posted May 15, 2008 04:24 PM            

Person of the Century:

Albert Einstein

He was the pre-eminent scientist in a century dominated by science.
The touchstones of the era — the Bomb, the Big Bang, quantum physics and electronics — all bear his imprint

By FREDERIC GOLDEN

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000

He was the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed.

Even now scientists marvel at the daring of general relativity ("I still can't see how he thought of it," said the late Richard Feynman, no slouch himself). But the great physicist was also engagingly simple, trading ties and socks for mothy sweaters and sweatshirts. He tossed off pithy aphorisms ("Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it") and playful doggerel as easily as equations. Viewing the hoopla over him with humorous detachment, he variously referred to himself as the Jewish saint or artist's model. He was a cartoonist's dream come true.

Much to his surprise, his ideas, like Darwin's, reverberated beyond science, influencing modern culture from painting to poetry. At first even many scientists didn't really grasp relativity, prompting Arthur Eddington's celebrated wisecrack (asked if it was true that only three people understood relativity, the witty British astrophysicist paused, then said, "I am trying to think who the third person is"). To the world at large, relativity seemed to pull the rug out from under perceived reality. And for many advanced thinkers of the 1920s, from Dadaists to Cubists to Freudians, that was a fitting credo, reflecting what science historian David Cassidy calls "the incomprehensiveness of the contemporary scene — the fall of monarchies, the upheaval of the social order, indeed, all the turbulence of the 20th century."

Einstein's galvanizing effect on the popular imagination continued throughout his life, and after it. Fearful his grave would become a magnet for curiosity seekers, Einstein's executors secretly scattered his ashes. But they were defeated at least in part by a pathologist who carried off his brain in hopes of learning the secrets of his genius. Only recently Canadian researchers, probing those pickled remains, found that he had an unusually large inferior parietal lobe — a center of mathematical thought and spatial imagery — and shorter connections between the frontal and temporal lobes. More definitive insights, though, are emerging from old Einstein letters and papers. These are finally coming to light after years of resistance by executors eager to shield the great relativist's image.

Unlike the avuncular caricature of his later years who left his hair unshorn, helped little girls with their math homework and was a soft touch for almost any worthy cause, Einstein is emerging from these documents as a man whose unsettled private life contrasts sharply with his serene contemplation of the universe. He could be alternately warmhearted and cold; a doting father, yet aloof; an understanding, if difficult, mate, but also an egregious flirt. "Deeply and passionately [concerned] with the fate of every stranger," wrote his friend and biographer Philipp Frank, he "immediately withdrew into his shell" when relations became intimate.

Einstein himself resisted all efforts to explore his psyche, rejecting, for example, a Freudian analyst's offer to put him on the couch. But curiosity about him continues, as evidenced by the unrelenting tide of Einstein books (Amazon.com lists some 100 in print).

The pudgy first child of a bourgeois Jewish couple from southern Germany, he was strongly influenced by his domineering, musically inclined mother, who encouraged his passion for the violin and such classical composers as Bach, Mozart and Schubert. In his preteens he had a brief, intense religious experience, going so far as to chide his assimilated family for eating pork. But this fervor burned itself out, replaced, after he began exploring introductory science texts and his "holy" little geometry book, by a lifelong suspicion of all authority.

His easygoing engineer father, an unsuccessful entrepreneur in the emerging electrochemical industry, had less influence, though it was he who gave Einstein the celebrated toy compass that inspired his first "thought experiment": what, the five-year-old wondered, made the needle always point north?

At age 15, Einstein staged his first great rebellion. Left behind in Munich when his family relocated to northern Italy after another of his father's business failures, he quit his prep school because of its militaristic bent, renounced his German citizenship and eventually entered the famed Zurich Polytechnic, Switzerland's M.I.T. There he fell in love with a classmate, a Serbian physics student named Mileva Maric. Afflicted with a limp and three years his senior, she was nonetheless a soul mate. He rhapsodized about physics and music with her, called her his Dolly and fathered her illegitimate child — a sickly girl who may have died in infancy or been given up for adoption. They married despite his mother's objections, but the union would not last.

A handsome, irrepressible romantic in those years, he once had to apologize to the husband of an old flame after Mileva discovered Einstein's renewed correspondence with her. He later complained that Mileva's pathological jealousy was typical of women of such "uncommon ugliness." Perhaps remorseful about the lost child and distanced by his absorption with his work — his only real passion — and his growing fame, Mileva became increasingly unhappy. On the eve of World War I, she reluctantly accompanied Einstein to Berlin, the citadel of European physics, but found the atmosphere insufferable and soon returned to Zurich with their two sons.

By 1919, after three years of long-distance wrangling, they divorced. He agreed to give her the money from the Nobel Prize he felt sure he would win. Still, they continued to have contact, mostly having to do with their sons. The elder, Hans Albert, would become a distinguished professor of hydraulics at the University of California, Berkeley (and, like his father, a passionate sailor). The younger, Eduard, gifted in music and literature, would die in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Mileva helped support herself by tutoring in mathematics and physics. Despite speculation about her possible unacknowledged contributions to special relativity, she herself never made such claims.

Einstein, meanwhile, had taken up with a divorced cousin, Elsa, who jovially cooked and cared for him during the emotionally draining months when he made the intellectual leaps that finally resulted in general relativity. Unlike Mileva, she gave him personal space, and not just for science. As he became more widely known, ladies swarmed around him like moonlets circling a planet. These dalliances irritated Elsa, who eventually became his wife, but as she told a friend, a genius of her husband's kind could never be irreproachable in every respect.

Cavalier as he may have been about his wives, he had a deep moral sense. At the height of World War I, he risked the Kaiser's wrath by signing an antiwar petition, one of only four scientists in Germany to do so. Yet, paradoxically, he helped develop a gyrocompass for U-boats. During the troubled 1920s, when Jews were being singled out by Hitler's rising Nazi Party as the cause of Germany's defeat and economic woes, Einstein and his "Jewish physics" were a favorite target. Nazis, however, weren't his only foes. For Stalinists, relativity represented rampant capitalist individualism; for some churchmen, it meant ungodly atheism, even though Einstein, who had an impersonal Spinozan view of God, often spoke about trying to understand how the Lord (der Alte, or the Old Man) shaped the universe.

In response to Germany's growing anti-Semitism, he became a passionate Zionist, yet he also expressed concern about the rights of Arabs in any Jewish state. Forced to quit Germany when the Nazis came to power, Einstein accepted an appointment at the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., a scholarly retreat largely created around him. (Asked what he thought he should be paid, Einstein, a financial innocent, suggested $3,000 a year. The hardheaded Elsa got that upped to $16,000.) Though occupied with his lonely struggle to unify gravity and electromagnetism in a single mathematical framework, he watched Germany's saber rattling with alarm. Despite his earlier pacifism, he spoke in favor of military action against Hitler. Without fanfare, he helped scores of Jewish refugees get into an unwelcoming U.S., including a young photographer named Philippe Halsman, who would take the most famous picture of him (reproduced on the cover of this issue).

Alerted by the émigré Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard to the possibility that the Germans might build an atom bomb, he wrote F.D.R. of the danger, even though he knew little about recent developments in nuclear physics. When Szilard told Einstein about chain reactions, he was astonished: "I never thought about that at all," he said. Later, when he learned of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he uttered a pained sigh.

Following World War II, Einstein became even more outspoken. Besides campaigning for a ban on nuclear weaponry, he denounced McCarthyism and pleaded for an end to bigotry and racism. Coming as they did at the height of the cold war, the haloed professor's pronouncements seemed well meaning if naive; Life magazine listed Einstein as one of this country's 50 prominent "dupes and fellow travelers." Says Cassidy: "He had a straight moral sense that others could not always see, even other moral people." Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holton adds, "If Einstein's ideas are really naive, the world is really in pretty bad shape." Rather it seems to him that Einstein's humane and democratic instincts are "an ideal political model for the 21st century," embodying the very best of this century as well as our highest hopes for the next. What more could we ask of a man to personify the past 100 years?

posted May 15, 2008 04:27 PM            

July 1, 1946

Feb. 19, 1979

posted May 15, 2008 04:39 PM            

A total of approx. 55 min.

Albert Einstein - The Mark Steel Lectures

Part 1
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZrvPMRur0Zo

Part 2
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BRt4x8__cFo&watch_response

Part 3
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NotPQcb4tqU&watch_response

Part 4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wEEE5XoGahQ&watch_response

Part 5
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tEOrqLb-u-s&watch_response

posted May 21, 2008 06:42 PM            

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.

Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).
It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb.
This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices
but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

The world is too dangerous to live in, not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.

It is horrifying to realize that the poison of militarism and imperialism threatens to bring undesirable changes in the political attitude of the United States…
What we see at work is not an expression of the sentiments of the American people;
rather, it reflects the will of a powerful minority which uses its economic power to control the organs of political life.

I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism.

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government.
Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country.
I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.

Members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who,
for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people
do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.

Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.
An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student,
who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor,
and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils,
namely through the establishment of a socialist economy,
accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force, and artificial authority.
Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity, and the self-confidence of pupils, and produces a subservient subject.

I do not know how World War III will be fought but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones!

posted May 21, 2008 08:14 PM            

Methinks you're the one who was easily seduced.

posted May 21, 2008 11:17 PM            

Mr. Needham said the letters show what Einstein scholars already know: that the great physicist was also a great writer. Some of the passages read like poetry. ''Men are living now just the way they were before, as if we didn't have a new, all-overshadowing danger to deal with, and it's clear, that they have learned nothing from the horrors they have experienced,'' he writes on December 30, 1945. ''The little intrigues, with which they complicated their lives before, take up again the greatest part of their thoughts. What a strange species we are.''

posted May 22, 2008 12:58 AM            

IIRC (I'm too lazy to look it up), Tucker was among the first "anarchocapitalists" that argued for true capitalist anarchy (which means no government for the richest to buy off and turn into a tool of oppression, at least until the socialists got a chance to practice the same oppression by seizing the government themselves from the capitalists), and back then they often called themselves socialists, too. Like the word "liberal," the word was generally used in a very different way than it is today. So if Einstein truly kept up with socialist theory from a nonauthoritarian standpoint, he should've been aware of this.

European socialism and anarchism tended to be different in Europe because of historical factors being involved (again, I don't want to get into that, just that the landholders--and thus typical landlords--were typically from noble families left over from the waning of feudalism, unlike the USA, and as a result the peasants tended to remain peasants). There was the anarchistic socialist experiment during the Spanish Civil War that I find intriguing, and I'd think all the socialists of the world must've watched closely (remember, that was before Einstein's speech). That should've also taught him that Communism was NOT a friend of society, nor an end to oppression of man by man (I think the tongue in cheek saying is, "Under capitalism, man exploits man; under communism, just the opposite"). At least if he thought of the anarchistic kinds of socialism (which I thought he had until now), then I could see why he'd promote socialism, given the context of his day.

(But it should be kept in mind that while the accomplishments of the Spanish anarchists--who called themselves socialists--were indeed impressive,their accomplishments were little different than if they'd been forced to do the same thing for the Fascists & Commies, since both armies had forged a temporary truce as neither one were enough to fight the Anarchists and win, and were determined to wipe them all out: that is, the Anarchists HAD to work together and do all that they did in order to avoid immanent destruction, just as they would've had they been slave labor for the regimes fighting for power in Spain at the time.

Nevertheless, I'd have LOVED it if the Anarchists had won, simply to see if they could continue to function without hierarchal government AFTER the war, or if they'd fall apart once their survival was no longer immediately threatened. Keep in mind that the Anarchists were also allied to those fighting to establish a Republic in Spain, perhaps ironic that those ID themselves as "socialists" considered the Republicans the least evil when compared to Communists and Fascists, both socialist movements that--unlike the Spanish Republicans--were also hostile to free enterprise and USA capitalists! Granted, the tortures and attrocities Communist forces & Fascist forces did to the Spanish Anarchists were nightmarish, whereas those fighting for a Republic were much more humane. But in any case, had the Anarchists won, they'd also have to come up with a way to co-exist with the Republicans as well, unless they wanted to go to war again.)

While I sympathize with much of what he said there in terms of forces at work (though I think he overstates them, and ignores some of the good--and if the capitalists did have such control over the media, churches, and schools, then why wasn't he and countless others not a mindless drone of capitalist society, if it were as powerful as he said?), I'm disappointed that he reached the conclusions that he did.

As someone who worked against the Nazis himself, he should've known that socialism didn't fix the inequalities of society nor cure the ills of "crony capitalism" as he found in the USA, but if anything, made it even more toxic. That is, top-down socialism is a cure worse than the disease.

And decades before Einstein made this speech, Emma Goldman had written quite a bit about her disillusionment with Russia and declared top-down socialism (especially Communism) an enemy even greater than the Czar of Russia and the capitalists of the USA (and until she experienced Soviet Russia, the USA capitalists and Russia's Czar had been THE worst humanity had to offer before Soviet Russia as far as she was concerned!)

But at least he did ask the question, which was not included in the Einstein speech above:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Einstein.htm

quote:

---

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

---

posted May 22, 2008 12:59 AM            

Ah well, just because Einstein was an academic genius doesn't mean that he therefore had good sense, or that he was people smart (come to think of it, he was what today are called "geeks," and they* generally are infamous for being brilliant, but very stupid when it comes to dealing with people, or even in understanding them).

(*I say "they," but I have enough "geek" characteristics myself that I don't care when I'm included among them. I never claim to be one though as I can easily be outgeeked by anyone trying to be geekier-than-thou. )

OTOH, while I disagree strongly with Einstein's ideology, I much prefer his values to the ones displayed here by a scientist at a 1955 Atomic Energy Commission conference, talking about what our descendants might be like after a nuclear war.

"They might not be highly civilized like we are. They might not know anything about atomic warfare, for example."

posted May 23, 2008 08:18 PM            

quote:

---

BUD, where did you hear that?

Methinks you're the one who was easily seduced.

---

posted May 23, 2008 08:57 PM            

Jeez, believe no one BUD when it comes to accepting worldviews. Not even a enlightened person if you happen to bump in to him/her. No truth can ever be uttered by any one any time if their feets are touching the grounds LOL. They may be 99.99 percent accurate, but that still leaves 0.01 LOL Unless he/she tells you to trust him/her explicitly on historic events.
If they are historians by profession then the chance of they misquoting is less but still not 0.

Einstein greatly predicted E=mc2 (matter can be converted to energy) but he didn't have talents to put that equation in to practise. Not that I expect him to have that talent. Don't get me wrong that I am trying to downplay Einstein's geniusness. No. Not my intention. There were 4-6 other scientists working on the problem and one of them would have arrived at the same result. Even he acknowledged the same. But I still love the simplicity in which he derived the equations and his greatest "blunder" cosmological constant was not a blunder after all. Heheh... have to get in to that someother day.

Anyhow, thats where Oppenheimer and other scientists and engineers come in to the picture.

Einstein is an example of a guy who would jump in to the fire and then cry "Heh that burns". Let me explain what I mean. He was so naive to encourage the Amercian president that America must have a bomb. After he saw with his eyes the bomb exploding and the devastation, he wished that he was born a plumber. I can't remember his exact quote. Can you understand his state though? I will leave with that as food for thought

posted May 23, 2008 10:03 PM            

quote:

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Values and Ideology are 2 completely different things. Change the ideology and not the values and all you change is HOW things get done, not WHAT gets done. That's why when the Ideology was radically changed in Russia without the values changing, the government still perpetuated the same abuses, and they still became industrialized at the cost of their environmental health: because their VALUES were the same as before the revolution.

---

Congrats. You might be the first person amoung the lot who actually phrased out the problem with the basis of any type of governmental system or for that matter, societies and law in general. Its all down to basic preception sadly and you just demonstrated as to why is that.