic types. Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud will perhaps be regarded as false prophets, but no one can deny that they repeatedly agitated and uncovered innermost and sensitive aspects of human nature, thus offending and vexing many men.

In some sense Einstein, too, belongs with these men. H. G. Wells very trenchantly described the characteristic element of his mind as “subtle simplicity.” And this “subtle simplicity” has become an essential element of the mind of the twentieth century.
The principles underlying Einstein’s theories on the physical universe are of an uncanny simplicity, but from them derives a profusion of revolutionary consequences.