Chapter 5: Einstein and the Bigger Picture: Weaving Things Together
chapter 5: EINSTEIN AND THE BIGGER PICTURE: WEAVING THINGS TOGETHER
EINSTEIN WAS A “BIG PICTURE” THINKER, concerned about the ultimate nature of reality and our place within it.[115] In the late 1920s, Einstein began to set his sights on formulating a single grand theory that would weave together and unite relativity with quantum mechanics. He never succeeded, yet his quest for a “theory of everything” remains the holy grail of contemporary science. How can we weave various seemingly disconnected threads of thought together into a coherent whole?
In November 1944, Einstein wrote to Robert Thornton, who was hoping to launch a liberal arts program at the University of Puerto Rico, emphasizing the importance of the philosophy of science in generating a richer vision of our world. “So many people today,” Einstein remarked, including professional scientists, seemed to be “like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest.”[116] For Einstein, it was important to develop a unified Weltbild —a coherent and comprehensive way of seeing our world —that allowed individual trees to be seen and appreciated for what they were while at the same time seeing them as part of something greater. It is a useful image, helping us appreciate the importance of die Einheitlichkeit —the fundamental unity of all phenomena —in Einstein’s scientific and wider reflections.
Yet this unity of all things was more of an intuition than something that could be proved. The great German physicist Max Planck was aware of this aspect of Einstein’s thought and considered it to be essential to the scientific method:
As Einstein has said, you could not be a scientist if you did not know that the external world existed in reality —but that knowledge is not gained by any process of reasoning. It is a direct perception and therefore in its nature akin to what we call Faith. It is a metaphysical belief.[117]
The fundamental unity of phenomena thus turns out to be a philosophical or even theological belief, which provides both a motivation and justification for the scientific enterprise. It is not something that can be proved, but it nevertheless provides a working basis for the scientific project. For Planck, the scientist thus has faith in an unseen order of things and finds this both justified and reflected in the success of the sciences: “Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientists cannot dispense with.”[118]
The ultimate test of a theory, according to Einstein, is the quality of its vision of reality —not simply in terms of the range of that vision, but in terms of the manner in which it is able to hold things together as a coherent and interconnected whole:
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering new connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our way up.[119]
For Einstein, the best theory is able to accommodate the insights of older theories —such as Newton’s mechanics —but also offer a richer vision of our universe. The best theory weaves together what might once have been seen as disconnected threads but that can now be seen to be integral parts of the same “big picture.”[120] And, as Einstein rightly saw, this is an act of imagination as much as of understanding. Einstein’s recognition of the importance of the imagination in sciences is well illustrated in his short essay “On Science”: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”[121]
Although such comments would seem strange to more rationalist scientists, there is now a much wider recognition within the scientific community of the importance of the imagination in developing theories and grasping the interconnectedness of reality.[122] Einstein frequently remarked that logic had limited value in creating links between theories and reality. Consider, for example, the opening of “On Science”: “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration. . . . At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.”[123] In his conversations with Max Wertheimer, Einstein suggested that he never thought in logical symbols or mathematical equations but rather found it more natural to use images, feelings, or even musical structures in his attempts to visualize the complex reality that could only be partly disclosed through science.[124] (Einstein once quipped that if he were not a physicist, he would probably be a musician.)
Einstein’s views on the importance of such a “bigger picture” are dispersed throughout his writings and tend not to be presented in a systematic and comprehensive way. For Einstein, there is a single real world, one not subject to the control of the human mind but whose basic structures can be grasped, if only partially, by human reason through experimentation and reflection and expressed mathematically. This world can be investigated by various research methods and models, yielding results that sometimes appear inconsistent with each other but that, when rightly understood, can be seen as part of a unified account of reality. Einstein’s genius was to find a way of holding together science, politics, and religion —in other words, to create a personal synthesis of everything that mattered. His own way of weaving them together is illustrative, not normative, showing us possibilities, not compelling us to follow him in every respect.
Einstein often wrote of the importance of developing a coherent Weltbild, a German term most naturally translated as “a picture of the world” or perhaps “a way of seeing the world.” Einstein used the term Weltbild as a title for a collection of his essays touching on the many topics that he regarded as important and meaningful.[125] The English title of the book —“The World as I See It” —doesn’t really express Einstein’s basic idea that there is some deep, underlying unity or harmony to the universe. The point Einstein is making is not so much that human beings can “see” the world but that there is some fundamental unity and coherence to our complex world that allows it to be grasped, however imperfectly, by human reason and imagination. “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”[126]
Einstein’s writings reveal an intense commitment to ethical and political issues and a strong interest in religion as an appropriate response to the mystery of the world. Where some might try to compartmentalize these aspects of life or see them as mutually inconsistent, Einstein seems to have seen science, ethics, and religious faith as integral —yet different —aspects of an authentic human existence. It’s not just Einstein’s ideas on science, politics, religion, and ethics that matter; it’s the fact that he was able to hold them together. Maybe he can help us do the same.
This quest for a unified view of the world lies behind what is generally agreed to be Einstein’s greatest intellectual achievement —the theory of general relativity. Confronted with the incoherence of classic Newtonian mechanics and the electrodynamics of James Clerk Maxwell and Hendrik Lorentz, Einstein conceived a new way of understanding space and time that restored a significant degree of unity to physics.[127] Difficulties remained. Indeed, many would say that Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life trying and failing to find a way to combine gravity and electromagnetism into a single elegant theory. Yet Einstein was convinced that nature was essentially a unity and that a single theory could —and would —therefore eventually be found to represent it, despite his own personal failure to do this.
Einstein’s quest for a “big picture,” holding everything together coherently in a single whole, is neither exceptional nor unusual. In fact, it seems to be the default setting of the human mind. The pursuit of meaning seems “fundamental to human nature” and embraces “much of what we most prize and are willing to make sacrifices for,” including such things as justice, art, and beauty.[128] Many literary figures, philosophers, and theologians would speak of some kind of instinct or intuition within human nature that both suggests there is such a unified vision of reality and stimulates us to find it. The philosopher David Hume, for whom Einstein had a particular respect, was always alert to the shortcomings of human reasoning and saw this quest emerging naturally from the deepest recesses of the human mind: “Reason cannot defend the principles which we need to steer us through our lives, and so nature takes over and engraves them on our minds. When rational justifications run out, we just go on in the way we find natural.”[129]
Einstein’s oft-repeated emphasis on the importance of a unitary view of our universe is, however, not universally accepted. Postmodern philosophers suggest that there is no “big picture,” only a number of smaller pictures that are not necessarily connected with each other. Reality, it is suggested, is like a patchwork quilt, each panel of which is different and has little connection with its neighbors other than the threads inserted by the person making the quilt. This theme, deployed in works as diverse as the philosopher Nancy Cartwright’s The Dappled World and the novelist Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, suggests that there is no fundamental coherence to our universe. There are at best localized areas of pattern and meaning, none of which can claim exclusive authority.
The Parable of the Lion
Einstein held to a unified view of nature while emphasizing the limits placed upon humanity as we seek to grasp our vast universe in its totality. In 1914, Einstein wrote a letter to a friend using an analogy to help explain this limited grasp of reality: “Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.”[130] Einstein’s parable of the lion remains illuminating in that it highlights the themes of both connectedness and distance in our attempts to grasp the deep structure of our universe and work out our place within it.
The first point Einstein’s parable conveys is that what we observe of the universe is a manifestation of a far greater unseen reality that lies beyond our capacities to grasp and hold. In June 1927, Einstein expressed this in a different yet equally illuminating way at a fashionable Berlin dinner party. “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable.”[131] What we see is indeed connected to a greater reality, yet we can only know nature through observation and experimentation.
Einstein was a realist in a general sense of the term, holding that physics was essentially an attempt to construct a conceptual model of the real world. In 1924, he suggested that all natural scientists correctly saw themselves as trying to make sense of “something real that exists independently of their own thought and being.”[132] Einstein often pointed out that the “real” is not given to us directly; what is given is our experience.[133] Science therefore cannot depict the “real” but offers a framework for accounting for our experience of the real. There is indeed a connection between our experiences and reality, but it is indirect.
This point was emphasized by many of Einstein’s scientific colleagues around this time. Werner Heisenberg, noted for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, highlighted that we do not know nature directly but rather indirectly through our research tools. “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature as it is disclosed by our methods of investigation.”[134] So if nature is a single totality, Heisenberg’s observation leads us to the conclusion that different research methods lead to different perspectives on reality —not to a total view of reality itself. A way has to be found of integrating or weaving together these perspectives if we are to see reality comprehensively.
Einstein makes this point by emphasizing that we are dealing with the lion’s tail, not the lion itself. Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life searching for the “tail” that would lead him to the “lion” —a “theory of everything” that would unite all the forces of the universe into a single equation. Might he be able to find a theory that accounts for “Newton’s falling apple, the transmission of light and radio waves, the stars, and the composition of matter”? Yet such a unified theory always eluded him, even though he knew, in his heart of hearts, that it had to be there —somewhere.
Connecting Science and a Wider Reality
Some scientists see their laboratories as defining their worlds. Their concern lies entirely with what happens within their walls —with experiments, calculations, and theoretical reflection. They are aware there is a world beyond the laboratory walls, yet their intellectual and personal investment lies primarily in the pursuit of science. Everything else is of secondary importance.
Einstein was not that kind of scientist. His letters bear witness not merely to his wide interests and concerns —music, philosophy, politics, and religion are frequently mentioned —but to his desire to try to bring and hold the insights of these various fields together. He was a scientist who valued his connections with other worlds of thought, worlds in which he might not personally excel or possess an international reputation but that he nevertheless regarded as important and worthwhile. For example, Einstein loved music and frequently performed in public (although it is thought that no authentic recordings of any of these performances have survived). Yet his love for music was linked with a sense that certain composers were tuning in to something deeper about our world. He said, “Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.”[135] Indeed, he once suggested that Niels Bohr’s model of the atom was “the highest form of musicality in the realm of physical thought.”[136]
Might this help explain why some of Einstein’s theoretical discoveries were triggered or stimulated by music? Consider, for example, Elsa Einstein’s account of Einstein’s discovery of the theory of general relativity, which she gave when dining with Charlie Chaplin in Beverly Hills in 1931.[137] Having told Elsa, sometime around 1915, that he had had a “marvelous idea,” Einstein went to his piano and began to play, every now and then making a few notes. After half an hour of this, he went upstairs to his study to work on this idea in greater detail —and two weeks later completed his theory. This suggests that Einstein saw playing classical music as a brainstorming technique, capable of stimulating his thought and helping his emerging ideas coalesce.
Yet there is a deeper question here: whether there is some fundamental harmony between human thought and the deeper structures of the universe, an idea that was often discussed during the Renaissance in terms of the “music of the spheres.” Although Einstein’s scientific papers show his commitment to traditional scientific methods, he often spoke of theoretical physics as an attempt to uncover “the music of the spheres,” which revealed a “pre-established harmony” within the fabric of the universe.[138] A very similar idea is set out in the great astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Harmonies of the World (1619), which links music and astronomy in explaining the orbits of the planets.
Einstein suggested that, whereas Beethoven “created” his music, Mozart’s “seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.”[139] We see this thought in one of Einstein’s scientific aphorisms: “In every naturalist there must be a kind of religious feeling; for he cannot imagine that the connections into which he sees have been thought of by him for the first time.”[140] It’s a thought we find in many early modern scientists such as Galileo and Kepler: the scientist is really uncovering the rationality of God, which is expressed in the universe. The scientist’s thoughts about the universe somehow echo God’s thoughts. As Stephen Hawking pointed out in an often-quoted aphorism, to find an answer to “why it is that we and the universe exist” is to “know the mind of God.”[141]
So why did Einstein feel such an affinity with Mozart? Einstein’s admiration for this great composer emerged during the 1880s, long before the great Mozart revival of the first years of the twentieth century. In his study of Einstein’s core papers of 1905, the American physicist John S. Rigden suggested that Einstein’s achievement in science was comparable to Mozart’s in music.[142] Both were rooted in the assumptions and conventions of their day, yet both demonstrated an intuitive leap and a new way of seeing things that lay beyond the reach of those assumptions and conventions.
Einstein’s brilliant theoretical resolution of the scientific dead ends and riddles of the opening decade of the twentieth century involved the discernment of something deeper and more fundamental that lay behind those puzzles and paradoxes. And when this deeper understanding was grasped, Rigden suggests, it allowed phenomena to be seen in a new way —and hence to be understood. Einstein did not see Mozart’s music as a soothing backdrop against which he could think without distraction. In some way, it sensitized him to something more fundamental about our universe.
So how might we be sensitized so that we might also hear this harmony? Einstein is scathing toward those who are tone-deaf to the beauty of the universe and especially to the mathematical representations of its structures, which often possess an elegance that seems to be correlated with their truth. He singles out what he terms “fanatical atheists” for particular comment, remarking that “their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’” makes them unable to “hear the music of the spheres.”[143]
Some may feel that such references to the “music of the spheres” suggest that Einstein has lapsed into some form of mysticism. There is no good reason to think that Einstein was a “mystic” in the general sense of the word.[144] However, he was certainly alert to the imaginative power of words. Like so many before him —including Newton and Kepler —he found the musical metaphor of “harmony” helpful in expressing and stimulating the study of the fundamental unity of the universe.[145] Perhaps that helps us understand the somewhat unusual way in which Einstein celebrated the confirmation of his theory of general relativity in November 1919: he bought himself a new violin.
A Theory of Everything That Matters
Einstein’s writings of the 1930s and 1940s show an increasing interest in areas beyond the field of the natural sciences, including ethics, politics, and religion. In each case, he defines these in his own way and marks out his own distinct approaches. Although Einstein was open about his “inclination to a life of quiet contemplation,”[146] he knew there were issues that demanded his involvement and engagement. In one sense, there is little that is unusual in this. Most scientists have views on ethical, political, and religious issues, and many are active in debates and programs arising from these. What makes Einstein particularly interesting is his attempts to see these as interconnected. Again, this is by no means unique, but it is a characteristic feature of Einstein’s Weltbild. All these perspectives are parts of a greater whole, woven together in the mind of the individual thinker but whose interconnection might not be apparent or demonstrable to an outside observer.
This is particularly evident in Einstein’s 1949 essay “Why Socialism?”[147] Einstein here argued that the natural sciences cannot create moral goals, even though science may provide means by which those goals could be achieved. Such goals do not themselves arise as a result of scientific inquiry, yet science might help implement their application —for example, in the field of medicine. “Science . . . cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends.”[148] Einstein makes a moral case for socialism, fully aware that those moral norms cannot be established or confirmed by the natural sciences.
So are science and socialism incompatible or irreconcilable? After all, they are the outcomes of quite different processes of thinking, with quite different criteria of evaluation.[149] If someone is committed purely and totally to a scientific way of thinking, how can she be a socialist? Or, for that matter, have any political or ethical commitments, given Einstein’s view that one cannot derive values through the scientific method? Einstein rightly saw that individuals and communities use different ways of thinking in order to build up a coherent view of the world, involving a complex interplay of the rational and the intuitive. Perhaps more importantly, he never drew the conclusion that, because science cannot establish moral norms and values, these are invalid or irrational for that reason.
Einstein developed much the same point ten years earlier in arguing for a constructive engagement between the natural sciences and religion.[150] Einstein here echoes David Hume’s point that a knowledge of how things function does not generate viable moral values:
The scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capable. . . . Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.[151]
For Einstein, the fundamental beliefs that are “necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgments” cannot be developed or sustained in a “solid scientific way.”
It is generally agreed that it is difficult to find a comprehensive ethical system either explicitly stated or implicitly assumed in Einstein’s writings. Nevertheless, there is clearly an intuitive ethical vision that led Einstein to affirm the value of scientific research while criticizing some of its outcomes. Consider, for example, this powerful 1948 statement on the moral obligations of scientists:
Rational thinking does not suffice to solve the problems of our social life. Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind, producing, on the one hand, inventions which liberated man from exhausting physical labor . . . but on the other hand . . . creating the means for his own mass destruction. . . . We scientists, whose tragic destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.[152]
The fact that science enables us to do certain things does not make those things moral. A framework of values originating from outside science is needed to make such judgments. Scientists need to be able to make moral judgments, but science itself, according to Einstein, cannot provide us with moral guidance or establish our moral values.
Einstein thus argued that proper human functioning, both individual and communal, requires more than what a “purely rational conception of our existence” is able to offer. Yet discussing fundamental questions of meaning and value does not mean we have ceased to be rational. “Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source.”[153]
Einstein’s political commitments, which emerge from his ethical views, are similarly independent of science. His two core political values were the importance of intellectual solidarity among intellectuals as a means of reducing the threat of war, and the cultural Zionist movement as a model of a world community based on mutual solidarity.[154][155]
So is there a single principle or central theme that holds these diverse ideas and values together? Or are they simply held together in Einstein’s mind, shaped by his own personal history and narrative? To answer this question, we will need to look more closely at his quite distinct concept of religion and consider the role that this plays in his thought. Yet it will be helpful to introduce a philosophical voice at this stage that offers an analogy that helps us make sense of what Einstein is doing, while allowing us to develop our own approaches.
Multiple Maps of Reality
How do we go about representing a complex reality? The English philosopher Mary Midgley developed the idea that we use multiple maps in our attempts to make as much sense as we can of our world and live meaningfully within it.[156] Consider an atlas, which provides us with many maps of a region —for example, North America or Europe. But why do we need so many maps? After all, there is only one planet Earth! Midgley’s answer is simple: because different maps provide different information about the same reality.
Multiple Maps for the Same Reality
An illustration of how we understand complex realities.
A physical map of Europe shows us the features of the landscape. A political map shows the borders of its nation states. Midgley’s point is that no map shows everything. Each map is designed to answer a specific set of questions. What language is spoken here? Who rules this territory? Each map makes sense of the whole landscape only by answering certain questions about it and not others. To get an overall view of our complex reality, we refuse to rely on any single map. Instead, we try to find some way of bringing them all together so that their information can be harvested and used. It’s not as if a physical map of North America makes a political map of that same region irrelevant. They answer different questions —and each of those questions is important.
Although Einstein does not use this specific imagery, it is helpful as an informing framework for his thought. Einstein is clear that the complexities of life demand answers to different questions. How does this work? What should I do? What does this mean? In effect, he is mapping different areas of life in terms of the questions that need to be asked and the resources we can use in answering those questions. And as we have seen, like any good scientist, Einstein knew that science had a limited capacity to answer questions beyond its own domain. We need scientific, ethical, political, social, and religious maps to help us navigate our way through the landscape of our world. No one map is able to answer all our questions.[157] We need to bring those answers together and try to weave them into a coherent unity.
We now will turn and consider Einstein’s views on religion and see how they fit into this overall framework.
[115] On the importance of this, see Carroll, The Big Picture, 69.
[116] Letter to Robert Thornton, dated December 7, 1944. Einstein Archive, Reel 6-574.
[117] Planck, Where Is Science Going?, 218.
[118] Planck, Where Is Science Going?, 214.
[119] Einstein and Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, 159.
[120] Einstein here anticipates aspects of what is now known as the “unificationist” approach to scientific explanation.
[121] Einstein, Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 97.
[122] Downie, “Science and the Imagination in the Age of Reason”; Rocke, Image and Reality.
[123] Einstein, Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 97.
[124] Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, 213–28.
[125] Einstein, Mein Weltbild. Although written in German, this book was published in Amsterdam in 1934 by Querido Verlag, which published titles of German writers in exile from Nazi Germany. Emanuel Querido, who established this publishing house, was killed by the Nazis in Sobibor extermination camp on July 23, 1943.
[126] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 292.
[127] Bergmann, “The Quest for Unity.”
[128] Metz, Meaning in Life, 249.
[129] Pears, Hume’s System, 99. See also Lynch, “Hume and the Limits of Reason.”
[130] Letter to Heinrich Zangger, dated March 10, 1914, in Collected Papers, vol. 5, 381.
[131] Kessler, The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan 1918–1937, 332.
[132] Einstein, “Elsbachs Buch,” 1685.
[133] For example, see Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 224–27.
[134] Heisenberg, “Die Kopenhagener Deutung der Quantentheorie,” 85. Emphasis mine.
[135] Isaacson, Einstein, 14.
[136] Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, 47.
[137] Chaplin, My Autobiography, 317. I have found no record of what music Einstein actually played during this process of reflection.
[138] For comment, see Moszkowski, Einstein the Searcher, 222.
[139] Miller, “A Genius Finds Inspiration in the Music of Another.”
[140] Einstein, Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 100.
[141] Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 193.
[142] Rigden, Einstein 1905, 147–49.
[143] Letter to an unidentified recipient, dated August 7, 1941. Einstein Archive, Reel 54-927.
[144] For comment, see Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 125–27.
[145] See Wilczek, A Beautiful Question.
[146] Einstein, Cosmic Religion with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 84.
[147] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 151–58.
[148] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 152.
[149] For the issue, and its wider implications, see McGrath, The Territories of Human Reason.
[150] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 41–49.
[151] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 41–42.
[152] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 148. For comment, see Michalos, “Einstein, Ethics, and Science.”
[153] Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 42.
[154] Rowe and Schulmann, Einstein on Politics, xxiv–xxv.
[155] It is important to note that Einstein’s vision of Zionism did not include support for a Jewish state. Perhaps with Switzerland as a model, he envisaged the creation of a “national home” that would welcome Jewish immigrants and encourage Jewish cultural development while ensuring equal rights for Arabs.
[156] For what follows, see the fuller discussion in Midgley, Science and Poetry, 170–213.
[157] For Midgley’s critique of aggressive reductionisms, which insist we use only one map for everything, see Midgley, “Reductive Megalomania.”