“Liberty is the necessary foundation for the development of all true values”
-Albert Einstein
Without the freedom of mind and spirit, human values grind under the weight of oppression and want.
On the Source of Human Values
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On Nature and Discovery
“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us”
-Albert Einstein
And, nonetheless, we delight in the eternal mystery with joyful curiosity and a determination to unravel the revelation as best we possibly can.
Einstein’s vision of the world and the universe encompasses the boundary of human imagination. The point where the science of the empirical world intersects with the faith in the spiritual dimension that lies beyond our limited perception. However limited, Einstein stretched that boundary, for which we are eternally grateful. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Albert Einstein takes a break
The Albert Einstein blog will continue the first week of March. In the meantime, in the spirit of Einstein, let’s all stretch.
Stay curious.
On Going to School vs. Getting an Education
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
-Albert Einstein
A true education is the sum total of what you know, not everything you’ve been taught.
On Mystery and Salvation
“The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind.”
-Albert Einstein
Mystery is the reflected nature of beauty, and the beauty reflected in nature. It is what calls the human spirit to a higher calling.
It is the salvation of humanity.
On the Next Step in Human Evolution
“Is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him secure proof against the the psychosis of hate and destructiveness?”
-Albert Einstein, posing a question to Sigmund Freud
Freud’s reply to Einstein was not encouraging, and humanity has yet to prove him wrong.
On Perception and Truth
“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations.
He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions.
He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.”
-Albert Einstein
There is truth, it is our nature and obligation to seek it. But its true nature lies just beyond the veil of perception.
On Balance and a Life Well Lived
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
-Albert Einstein, letter to son Eduard, 1930
A life in motion is one of ongoing intellectual curiosity, loving relationships the deepen through the years, and a growing sense of community. Curiosity, love, and selflessness.
With that, if we are lucky, we can maintain balance and find some modicum of wisdom and maturity.
On the Real Danger of an Apathetic Nature
“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.”
-Albert Einstein
Apathy kills.
On History, Philosophy, and Perspective
“So many people today… seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation…”
-Albert Einstein
We are fast becoming a nation with no sense of history, from high school graduates that kind can’t find Europe on the map to a presidential press secretary that didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was while talking to reporters.
We are disconnected from the past and disinclined to see why it matters; stuck in the prejudice and hubris of the now that is nothing but an illusion, a lack of perspective of which is the consequence of narcissism, arrogance, and apathy.
On the Rebel Becoming the Authority
“To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself”
-Albert Einstein
By rejecting the status quo and revolutionizing physics with his rebellious notions of space and time, Einstein eventually became the scientific establishment – the authority that younger physicists rebelled against through a “quantum” leap of thought and imagination.
But it was upon the former rebel’s shoulders that these young turks stood in their rebellion – just as it was for Einstein himself two decades before.
And so it is that human history progresses: through a cycle of rebellion and revolution, of one sort or another, against established authority, thus becoming the new authority from which, one day, new revolution foments.