“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
-Albert Einstein
Science is the trees, music is the forest.
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“Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age.”
-Albert Einstein
Our clever minds thrive on technology. From taming fire to taming the atom.
With each step along the way, a commensurate advance in wisdom is required to justly apply the increased power that is made available for our use.
Somewhere along the way, and certainly by the time a mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, our cleverness far outstripped our wisdom to use it.
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“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”
-Albert Einstein
It was with little more than this that Einstein paved an entirely new road for the rest of humanity to trod behind.
The simple things is life are often the best and allow the mind free reign, without distraction, to explore the universe.
Albert Einstein’s brain wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill brain. It’s still around somewhere; some say it’s in a small-town doctor’s office in Kansas, in a mason jar tucked in a cardboard box behind behind a beer cooler.
One hopes the good doctor wasn’t partaking of the beer while examining patients. If that sounds far-fetched, well, Steven Levy swears it’s true. And in fact, it does appear to be true.
Most people’s brains don’t matter for much after the rest of them has left this mortal coil. Some people never really learn how to work their brain very well even while alive.
Whatever it was that sparked such a far-reaching imagination, driven by intellectual genius, will remain an unanswered question.
It wasn’t his education that led Einstein to his discovery of space, time, and the nature of light beams; it was his imagination. He was able to envision the world in ways the even today most of us can’t really imagine.
Try imagining riding alongside a beam of light and then writing down an equation that describes it. One that works. One that scientists who at first scoffed finally had to admit that it was provable reality.
Einstein seemed destined to follow his path toward relative fame, if you’ll indulge and forgive my bad pun.
He was actually a media star, and still is. His name and likeness are the very defination of the eccentric genius scientist.
It was Newton that said if he had “seen further than other men”, it was because he “stood on the shoulders of giants” – and thus became a giant himself. Einstein surely stood on these shoulders and those of others, looking beyond what anyone had dared, or could, imagine before.
It is impossible not to be intriqued and drawn not only to the work, but also the character of a man like Albert Einstein. He was a scientist-philosopher and he left behind not only his scientific vision of the universe, but also his philosophical view of the world we live in.
It’s been a little over 50 years since Einstein died, and his vision – both universal and human – are as vital today as they will be tomorrow and as they were when he first spoke them; irrespective of time.
Get it?
I’m not sure I do either, but it will be fun to try. Thus starts the next effort in the History Blog project, where the words of great humans of the past are applied to the present.
My humble attempt to climb onto the shoulders of giants and try to get a peek at what they saw.
I am sure to stumble, but I’m going to do it anyway, and announce the start of AlbertEinsteinBlog.org. I’ll have fun and I hope you may find it amusing as well.