Science as Religion

I Am a Part of Infinity: The Spiritual Journey of Albert Einstein by Kieran Fox.  Basic Books.  322 pp. $30.00 ****

The basic premise of this book is that Albert Einstein’s life’s work stemmed from an essentially religious feeling of awe and wonder at the workings of the universe.  Kiernan Fox cites an early moment when one of Einstein’s uncles gave him a compass when he was five, and the young man was amazed that, no matter where he went, the needle always pointed to North.  He wanted to understand the force behind a fact like that.

Another intriguing fact is that Einstein’s most famous discovery, didn’t originate in a process of thinking, but in another use of the mind altogether.  “It is not easy to talk about how I reached the idea of the theory of relativity,” he said.  “There were so many hidden complexities to motivate my thought.”  He also said, “I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me that my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.”

He referred to his process as “thought experiments,” and Fox tells us that his “best-known vision occurred at just sixteen years old, when he imagined himself traveling through the vacuum of space at the same speed as light itself.  He soon forged this thought experiment into a formal theory that revolutionized physics: special relativity.”  People spoke about such understanding in religious terms.  Even a famous atheist like Bertrand Russell said that, “For all who were inspired by Pythagoras,” mathematics “retained an element of ecstatic revelation.”  It seemed to resemble an enlightenment experience, and Einstein spoke of it just that way.  “He who finds a thought that lets us penetrate even a little deeper into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted a great grace.”
I had the vague notion in my head that Einstein spent most of his time pondering physics.  I got that idea from an anecdote I once read.  A friend who was supposed to meet him for lunch somewhere got held up and arrived late.  He apologized for keeping Einstein from his work.  Einstein said something to the effect of, “I can work here as well as anywhere.”  He didn’t need particular surroundings.  He was always “working,” by which he meant, I assume, contemplating the universe.

Actually, he was a prolific reader, and when he died had a library of 2400 books.  Kiernan Fox had access to these books, and pored through them to see what interested the man.  One part of his collection centered on Eastern philosophy, including works on Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  He found much of what he read to be in agreement with his view of things, which was that the universe was powered by what he thought of as an “arch-force,” not a personal God but an overwhelming source of creation and destruction.   Einstein also traveled all over the world meeting religious figures of all kinds, including Buddhists in Japan and, in India, Rabindranath Tagore, who had several long conversations with him.  He was intrigued by the vision of reality of these people but was never persuaded to undertake their kind of spiritual practice.  He encountered the vastness of the universe through his work.

One name that keeps recurring in this book is Pythagoras, about whom not much is known but who has also acquired a variety of legends around him.  He too seemed to believe that the universe could best be explained mathematically and saw its harmony in mathematical terms.  He felt that music also expressed the essential harmony of things (Einstein was an amateur musician, and thought that if he hadn’t been a scientist, he might have devoted himself to music), and he did apparently engage in various spiritual practices, perhaps something resembling Buddhist meditation (he lived at roughly the time of the Buddha).

Subsequent thinkers had a similar bent.  Einstein also had a strong interest in Spinoza, and said on various occasion, when asked if he believe in God, that he believed in the God of Spinoza.  Like Pythagoras, Spinoza’s way of explaining things verged on being mathematical, or at least technical, and Einstein seemed to have read his work thoroughly.  Another thinker in the same vein was Schopenhauer, who was similarly influenced by Eastern thought and by Spinoza’s view of things.

Einstein and the physicists who followed him—especially Wolfgang Pauli—seemed to believe that the universe could somehow be “known” scientifically, that it would be possible to extend human knowledge in such a way that it could take everything in.  That seems to me to be the major difference with Eastern thought, at least the Buddhism I’m familiar with, which suggests that you can experience reality but not know it: you can’t see it, but you can be it.  In fact, Don’t Know Mind, or Beginner’s Mind, is seen as a possible virtue.  The scientific approach is another way altogether.

The question is: is it really possible to “know,” that is to understand, the workings of the universe?  Einstein toward the end of his life seemed to be having doubts.  I think that he saw the theoretical possibility while not really believing in the reality.  Though some of his discoveries led to the branch of physics known as Quantum Mechanics (this part of the discussion left me in the dust), he ultimately thought the Quantum physicists were on the wrong track and would have to abandon that perspective to achieve real progress.  They thought he was just a (brilliant) old guy who was out of touch.

In a way it seems like the way Buddhists talk about “perfect and complete enlightenment” (a phrase which people threw around at the Insight Meditation Society).  Is there really such a thing? I used to think.  If the universe is infinite, do you really ever get to the end of it?[1]  There are those who say that, in some other realm, the Buddha is still practicing.  It seems that scientists will be practicing their method forever as well.  Both approaches seem equally religious to me.

[1] And if it’s infinite, how do you ever know where you are in terms of enlightenment?  If there’s no end, there’s no other marker.