Albert Einstein, Mary Baker Eddy...metaphysics

 

"On Albert Einstein’s Interest In The Metaphysics Of Mary Baker Eddy"

by

William S. Cooper

University of California, Berkeley

        In the voluminous literature on Einstein, even his religious sentiments have not escaped scrutiny.  It is known that in his youth he received Jewish training at home and Roman Catholic teaching at school, that he respected the medieval theologian Maimonides, that he believed in an impersonal God which he compared to the God of Spinoza, that he admired the Society of Friends, and that he said he never prayed in his life.  These and other aspects of his personal theology are touched upon in many sources, perhaps most exhaustively in Max Jammer’s book Einstein and Religion.[1]

        An intriguing facet of his religious outlook--one that seems to have been generally overlooked in the scholarly literature--is his apparent interest in the metaphysical system of the New England religious leader Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science movement.  My purpose in this note is to gather together some of the evidence that suggests this interest.

INDICATIONS OF HIS INTEREST

        Late in his life Einstein attended the Wednesday noonday meeting of a Christian Science church in New York City.  After the service he was greeted by George Nay, a German-speaking editor and lecturer on Christian Science.  Nay had heard of earlier visits to the church by Einstein and had been hoping to encounter him.  During their conversation Einstein said, among other things, “Do you people realize what a wonderful thing you have?”  The encounter is described by Robert Peel, author of a well known three-volume biography of Eddy, who states that he heard it directly from Nay.[2]  It is also recorded in the church archives in Boston in the form of a brief description of the encounter signed by Nay.  The conversation was witnessed by a party still living who is able to fix the date as April 28, 1954.[3]

        The church in question is Fifth Church, near Grand Central Station.  Einstein is reported to have attended the meetings of this church repeatedly, including at least some visits prior to 1952.  Church members were able to point out the seat in which he habitually sat on those occasions.[4]  He was also seen in attendance at Wednesday evening meetings of the Christian Science church in Princeton, his town of residence at the time.[5]

        He also visited Christian Science reading rooms.  Mary Spaulding, wife of the noted violinist Alfred Spaulding, was serving as attendant at the reading room on Madison Avenue near 43rd St. during one of these visits.  She recorded some complimentary remarks that he made to her about Science and Health, Eddy’s major work, including the comment  “. . . to think that a woman knew this over eighty years ago”.[6]   Spaulding’s memory could have been selective when she wrote down what he had said, but there is no reason to suppose she fabricated the entire incident.  He is reported to have visited another New York City reading room as well.[7]  In addition he made repeated use of the reading room in Princeton.  An informant relates that a librarian in the Princeton reading room told her that Dr. Einstein was one of their most frequent visitors, and that he would often spend an hour or more reading Science and Health.  In that case too, generous remarks made by him about that work were recorded by the attendant and are still available.[8]

        An artist who lived in Princeton in the late forties and early fifties recalls seeing Einstein in the Princeton reading room. She writes:[9]

On one occasion, when I was in the Reading Room and Professor Einstein was studying there, we both happened to leave at the same time.  He greeted me politely and then went over to get his overcoat.  He then walked over to the attendant, took out his pipe from the pocket and said to her, “If it wasn’t for this pipe, I would join your church.”  He smiled and walked out.

(Christian Scientists abstain from the use of tobacco.)  Caution is called for concerning this remark of Einstein’s.  It could have been intended playfully.  Also, it has to be weighed against others such as the one he made later to the Canadian astronomer A. V. Douglas: “If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker”.[10]   But however the remark about the pipe is construed, it is a clearly recollected instance of his use of a Christian Science reading room.

        John Arthur Arnold, a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch and other newspapers and later a ghost writer for Washington politicians, helped Einstein perfect the English in some of his speeches after the war.  Arnold had for personal reasons become bitter about Christian Science and had authored a pamphlet attacking organized religion in general and Christian Science in particular.  On one occasion while visiting Einstein he showed him this pamphlet.  Einstein responded that the pamphlet was most unfair and that he had a great deal of respect for Christian Science.  This surprised Arnold, who had assumed Einstein knew little or nothing about the religion.[11]

        In his biography of Eddy,  Peel characterized Einstein’s interest in Christian Science as “slight but recurrent.”[12]  Unfortunately Peel does not explain his reasons for thinking the interest to be slight.   Peel states that Einstein was introduced to Eddy’s ideas “apparently for the first time” after World War II by the famous Austrian stage and screen actress Elisabeth Bergner.  However, there are indications that Einstein’s familiarity with the  subject predated that meeting.  Paul S. Seeley related in a public lecture that “a close family friend of Mrs. Seeley and myself” (Bergner) who had known Einstein well in Europe became interested in Eddy’s ideas.  On visiting America near the end of the war she made an appointment to see Einstein at Princeton, curious to ascertain his attitude toward her new religious conviction.  She laid before him her copy of Eddy’s book Science and Health and asked in effect, “How about it?”  He immediately recognized the book and impetuously replied “Blessed art thou!”.  If accurate this account implies prior knowledge and a positive assessment.[13]    As a further clue to the timing, one report would place the beginnings of his interest as far back as the early 1930’s.[14]

        A more consequential point of early contact concerns Einstein’s son, Hans Albert, and his family.  They lived in Greenville, South Carolina, from 1938 to 1943.  According to local newspaper accounts, the senior Einstein was a frequent visitor to the town during that period.  Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Albert Einstein, writes

    . . . Hans Albert became, under the influence of his wife, a Christian Scientist.  The rejection of medical care, as sometimes entailed by that faith, had tragic results.  A few months after their arrival their 6-year old son Klaus contracted diptheria and died.  He was buried at a tiny new cemetery in Greenville. [15]

How this tragedy affected Einstein’s religious views we can only guess, except that the occasion would surely have provided both motive and opportunity for his finding out more about the faith in question from his family.  According to Isaacson, “[Einstein’s] relationship with his son became increasingly secure and even, at times, affectionate.”  Later Hans Albert became a respected professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

        Because so much time has gone by since Einstein was with us, care is needed in separating fact from legend.  In an effort to screen out the purely legendary, all evidence mentioned here has been restricted to that of eyewitnesses or parties who received their information directly from an eyewitness.  Caution is needed in dealing with recollections that are decades old.  Nevertheless it can be said that the clues that do survive, taken collectively, point to the likelihood that Einstein had more than a casual or passing curiosity about Eddy’s metaphysics.

HIS OBJECTIONS TO RELIGION

        So far as I have been able to discover, Einstein never commented in writing on Eddy’s metaphysics, and in conversation spoke about it only in generalities.[16]   That is unfortunate, for one is left wondering just what it was about her ideas that he found worthy of contemplation.  Eddy wrote much about the illusory nature of matter.   Did he see some deep connection between her ideas and his advanced physical theories?  Here the historical traces fail us.  However, it is possible to surmise at least that her system overcame some of his more basic objections to conventional religion.

        Einstein had his criticisms of traditional religious beliefs and did not hesitate to articulate them.  So when it is suggested that he might have had a sympathetic interest in a particular system of religious thought, the question naturally arises as to how he could possibly take it seriously in the light of his general religious objections.  In the case of Christian Science however the answer is simple enough.  That particular religious system is relatively free of the particular dogmas he explicitly rejected.

        Consider for instance the question of God’s existence.  Einstein never denied the existence of a deity and always protested against being regarded as an atheist.[17]   However, he did deny vigorously the existence of a personal God.  He said “I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly”.[18]   Again, he said “The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.”[19]   Though castigated for it by religionists of both Jewish and Christian persuasions, he steadfastly maintained this position.  He went so far as to add “The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God . . .”.[20]

        In Eddy’s metaphysics God is defined in terms of abstract synonyms including ‘Truth’, ‘Mind’, and ‘Principle’.[21]   None of the synonyms is suggestive of a personal God in the sense of a deity with the characteristics of a human personality.  Moreover there are passages in her writings which explicitly reject any notion of a personal, anthropomorphic God.  She writes,  “Mortals believe in a finite personal God; while God is infinite Love, which must be unlimited”[22] ; “A personal God is based on finite premises, where thought begins wrongly to apprehend the infinite . . .”[23] ;  “We must learn that God is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain”.[24]  Evidently Eddy was as averse as Einstein to a naive personification of the Deity.

       Einstein wrote, “I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures . . . ”.[25]   On another occasion he observed wryly, “I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of his children for their numerous stupidities, for which he himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only his nonexistence could excuse him.”.[26]  Eddy too, decades earlier, had found the idea of a punitive God incredible.  She wrote “In common justice, we must admit that God will not punish man for doing what He created man capable of doing, and knew from the outset that man would do.”[27]  And in similar vein, “It would be contrary to our highest ideas of God to suppose Him capable of first arranging law and causation so as to bring about certain evil results, and then punishing the helpless victims of His volition for doing what they could not avoid doing”.[28]   Einstein would surely have concurred.

        Einstein did not believe in petitionary prayer.  He rejected it as a relic of the primitive belief in a personal God.  He said of the traditional concept of God that “Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes”.[29]    In a letter to Leo Szilard he made the arresting comment, “So long as you pray to God and ask him for some benefit, you are not a religious man”.[30]   His position is not far from Eddy’s when she wrote “The mere habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circumscribed,--an error which impedes spiritual growth”.[31]   Though she placed great emphasis on prayer, Eddy held that its purpose is to improve one’s own thinking, not to change the divine Mind:  “God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already done.  . . .   Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.  . . .  He who is immutably right will do right without being reminded of His province”.[32]  

HIS PHILOSOPHICAL LEANINGS

        Einstein had his favorite philosophers.    Skeptics might wonder how a mind sophisticated enough to appreciate these famous thinkers could also find merit in Eddy’s writings.  But on comparing the actual positions of the writers in question, certain parallels emerge.

        Einstein expressed respect for Moses Maimonides, a leading medieval Jewish philosopher.  He praised him as “one of those few who exerted a crucial and fruitful influence on their contemporaries and thus on later generations as well”.[33]  Maimonides’ influential work Guide for the Perplexed, which was found among Einstein’s possessions, argues strongly and at length that God is incorporeal and incapable of being described in terms of ordinary material or human attributes.  Eddy was equally emphatic.  She writes, for instance, that “Christian Science strongly emphasizes the thought that God is not corporeal, but incorporeal . . .”.[34]   On a related topic, Maimonides attached much importance to the unity or indivisibility of the Deity, as did Eddy.[35]

        As a young man Einstein found time to attend a discussion group on Baruch Spinoza.  He read Spinoza’s works repeatedly and said more than once that his own ideas were close to those of Spinoza.[36]   While Eddy’s God is no carbon copy of Spinoza’s,[37]  there are some resemblances.  Both are incorporeal and impersonal.  Both are seen as undergirding the order and harmony of a lawful universe.  Both constitute a sole universal substance, one of Eddy’s defining phrases for God being in fact “all substance”.[38]    Both conceptions reject the dualism that would regard mind and matter as two real, distinct substances.

SUMMARY

        Lest the impression be left that Einstein and Eddy were in full agreement about everything, it should be added that at times Einstein expressed some notions that would be hard to reconcile with Eddy’s metaphysics.  For example, some interview material suggests that, at a younger age at least, he believed sensation to reside in matter, contrary to her teaching.[39]  His understanding of her writings could have been idiosyncratic, his agreement with them might have been only partial, and his generous comments about them in conversation have to be considered in the light of his natural politeness.    Nevertheless Eddy’s metaphysical system stands in general sympathy with his stated reservations about popular religious thought, concerns itself with the derivative character of matter, and shares some ground with some of his favorite philosophers.  At a minimum, we may conclude that for him it came closer than more traditional Judeo-Christian creeds to his expressed ideal of a ‘cosmic religion’.  To that extent at least his special interest in it is explainable, and future historians might well ponder its significance.
 Acknowledgements

 I am indebted to Prof. Max Jammer for searching the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem for relevant correspondence, to Robert Hough of Alameda, California for collecting pertinent press reports,  to Lee Johnson and Judith Huenneke for guidance to associated documents in the church archives, to Bill Sweet of Spindrift Research and Keith Simon for directing me to living witnesses, and to the witnesses themselves for their recollections.

NOTES

[1]  Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).  Prize for Outstanding Books in Theology and the Natural Sciences, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley, California.

[2]  Robert Peel, Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 28, 201 n. 16.

[3]  Date according to George Millar of 34 Esmond Rd, London, England (telephone interview July 2001).  Millar saw Einstein conversing with Nay and spoke with Nay immediately after their conversation.

[4] Marcyne Johnson of Tucson, Arizona, who attended the church in the period 1952-53, remembers being told at that time of frequent Wednesday visits by Einstein by at least two eyewitnesses who had vivid recollections of his attendance and where he sat (telephone interview, June 2001).  Also Rosemarie Bettinson of Bronx, N.Y., long-time clerk of the church, recalls being told by eyewitnesses of Einstein’s attendance (telephone interview, June 2001).

[5]  Virginia E. Bailey of Floral Park, N.Y., attests to having seen Einstein at Wednesday services in Princeton and in the Princeton reading room  (letter to Robert Hough, March 12, 2001).

[6]  David L. Keyston, The Healer: The Healing Work of Mary Baker Eddy, 2nd ed.  (Seattle, Wash.: Healing Unlimited, 1996), p. 189.

[7] Frederic Stoessel of Las Vegas, N. M. states that while living in New York City in about 1954 he saw Einstein chatting with the attendant of the reading room then on Central Park South, and immediately afterward confirmed with the attendant that it had indeed been Einstein (letter to Robert Hough September 1, 1999;  telephone interview August, 2001).

[8] Elizabeth Earl Jones, Reminiscences of Elizabeth Earl Jones,  c. 1986, excerpts quoted in Keyston, The Healer, p. 189.

[9] Quoted from Bailey letter (see note 5).

[10]  Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1971), p. 622.

[11]  As related by Arnold’s daughter Genevieve Arnold of Atlanta, Georgia (telephone interview, June 2001).

[12]  Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy:  The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 497 n. 22.

[13] Paul Stark Seeley, “Spiritual Forces Bring Mankind’s Liberation,” public lecture printed in The Christian Science Monitor, October 20, 1965.

[14]  Harold W. Stewart of Alameda, California states that his mother was a member of the Christian Science church in Pasadena, California in the 1930’s and 40’s.  She told him of visits Einstein was reported to have made to the church.  Since Einstein’s stays in Pasadena while at Cal Tech all fell in the time period 1930-1933, the church visits presumably took place in that period (interview, August 2001; also letter to Robert Hough, November 11, 1999 ).

[15]   Isaacson, W.  Einstein:  His Life and Universe,  New York, N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 2007, p.  444.

[16]  In this connection, Prof. Max Jammer informs me that in the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem there are essentially no documents indicative of Einstein’s attitude toward Eddy or his interest in Christian Science.

[17]  Jammer, Einstein and Religion,  149-151.

[18]  Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 43.

[19]  Einstein’s reply to Beatrice F., quoted in Jammer, Einstein, p. 121 .

[20]  Albert Einstein,  Out of my Later Years [essays] (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), p. 27.

[21] Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1913), p. 465.

[22]  Ibid., p. 312.

[23]  Eddy, The People’s Idea of God, 1909, reprinted in her Prose Works other than Science and Health (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1925), p. 3.

[24] Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, 1897, reprinted in Prose Works, p. 16.

[25]  F. Herneck, “Albert Einstein’s gesprochenes Glaubensbekenntnis”, Naturwissenschaften , 1966, 53 : 198.   Excerpt translated in Jammer, Einstein,  p. 72.

[26]  Alice Calaprice, The Expanded Quotable Einstein (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 201.

[27]  Eddy, Science and Health, p. 357.

[28]  Ibid., p. 230.

[29]  Einstein, Later Years, p. 26

[30]   Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 149.

[31]   Eddy, Science and Health,  p. 2

[32]   Ibid., p. 2.

[33]  A. Einstein, “Moses Maimonides”, talk delivered in 1935, in Essays in Humanism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950, 1985), p. 115.

[34]   Eddy, Science and Health, p. 116 (italics hers).

[35]   Ibid., pp. 132, 335, 336.

[36]  Jammer, Einstein and Religion, p. 144.

[37]  For Eddy’s statement of her differences with Spinoza see her No and Yes, 1887,  reprinted in Prose Works, p. 24.

[38]  Eddy, Science and Health, p. 587.

[39]   William Hermanns, Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man.  (Brookline Village, MA: Branden Press, 1983).

Callllllllll forrrrrrrrrr "meta-physician"...so called Johnny Roventini

Now we are entering the realm of philosophy and metaphysics.

"Will we ever… know what happened before the Big Bang?"

by

Matthew Francis

May 3rd, 2013

BBC NEWS

 If you think theories about the universe are mind-bending, rest assured that many scientists feel the same way. But the question isn't a philosophical one: it has potentially real, testable aspects.

In many ways, it's strange to us humans that the Universe should be the age it is. The Universe – by definition, everything that physically exists – should either be infinite in age, or somehow tied to the lifespan of the human species, as it does in many mythologies. However, thanks to studies on the rate the Universe is expanding, and applying this knowledge in reverse, we know its age. Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, all we can observe on Earth, in our solar system, other galaxies and everything in between expanded out rapidly from an initial point much smaller than an atom, which we call the Big Bang.

The Big Bang model is our best explanation for why the cosmos appears as it does. Nevertheless, it's not able to answer some of the more challenging questions, including what – if anything – came before it? Despite how it might sound, this question isn't a philosophical one: it has potentially real, testable aspects. But to understand any of the possible answers, we must first understand the question itself.

First of all, the language we use to describe what we know and don’t know can sometimes be muddy. For instance, the Universe may be defined as all that exists in a physical sense, but we can only observe part of that. Nobody sensible thinks the observable Universe is all there is, though. Galaxies in every direction seem similar to each other; there's no evident special direction in space, meaning that the Universe doesn't have an edge (or a centre). In other words, if we were to instantaneously relocate to a galaxy far, far away, we'd see a cosmos very similar to the one we observe from Earth, and it would have an effective radius of 46 billion light-years. We can't see beyond that radius, wherever we're located.

For many reasons, cosmologists think the early Universe underwent inflation: an incredibly rapid expansion right after the Big Bang. As the Universe expanded, it also cooled, so in the distant past, it was hotter, more dense, and opaque to all forms of light. When the cosmos became transparent, about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, it left behind a bath of photons, detectable today as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). As space observatories like COBE, WMAP and more recently Planck have shown, the CMB is remarkably smooth, but not quite uniform. Within this were tiny ripples that were stretched to enormous sizes during inflation, and in turn these became the seeds for large-scale objects like galaxies and galactic clusters we see today.

While inflation comes in many possible versions, the gist is that random fluctuations in temperature and density produced by the Big Bang were smoothed out by the rapid expansion, much like a wrinkly uninflated balloon grows into a smooth object when filled with air. Inflation happened so quickly that, in many versions, the Universe has disconnected regions – parallel universes – that might even have different sets of physical laws. Inflation would have produced a lot of gravitational waves – fluctuations in the structure of space and time – which in turn should leave their mark on the CMB. Gravitational waves in the very early Universe churned up space-time, creating an environment that twisted light emission.

Pocket universes

However, none of this really tells us what, if anything, came before the Big Bang. In many models for inflation, as in some of the older Big Bang theories, this is the only Universe that exists – or at the very least, the only Universe we can observe.

A partial exception to this is a model known as eternal inflation. In this scheme, the observable Universe is part of a “pocket universe”, a bubble in a larger froth of inflation that is ongoing. In our particular bubble, inflation began and ended, but in other pocket universes – unconnected (“parallel”) and thereby unobservable to our pocket universe – inflation might have had different properties. Eternal inflation effectively emptied the regions outside of bubbles of all matter; these would have no stars, galaxies, or other familiar hallmarks.

If eternal inflation is correct, then the Big Bang is the origin of our pocket universe, but not the beginning of the whole Universe, which may have begun much earlier. The evidence for multiverses will be indirect at best, even with confirmation of inflation from Planck or other observations. In other words, eternal inflation could answer the question of what preceded the Big Bang, but still leave the question of ultimate origin out of reach.

Trillion-year cycle

Many cosmologists regard inflation as being the worst model we have, except for all the alternatives. Inflation's generic properties are pretty nice, thanks to its usefulness in solving difficult problems in cosmology, but the specifics are slippery. What caused inflation? How did it begin, and when did it end? If eternal inflation is correct, how many pocket universes could there be with similar properties to our own? Was there a Bigger Bang that started the multiverse going? Finally, since we're scientists and not philosophers, how can we tell all of these options apart: can we test them?

There is one possible alternative to inflation, which bypasses these questions and, along the way, resolves what came before the Big Bang. In Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok’s cyclic universe model, the observable Universe resides in a higher-dimensional void. Coupled to our universe is a parallel shadow universe that we can’t directly observe, but is connected via gravity. The Big Bang was not the beginning, but a moment when the two “branes” (short for “membrane”) collided. The Universe in the cyclic model goes between periods when the branes are moving apart, accelerated expansion, and new Big Bangs when the branes re-collide. While each cycle would take about a trillion years to complete, the whole cosmos could be infinitely old, bypassing the philosophical problems with inflationary models.

The cyclic universe is not a popular model among working cosmologists, but at least it could be ruled out by experimental observations: if the gravitational-wave signature of inflation is found, then the cyclic model is dead. The cyclic model isn't complete: it doesn't explain how much dark energy there is in the Universe any more than standard cosmology does, for example. In other words, the cyclic model is not complete, so at present there's no physical evidence to distinguish it from inflationary models.

If you think all these options are fairly mind-bending, rest assured that professional scientists feel the same way. Since the observable Universe is currently accelerating with no sign of re-collapse even in the far future, why should there be a cosmos with a beginning but no similar ending? If inflation or the Big Bang erases information of what (if anything) came before, are we stuck debating over the number of angels dancing Gangnam Style on the head of a pin? Even if eternal inflation or the cyclic model is correct, it pushes the question of ultimate origin into the realm of untestability.

In another decade or century, the questions and the methods we use to answer these questions will most likely have evolved. But for now, it's unclear how we can possibly know what preceded the Big Bang.

"Gaia"--metaphysics?

Lisa Hunt

Is it philosophy or science--a warm, fuzzy metaphor: "It is not silly to think of the world as an organism. After all, every year it goes through phases of growth, flourishing, yielding its fruits, and then withering and dying." Is this simply a naive and primitive metaphysics?

"Gaia in the Light of Modern Science"

by

Michael Ruse

July 20th, 2009

The Chronicle of Higher Education

For many years, I taught an introductory philosophy class based on Plato's Republic. It is a wonderful work through which to bring students to some of the crucial issues that engage and divide human beings—the nature of knowledge, the desirability of democracy, the place of women in society, mathematics, and God. Above all, there is the Theory of Forms, extrasensory entities that are supposed to inform and determine the objects in this world of sensation and experience. They are Plato's answer to the challenge posed by two earlier thinkers: Heraclitus, who claimed that everything changes ("You cannot step into the same river twice."), and Parmenides, who claimed that nothing changes ("How could what is perish? How could it have come to be?"). The Forms are timeless and yet manifest themselves in this physical world of corruption and decay.

Others intent on the same ends as I was might have chosen different works by Plato, but I suspect that few if any would have seized on Timaeus, a rather odd dialogue (at least to us) in which Plato argues that the world is a giant organism fashioned by a God, the Demiurge. Today it's hard to imagine that in the early Middle Ages, until Thomas Aquinas and others discovered the attractions of Aristotle, Timaeus was the only known work of Plato. And very influential it was, too, as almost everyone in the early centuries of the last millennium agreed that the world was an organism of a kind. Hence, as with all organisms, it was appropriate to think of the world as having sensations and feelings, and also to ask questions about ends and purposes.

The coming of Aristotle did not stop that mode of thought—indeed, he emphasized that such end-directed thinking (what he spoke of as final-cause thinking) is an absolutely vital tool for understanding the world around us. As Carolyn Merchant, a professor of environmental history at the University of California at Berkeley, showed in The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (Harper & Row, 1980), even at the beginning of the 16th century, on the verge of great changes in our understanding of the world, it was considered appropriate to give thanks when, in order to extract minerals, miners cut into the earth—cut quite literally into our mother. It was thought necessary to respect the earth for what she was and what she gave. Crass misuse of her bounties was sinful.

At the same time, one could ask questions about the world that were (as with organisms) couched in terms of ends. Just as we might ask about the purpose or function or end of the eye, so we might ask about the purpose or function or end of (let us say) rain. And answers were forthcoming: The eye exists for sight. Rain exists for the growth of crops.

It is not silly to think of the world as an organism. After all, every year it goes through phases of growth, flourishing, yielding its fruits, and then withering and dying. In their fascinating new biography, James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia (Princeton University Press), the science writers John and Mary Gribbin introduce us to a man who endorses this metaphor with much enthusiasm.

The British-born Jim Lovelock (as they call him) is someone with a deservedly high reputation as a scientist. Although trained as a chemist, for many years (thanks primarily to the demands of the Second World War and its aftermath) he worked on biological and medical questions, investigating such matters as the spread of the common cold, a problem which involves the physics and chemistry of small particles as much as anything strictly organic in itself. By the early 1970s, that research had earned him a Fellowship in the Royal Society of London. Around that time, however, Lovelock broke from conventional science, having become convinced that the earth is a living organism. To this hypothesis, drawing on a suggestion by his neighbor—the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding—Lovelock gave the name Gaia, referring to the Greek goddess of the earth.

Gaia has gone through various formations and definitions—in his less-than-enthusiastic book this year The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton University Press), Peter D. Ward, a professor of paleontology at the University of Washington, traces several variations. Unfortunately, Lovelock himself is not always terribly helpful about the precise nature and content of his own claims. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (Basic Books, 2008), is not the place to start looking for answers, since it seems to be little more than clippings from the floor of a long career. Better to go to some of the earlier works, perhaps the first full declaration, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford University Press), first published in 1979, although Lovelock had gone public with the idea in articles at least five years earlier.

Speaking of the new perspective on ourselves of looking at the planet from outer space, Lovelock writes:

We now see that the air, the ocean and the soil are much more than a mere environment for life; they are a part of life itself. Thus the air is to life just as is the fur to a cat or the nest for a bird. Not living but something made by living things to protect against an otherwise hostile world. For life on Earth the air is our protection against the cold depths and fierce radiations of space.

There is nothing unusual in the idea of life on Earth interacting with the air, sea and rocks, but it took a view from outside to glimpse the possibility that this combination might consist of a single giant living system and one with the capacity to keep the Earth always at a state most favorable for the life upon it.

Things are kept in balance because when something occurs to shift the natural order of things, then other things occur to compensate, bringing one back to the original state. Seizing on the fact that the earth's temperature remains pretty constant, despite the increase over the years of heat from the sun (25 percent, the Gribbins tell us, from the beginning of life on earth), Lovelock looked for, and found, the necessary feedback mechanisms. For instance, volcanoes produce carbon dioxide; as carbonic acid, it becomes part of the rock-weathering process and eventually ends up on the sea floor; in turn it is taken up by primitive organisms like algae; through evaporation it gets whipped up into the clouds, giving the earth cover from the sun; and so the earth cools; and on we go, cycle after cycle.

What we have here is a homeostatic system a notion that was popularized in the 1930s by the American physiologist Walter B. Cannon, although those with longer historical memories will find the idea remarkably reminiscent of the Victorian man of science Herbert Spencer's concept of dynamic equilibrium. The Gribbins claim Charles Darwin as a precursor to that kind of thinking, but I find their argument most unconvincing. Darwin was never into balances of nature and that sort of thing. He saw change as continuing and profound. To go back to our Greeks, whereas Gaia is Parmenidean, Darwinism is Heraclitean.

Of course, it is not only in that sense that Lovelock is out of tune with modern science. Picking up the story at the end of the Middle Ages, in the time span from Copernicus, at the beginning of the 16th century, to Newton, at the end of the 17th century, something major happened in what was then known as natural philosophy. The idea (the metaphor, if you like) of the world as an organism was increasingly rejected in favor of the idea or metaphor of the world as a machine. To cite the title of one of the greatest histories written about the period, by the Dutch historian E.J. Dijksterhuis in 1950, minds turned to The Mechanization of the World Picture.

Why did the new perspective triumph? Why did people want to drop all of that organiclike, end-directed thinking and focus instead on blind law, working with undeviating regularity? There is no great mystery here. It was not some violent repudiation of God. Copernicus was a minor cleric who died in good standing, and Newton, for all that he may privately have doubted the divinity of Christ, was an ardent—one might say obsessive—believer in a deity. The machine metaphor triumphed because it led to a science that more readily exhibited the values that scientists hold dear—Newtonian physics was more predictively fertile, more consistent, more unifying, more everything than Aristotelian physics. With the new physics you could explain and do things simply impossible with the old. A weapon maker could calculate the trajectory of a cannonball; a lens maker could work out the best kind of optical apparatus; a chemist could start to understand why certain combinations of elements work and others do not, saving valuable time and materials when making alloys.

The machine metaphor may have been regarded by the Aristotelians as akin to an Egyptian plague—there are those today who think likewise, especially the so-called "ecofeminists" who argue that we abuse and rape our dwelling place—but the current of thought did not sweep through overnight. At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant notoriously declared that there would never be a Newton of a blade of grass, meaning that a machine-based picture could never fully capture the organic world. But in the 19th century, Darwin, thanks to his mechanism of natural selection, showed how organisms are subject to unbroken, unbending laws. Richard Dawkins, who has a gift for these sorts of phrases, spoke of organisms as "survival machines." And then, as the 20th century drew to an end, many believed that cognitive scientists had finally extended the machine metaphor to the human brain and its thinking abilities. We were invited to think of brains as the hard drives behind our thoughts—computers made of meat, said the computer scientist Marvin L. Minsky.

There have long been attempts to resuscitate the claim that the world is an organism. The most ardent were those by the German Romantics at the beginning of the 19th century—known as the Nature Philosophers, or Naturphilosophen—who included the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the anatomist Lorenz Oken, and the greatest advocate of all, the philosopher F.W.J. von Schelling. But generally, although those people often did good science, however you judge it, such attempts came to naught. The organic metaphor did not work as well as the machine metaphor. Indeed, the enthusiasm of the Naturphilosophen, and more particularly of their modern-day successors, does show why it was as well that, before Lovelock took up the organic metaphor, his fellowship at the Royal Society was already in hand.

To say the least, initial reaction to the Gaia hypothesis was not overly enthusiastic. Or rather, in respects, initial reaction was even worse than that, because the theory was enthusiastically embraced by the wrong people—joss-stick-burning, Eastern-religion-embracing, herb-consuming (eaten and smoked), Birkenstock-wearing, now-aging hippies and New Agers. Respectable scientists shunned Gaia. The notable exception was the American biologist Lynn Margulis, a professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, author of a brilliant hypothesis about the hybrid nature of complex cells (eukaryotes) from simple cells (prokaryotes). She is the exception that proves the rule. Not only is she someone with her own well-merited reputation for going against the mainstream—initially her cell hypothesis was derided and denied—but her thinking is deeply holistic in an organic way, seeing parts coming together to make living wholes that function only as complete systems and not as blind mechanisms built out of disparate bits and pieces.

Although I don't think of Gaia as in any sense a religious hypothesis—neither Lovelock nor Margolis promotes that cause—I can see the attractions for someone who thinks that a good God designed this earth of ours. Lovelock was for a time close to Quakerism, and, although he has moved on, he certainly has the holistic reverence for creation that one finds in that religion: "that of God in every person."

In science, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), niceness is not enough. There were some telling hits on the Gaia hypothesis. Scourge of all things sloppy—especially those with the odor of the quasi-spiritual—Dawkins, in his 1982 book The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection, argued that organisms are produced by natural selection, which requires reproduction, variation, and a struggle for existence. There is no reason to think that the earth has been produced that way, hence no reason to think of it as an organism. To which Lovelock (who did, to his credit, take the criticism seriously) responded (in books like The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth, first published in 1988) that, on the one hand, he meant the organism talk in only a loose, metaphorical sense (which may have gotten him off the hook but made his claims rather less interesting), and on the other hand, for him the chief mark of life is homeostasis (which may have satisfied the physiologists and Spencerians but left the evolutionists and Darwinians a lot less than happy).

In major part, however, the objections to Gaia were more philosophical than scientific, echoing the earlier critics of Aristotelian thought, like Francis Bacon and Descartes. Thinking of the world as having ends, of volcanoes as having functions (spewing out carbon dioxide), goes against the spirit of modern science and is not very helpful. The argument that Gaia is unfalsifiable was also trotted out, starting with a letter published in Nature in 1990 from James W. Kirchner, an earth scientist at Berkeley, who has leveled this charge repeatedly. Again to his credit, Lovelock took his critics seriously. (Whatever you might say, this is a man who gives science the respect it deserves.) He came up with the "Daisyworld" model. Suppose you have a planet covered in flowers: black daisies that absorb the sun's rays but that like the cool, and white daisies that reflect the rays but that thrive in the heat. As the sun warms up, thanks to the black daisies, the planet gets warmer. Then the white daisies increase in number and reflect more rays back into space; the planet starts to cool. Eventually a kind of equilibrium is achieved. There is no strange teleology; no weird forces bringing the end about; all is mechanical. Yet there is homeostasis.

Critics have not been convinced. Ward, in The Medea Hypothesis, argues bluntly that our planet is not a Daisyworld. Drawing on his experience as a paleontologist, he says the history of the earth and its life suggests that there are violent fluctuations—especially mass-extinction episodes—and no evidence that the earth then returns to anything like equilibrium. Indeed, he argues (and that gives him his rather overly cute title, which refers to the character in the Euripides play who killed her children) that life is, in a sense, poisonous and carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. For instance, again and again microbes in the sea have produced vast quantities of carbon dioxide, leading to violent changes of temperature here on earth, a consequent lack of oxygen, and mass deaths. There is nothing particularly homeostatic about any of that, even though there may have been rebounds to eras of very different flora and fauna.

I was surprised not to find some discussion by Ward of the work of the late J. John Sepkoski Jr. A paleontologist with sophisticated computer skills, Sepkoski spent much of his career mapping the rise and fall of groups of organisms, suggesting that it was less the external environmental influences that led to, say, the rise of flowering plants, or angiosperms, and more the ecological dynamics caused by the inventive exhaustion of certain organic forms and the arising of different forms that could create and take advantage of new niches. (The point being that there is only so much you can do with four legs. You need a new adaptation, like wings, which now let you exploit the air.) In a sense, Sepkoski's work seems not to fit comfortably into either a simple homeostatic model or one of violent death and destruction. Although he was well attuned to the brutal episodes in life's history, Sepkoski saw organisms as the ultimate determinants of this history. All of that, at a minimum, suggests that the true, overall picture may be more complex than either Lovelock or Ward suggests.

Lovelock and his critics agree that we cannot just go on as we are going on. The world in which we live is changing in a dramatic fashion, warming at a frightening speed. That is true whether because we have upset Gaia and taken her beyond her abilities to regenerate naturally, or because a Medea effect has kicked in and we are on the way naturally to another crash of the earth's life forms. We must do something.

Ever the discomfiting maverick, Lovelock himself is scathing about many of the proposals to replace our dependence on fossil fuels. Windmills in particular make him scornful; even with nonstop gales, we can achieve but modest gains. For him it is nuclear power or nothing. James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia has a jolly picture of him and his wife, in white coveralls, touring a French nuclear station. Ward is more inclined toward orbiting sunshades that would cut down on the amount of sunlight hitting the planet. Positioned over the oceans, they would reduce the growth of gas-producing micro-organisms. All a bit gloomy for sailors, one would think.

My sense is that Gaia has made an important contribution to our thinking about the planet, if only by virtue of the fact that it makes us think seriously about such issues as global warming and pollution of the oceans. As a historian and philosopher of science, I find that both Lovelock's theory and those of his critics inspire me to go back to the foundations of science and consider the root metaphors of empirical inquiry and why we prefer one set of models and ideas over another. It is true that as Gaia has been tamed (by Lovelock himself) into a more respectable notion in the light of modern science, it has lost some of its original dramatic appeal. No doubt those earnest Californians seeking spiritual backing for their enthusiasms will find other outlets.

As a Darwinian and a Heraclitean (and an ex-Quaker shunning his childhood roots), I confess that I am uncomfortable with balance and equilibrium, those Parmenidean conjectures. Although books like Ward's The Medea Hypothesis—so obviously written for the trade market, so selective in the evidence they use to make their case —make me no less uneasy. Perhaps in the end, Plato had it right: We need both perspectives, Heraclitean and Parmenidean, to get the whole picture. At our peril, and at our children's peril, we ignore the messages of those seminal Greek thinkers.

James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia

by

John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin

ISBN-10: 0691137501
ISBN-13: 978-0691137506

Psilocybin...for that metaphysical experience

Psilocybin mushrooms

The Jolly Green Giant may want to explore the possibilities here...to enhance a metaphysical epistemology accessible to all at the local grocery store. The 60s are back and a positive force in the understanding of the universe. But the Schedule I drug may have many hurdles to jump.


physorg.com:

"Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist, researchers report"

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," says lead investigator Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor in the Johns Hopkins departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience.

In a related paper, also published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers offer recommendations for conducting this type of research.

The guidelines caution against giving hallucinogens to people at risk for psychosis or certain other serious mental disorders. Detailed guidance is also provided for preparing participants and providing psychological support during and after the hallucinogen experience. These "best practices" contribute both to safety and to the standardization called for in human research.

"With appropriately screened and prepared individuals, under supportive conditions and with adequate supervision, hallucinogens can be given with a level of safety that compares favorably with many human research and medical procedures," says that paper's lead author, Mathew W. Johnson, Ph.D., a psychopharmacologist and instructor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

The two reports follow a 2006 study published in another journal, Psychopharmacology, in which 60 percent of a group of 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives reported having a "full mystical experience" after taking psilocybin.

Psilocybin, a plant alkaloid, exerts its influence on some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in some cultures for hundreds of years or more for religious, divinatory and healing purposes.

Fourteen months later, Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study -- along with a specially designed set of follow up questions -- to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about the same proportion of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths says. "Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We're eager to move ahead with that research."

Griffiths also notes that, "while some of our subjects reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their day-long psilocybin sessions, none reported any lingering harmful effects, and we didn't observe any clinical evidence of harm."

The research team cautions that if hallucinogens are used in less well supervised settings, the possible fear or anxiety responses could lead to harmful behaviors.

Source: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Time to re-evaluate physics

I think, as I have said before, that it is time for a re-evaluation in physics...that mere mathematical expressions are insufficient as an epistemological sources without evidence...reverence for the scientific method...if not, then we move into the realm of metaphysics and philosophy.

The April 1st, 2008 issue of Discover ran this short comment:

"Has the Einstein Revolution Gone Too Far?"

Einstein ended science's devotion to experience; it may now be time to come back.

by

Richard Panek

April 1st, 2008

Discover

In the fall of 1919, Albert Einstein received an urgent telegram informing him that astronomers had observed evidence of the bending of light by the sun’s gravity, validating a key prediction of his general theory of relativity. He handed the cable to a student, who began congratulating him. "But I knew that the theory is correct," he interrupted. And what, she asked, if the observations had disagreed with his calculations? "Then I would have been sorry for the dear Lord," Einstein answered. "The theory is correct."

There, in a nutshell, is one of Einstein's most revolutionary yet underappreciated contributions to science. For thousands of years, researchers had studied the behavior of the heavens and sought to capture it in mathematical terms. Einstein reversed the challenge: He sought truth in equations and then trusted that studies of the heavens would back him up. Almost all of modern cosmology and theoretical physics follows from that leap of faith—or leap, perhaps, of reason.

Einstein's first big break with tradition came while he was in his twenties, as he pondered how light travels through a vacuum. At the time, most scientists believed that light was rooted to some substance embedded in empty space. But one evening in May 1905, Einstein did what no other physicist of his era had done: He took the math at face value. The constancy of the speed of light was right there on paper, in James Clerk Maxwell’s 1873 equations defining the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Hence, Einstein postulated, the constancy was right there in the universe, too. If the speed of light is the same to all observers, he realized, then time and space must stretch and compress so that no matter how you are moving, light’s behavior never appears to change. From that one insight sprang the entire special theory of relativity.

As Einstein extended his thinking from space and time to gravity, he found himself increasingly drawn to the power of the equation. "Never before in my life have I troubled myself over anything so much," he wrote to a friend, "and I have gained enormous respect for mathematics, whose more subtle parts I considered until now, in my ignorance, as pure luxury!" The result of that effort, in 1916, was general relativity—the theory that had the newly confident Einstein telling God how the universe must work. By 1933 he had no doubts about the path to scientific truth. Delivering the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford, he declared: "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 the laws connecting them with each other."

Following Einstein's example, subsequent physicists have discovered previously unimagin­able phenomena: dark energy, black holes, the Big Bang. In trying to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, theorists now invoke even more exotic things—subatomic strings, parallel universes, and higher dimensions. These latest concepts all exist beautifully in the mathematics, but so far observers have identified no sign of them in the real world.

Some scientists are starting to worry that Einstein’s revolution has gone too far. Without observation to check theory, at what point does the math devolve into game playing? Einstein, too, fretted about that possibility in his 1933 Oxford lecture. "Experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of the physical utility of a mathematical construction," he said. How to move beyond slavish devotion to experience may have been Einstein’s greatest gift to the 20th century. How to bring mathematical imagination back down to earth may rate as his greatest challenge to the 21st.

Facing that challenge will require a fresh look at Einstein, one that ignores the caricatures and unflinchingly explores the man and his work. It will also demand a rigorous investigation of the people and ideas that could take us beyond Einstein's science.


Handwerksgelehrte

Theoretical physics...philosophy/sci-fi?

Einstein: Spiritual and the scientific

One simply cannot divorce the spiritual and the scientific--as long as there are unanswered questions regarding the composition of the universe and man's position in the universe. Science can explore and offer the objective and the spiritual can fill the void of questions. Let each and every individual blend the both for a holistic perspective. Now the Christian Science journal, late this summer, provided an article titled "Time Space Matter: Seeing through the grand illusion" by, Jeffrey Hildner. And of particular interest was an interview with Brian Greene of which is reproduced here.

[Thanks to Megirox for the fine work and time spent transcribing the entire article.]

Here is the Brian Greene interview:

On April 18, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s passing, a relay of lights started around the globe in Princeton, New Jersey, the physicist’s home. The even, titled "Physics enlightens the world," marked a high point of this Einstein-inspired World Year of Physics 2005. It just happens that it was on that very evening that I sat down with Brian Greene in The Princeton Club in New York City. A professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, Professor Greene is the author of The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality and The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, which describes what physicists now call the "Theory of Everything," or the string theory. String theory picks up where Einstein left off in his quest to find one master equation that unifies nature, explains Professor Greene as part of the Nova television series based on his book. "String theory says that we may be living in a universe where reality meets science fiction. A universe of 11 dimensions, with parallel universes right next door…. It says that everything in the universe, from the tiniest particle to the most distant star, is made from one kind of ingredient - unimaginably small, vibrating strands of energy, called strings." Although Christian Scientists have come to entirely different conclusions about the substance of reality - based on the discoveries elucidated in Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy - our conversation was a fruitful and honest exchange of ideas.

You've learned that reality is very different from everyday perception, Brian. In the article in The New York Times you wrote, "….modern physics’ notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have internalized….For decades, I've struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I delight in what I know is the individual's power, however imperceptible, to affect time’s passage." Tell us about that struggle. How have you bought your experience more in accord with what you know is true?

Sometimes it requires having almost a dual outlook on the world. One part is the pragmatic outlook, the one that aligns with the things that we do perceive. And that outlook imagines a time that’s the same for you and me, a space that’s the same for you and me, and a reality that’s pretty close to what we think it is. The other part, though, is the outlook that recognizes that the veneer of perception is hiding something deeply profound and thoroughly shocking when one is ale to see it in its full mathematical form (which is the only way that we can really see it directly). There you learn that time elapses in ways that are different from what we experience. And space has properties difference from what we experience. I try to keep these concepts as close to the forefront of my experience as possible. But everyday reality intrudes on what I know to be the true nature of the world. Finding a means of keeping them in harmony is not something that really eats at the soul, but it takes attention to keep your eye on the truth while allowing the everyday necessities of life run their course.

Einstein believed that the concepts of past, present, and future are an illusion. I come from a religious tradition that agrees. Mary Baker Eddy, who founded our religion, concluded that matter itself is an illusion and that the only true reality is Spirit, which is the opposite of matter. Do you think that reality is ultimately physical?

I do think that reality is completely physical. In many ways, I agree with Einstein that past, present, and future are distinctions that are human made, that they’re not intrinsic to the way the world is put together and in some deep sense are meaningless. But when I say that, I don’t mean that time itself is a complete illusion. What I mean is that features of time that we consider basic to it - such as past, present, and future - are illusory. But I think time is real. I think time exists. It has properties that are unfamiliar when compared with what we’d expect based on everyday experience.

Could I ask you for a simple definition of time, space, and matter?

Very tough question, of course. I would say that to answer that question we need the next revolution in physics. And I think that’s where the next revolution will come from. Roughly speaking, I’d say time is the capacity for change. And change is the manifestation of time. Space I’d like to think of as the arena within which that change can take place. But, of course, space itself can also change, so it can be part of the way time manifests itself. And matter we like to think of as the actors within this space-time arena, on this space-time stage. But that’s an artificial distinction, because we’ve learned from Einstein that space and time and matter all evolve in a wonderfully intricate and interconnected dance. So all of these descriptions I’m giving are only partial truths. And the deep truth of what time and space and matter are, I think, will await the next big breakthrough.

Where does the question of consciousness factor into the ultimate equation?

Consciousness is one of the grand questions. To my mind, the big questions are: How did the universe begin? How did life begin? How did consciousness begin? You know, those are the big three. And the latter two, life and consciousness, are just too complex for me. The universe is very simple when you talk about its gross overall structure. And that’s where I like to be, because the questions are far simpler than the complex ones of mind and body and life. So I don’t really think about it, even though I’m tremendously interested in the issue.

I know this is a personal question, so I hesitate to ask, but are you a religious person?

I’m not religious in any conventional sense. I don’t follow any of the standard religions, even though from a cultural point of view, religion is important to me, but not in a traditional theological sense. I would definitely consider myself spiritual, and a certain kind of religiosity is definitely part of my being. But it’s a spirituality that comes from a wonderment at the universe, a sense of deep satisfaction and gratitude, and, at times, an overwhelming sense of the order and the harmony of the cosmos. The way it all fits together, the way the laws of physics are so elegant in their description of the universe, and how we’ve been able to understand so much about inner space - molecules and atoms. So much about outer space - galaxies and space in the entire cosmos. That has to fill you with a sense of awe. Some people wonder, Is that religious awe? I don’t know what the word religious means in this context, but this sense of awe is not cognitive, it’s definitely visceral. And, to me, that is a kind of spirituality. It’s a spirituality of connection to the cosmos.

I think of it as a spirituality that’s in touch with the poetic/aesthetic dimension of the universe, and I feel it, too. But, ultimately, I think we have two different definitions of the universe. As I see it, what’s called the physical universe isn’t physical at all; it’s actually a mental construction. Oceans, stars, and galaxies are thought-forms - grand symbols of the real universe, which is spiritual and governed by the laws of a perfect divine Principle, or intelligence. And that real universe - a universe whose substance comprises incorporeal qualities, such as precision and creativity, vitality, wisdom, happiness, coherence, integrity, health - is present here and now, completely accessible to human consciousness, and therefore potentially tangible in everyday life. Mary Baker Eddy made this remarkable statement about these apparently two different universes that you and I are sorting out - she said, “Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual.” I’m trying to live in accord with this advanced understanding, and I’ve experienced physical healing and rescue from misery and all kinds of bad things as a result. Which prompts me to circle back to the pragmatic question we started with and ask: Have you experienced any breakthroughs on your quest to live in accord with your advanced, physics-based understanding of time?

Well, the only impact that I can put my finger on is a certain, sometimes even roguish, pranksterish way in which I grin to myself about how, by moving, I’m affecting time’s passage. It’s more just recognizing that you can kind of wink at the universe, and it winks back if you understand how it works at a deeper level than what you could imagine based on everyday perception. One very important thing to keep in mind is that people who have different viewpoints on the world and the universe, generally hold those different viewpoints because they make use of different benchmarks when judging something is right, wrong, true, or not true. And, for me, the benchmark that’s always primary is: Does your belief, does your idea, does your theory about the universe, give rise to some testable prediction - one that you can go out and repeatedly and reliably confirm or prove wrong and in that way come to an assessment of the proposal? And through this scientific approach to truth, we have revealed so much about the universe that is thoroughly unexpected. Science has peeled back layers that no one could have anticipated; science has shown that there is a reality beyond the everyday that in some ways is shocking. To me, this is wonderful. I feel I need to keep these strange ideas of relativity and quantum physics as close to the forefront of my mind as possible, because they are, in my view, revealing a deep truth about the nature of the world we inhabit.

Here we are on the day of special celebration of Einstein’s life, during this centennial anniversary of his remarkable discoveries. What are you thinking?

It’s an astounding thing that in the course of one year Einstein came up with four ideas that have each profoundly changed our conception of the universe. Most physicists would be happy if they had a fraction of one of these in their lifetime. It really is humbling, because it’s wonderful to realize that there can be such minds, such creative geniuses. We as a species can celebrate the fact that we sometimes have members who can see so much further than others. And I think that’s not only a thing to celebrate, but also something that should give us great hope that we can go so far.

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...."--Albert Einstein.

I suppose there comes a time during this topic that Einstein's religious views or philosophy of life should be mentioned. It is a bit unfair to speculate too much into a man's mind on these feelings for the individual is not here to expound or defend statements. Nevertheless, Einstein in lectures and books, has expressed enough to draw some general conclusions via these quotes.

Einstein's rejection of main stream theism, prayer, punishment after death, and relationship of theology and science is expressed by the following statements:

1.) "The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events."

2.) "What I cannot understand is how there could possibly be a God who would reward or punish his subjects or who could induce us to develop our will in our daily life. I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws."

3.) "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously."

4.) "The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously."

5.) "What I cannot understand is how there could possibly be a God who would reward or punish his subjects or who could induce us to develop our will in our daily life. I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws."

6.) "Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being."

7.) "If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"

8.) "The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

9.) "The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being."

10.) "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."


Einstein's views on religion and God can sometimes be puzzling but it is all interwoven in science.

"Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?"

by

Michael R. Gilmore

Skeptic

Volume 5, Number 2,

1997

Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3-5): "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. 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 fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude...hich has never left me..."

We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein's writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.

Part of the popular picture of Einstein's God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as: "God is cunning but He is not malicious." (Also: "God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded." Or: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." (1946) "God does not play dice." (On many occasions.) "I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." (Unknown date.)

It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.

Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston's Cardinal O'Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation" (Clark, 1971, 413-414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal's attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: "Do you believe in God?" (Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein's return message is the famous statement: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"( 103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein's statement in his own way when writing: "Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. "Let us call a spade a spade" (Clark, 1971, 414). Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein's remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: "It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science" (413).

The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein's "Spinoza's God" statement, noted: "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony,' except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?" Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.

But what, at bottom, was Einstein's belief? The long answer exists in Einstein's essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?

In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist. Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist. Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?"

Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."

I was fortunate to meet Guy Raner, by chance, at a humanist dinner in late 1994, at which time he told me of the Einstein letters. Raner lives in Chatsworth, California and has retired after a long teaching career. The Einstein letters, a treasured possession for most of his life, were sold in December, 1994, to a firm that deals in historical documents (Profiles in History, Beverly Hills, CA). Five years ago a very brief letter (Raner & Lerner, 1992) describing the correspondence was published in Nature. But the two Einstein letters have remained largely unknown.

Curiously enough, the wonderful and well-known biography Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (1972) does quote from Einstein's 1945 letter to Raner. But maddeningly, although Hoffmann quotes most of the letter (194-195), he leaves out Einstein's statement: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit Priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." Hoffmann's biography was written with the collaboration of Einstein's secretary, Helen Dukas. Could she have played a part in eliminating this important sentence, or was it Hoffmann's wish? I do not know. However, Freeman Dyson (1996) notes "that Helen wanted the world to see, the Einstein of legend, the friend of school children and impoverished students, the gently ironic philosopher, the Einstein without violent feelings and tragic mistakes." Dyson also notes that he thought Dukas "profoundly wrong in trying to hide the true Einstein from the world." Perhaps her well-intentioned protectionism included the elimination of Einstein as atheist. Although not a favorite of physicists, Einstein, The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W. Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein's God: "However, Einstein's God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to...clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals--and to most Jewsa--looked like a variant of simple agnosticism...This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them" (19).

Einstein continued to search, even to the last days of his 76 years, but his search was not for the God of Abraham or Moses. His search was for the order and harmony of the world.

Bibliography:

Dyson, F. 1996. Forward In The Quotable Einstein (Calaprice, Alice, Ed. ) Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1996. (Note: The section "On Religion, God, and Philosophy" is perhaps the best brief source to present the range and depth of Einstein's views.)

Einstein, A. 1929. quoted in Sommerfeld (see below). 1949. Also as Telegram to a Jewish Newspaper, 1929; Einstein Archive Number 33-272.

___. 1946 and of unknown date. In Einstein, A Centenary Volume. (A. P. French, Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press. 1979. 32, 73, & 67.

___. 1959 (1949). "Autobiographical Notes." In Albert Einstein, Philosopher--Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros.

___. 1950. Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive Number 59-215. ___. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Pub.

___. on many occasions. In Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. (B. Hoffmann with the collaboration of Helen Dukas.) New York: The Viking Press.

Hoffmann, B. (collaboration with Helen Dukas). 1972. Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. New York: The Viking Press. Raner, G. H. & Lerner, L. S. "Einstein's Beliefs." Nature, 358:102.

Sommerfeld, A. 1949. "To Albert Einstein's 70th Birthday." In Albert Einstein, Philospher-Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros. 1959. 99-105.

Weinberg, S. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. 245.


Article:

"Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science"

Book:

Einstein And Religion : Physics And Theology

by

Max Jammer

ISBN: 069110297X


Einstein--Gutkind letter...to be auctioned

Einstein--Gutkind letter...SOLD!