Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm in the Kingdom of Wuerttemberg in the Germany Empire.

The Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews, but Albert went to Catholic elementary school in Munich. He studied there until he was 8; he transfers to Luitpold Gymnasium when he was 15 years old.

Due to job problems, the Einsteins moved around a lot, but Albert stayed in Munich to finish his schooling. His father wanted him to study electrical engineering, but Albert did not take to authority very well. He also didn't like the way that school worked, because he thought that the regime took away the spirit of learning and creativity.

In 1894, he left his school with the use of a doctors note to join his family in Italy.

He was always very good at Math and Physics. In fact, he actually thought himself Algebra and he came up with his own proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. He didn't fail math as some people say.  He liked Math so much that he said nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure."

Albert was also very interested in philosophy. At the age of 13, he found Kant through "Critique of Pure Reason," and Kant became Albert's favorite philosopher.

When Albert was 16, he applied to Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, but he failed to get in because of his scores in the general part of the exam. He killed it on the Math part of it. So he went to Argovian Cantonal School. He was at the top of his school, and once he graduated, he went to Zurich Polytechnic. He met his first future wife here.

He moved around more, but eventually, he came to America in 1933.

Albert did a lot in his life, but one of the most widely studied and often misunderstood parts of his life was his religious views.

Einstein said that the only god that he believed in was the pantheistic god of Spinoza.

To understand what this means, we need to take a look at a conversation between a school girl named Phyllis and Albert from 1939.

 
Phyllis asked Albert:

My dear Dr. Einstein,

We have brought up the question: 'Do scientists pray?' in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered.

We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for?

We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis's class.

Respectfully yours,

Phyllis

 
Albert responded with:

Dear Phyllis,

I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

With cordial greetings,

your A. Einstein


The hidden, but kind of the main point, in his response, was at pantheism. He didn't dive super into it because he was responding to a 6th grader, of course.

Pantheism is the idea that everything is just a manifestation of "god." The god that this idea talks about is not the same idea of the god that we all have. Spinoza's god is the universe, nature, the cosmos, and everything there is.

This god is one that is uninterested in human affairs. For example, Spinoza's says the praying is not the way to go about life. He says that people who pray want god to change the way the universe works in order to get what the person wants. Spinoza said that people should try to understand the world and accept it rather than sending a prayer to get god to change the universe. This idea could be summed up in this quote by Spinoza: "Whoever loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return." For someone to be happy, they need to try to understand the cosmos and our place in it rather than praying and hoping that God bends the rules of existence for us.

There are similarities in the way that Spinoza thought and the Stoics. The Stoics also believed that people should try to understand the universe and accept it. This is not a coincidence as Seneca was Spinoza's favorite philosopher. 

Now back to Albert.

Albert didn't have an extremely strong devotion to religion, but he did allow it to interfere in his work and believes. One such example of this lies in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. This is just referring to the meaning of quantum mechanics that Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg came up with around 1927.

Without diving too much into quantum mechanics, the idea is that electrons circle the nucleus with the classical laws, but with certain limitations. Such as the orbits they can occupy and the energy they lose as radiation when they jump from orbit to orbit. This theory, known as the Quantum Theory, attempted to unify all quantum phenomena.

The theory is summarized by Pié I Valls "This theory rested on two fundamental pillars: the adiabatic principle, a method to find possible quantum states within the atom; and the correspondence principle, which links classic electrodynamics with the new quantum theory forged at that time."

Albert did not like this particular version of Quantum Mechanics. He said that Bohr believed in a god that likes to play dice.

Albert noted that a lot of people did see him as an Atheist, but he preferred to be called an Agnostic. He, in fact, did not like militant Atheists.

Einstein's views are very complicated, but the idea is that his views came from a realistic view of the world, just like the one Spinoza had.

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein 

Quiz:
1. Who was Albert Einstein's favorite philosopher?
2. Why did Albert Einstein not like Bohr's Quantum Theory?
3. Who was Spinoza's favorite philosopher?
4. Define Spinoza's God?

Discussion Questions:
1. Does Spinoza's pantheistic God make sense to you?
2. Is it better to understand God from reading religious texts or by studying the universe?
3. Is it as crazy to pray as Spinoza says it is?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVEeXjPiw54 

Midterm: http://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2018/10/seneca-younger.html