Einstein

Science as spiritual inspiration

My husband Joel Primack died four months ago, and I am nostalgic for who he was – brilliant, loving, and endlessly entertaining. For the first ten years of Joel’s life as a budding scientist, Albert Einstein was a person in the news, a living hero, discoverer of the deep secrets of the universe, and a force for uniting the nations to prevent nuclear war.

He was an enormous influence on Joel, who also became a physicist, an astrophysicist, a discoverer of deep secrets of the universe, and a force for scientific responsibility to this world. It did not occur to Joel as a child that Einstein did not have the happiest life.

I too was fascinated by Einstein, starting the day my high school physics teacher, unable to answer my questions, handed me a little paperback, “The Universe and Dr. Einstein.” It blew my mind and set me on a lifelong journey to understand not only the physical universe but how the great scientists who discover it interpret spirituality.

I was especially intrigued by Einstein’s amazing statement that scientific research was “the only creative religious activity of our time.”

Joel and I were once asked to write for a British anthology on Religious Naturalism, an article on “Einstein’s View of God.” It seemed to me that to write an article with that title, the only way to avoid reeking of arrogance without even being right, was to rely on Einstein’s own words from his many books and essays. For example,

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings…Whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in [science] is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence…Cosmic religious feeling knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image…In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.”

Our article presented a little window onto Einstein’s public spiritual self. We never ventured into how his life might have felt from the inside. How could anyone know? For this kind of wild speculation, there is only art.

Einstein lived in a Jewish metaphor world. In his writing he compared himself to Moses, the Lawgiver for the Moral World, implying that he, Einstein, would be the Lawgiver for the Physical World. That was the inspiration for this song.

Joel loved listening to it, even though my viewpoint surprised him. I performed it the first time at a Phi Beta Kappa conference where Joel was the speaker and I was the entertainment. An elderly woman came up to me afterward and said that she had driven three hours to get to the conference, and this song alone was worth it – one of the nicest compliments I have ever received.

If you have been following along in this Substack (and if you haven’t, WHY NOT?), you may recall another song I’ve posted here, “Galileo’s Logic,” which is also a speculation on a great scientist’s view of God, inspired by his own words.

Einstein

In 1905 three papers

With esoteric names

Shattered deep beliefs of science

Brought a young man his first fame

Never spoke until he was three

Teachers frowned, said he would never be

Anything

He paid no more attention to them than to kings

He knew that God had spoken to him

Shown him what no one else had seen

And it filled his life with awe:

The world was not the way it seemed

And they showered him with honors

Though those who understood were few

Those blinding flashes of insight

That swept through physics like the truth

Free as a child in Wonderland

His mind-tools played with the flight

Of his fantasy as it soared alone

On a beam of light

He knew that God had spoken to him

He stood upon his own Sinai

Alone before the fire

A universe to codify

And they pestered him with letters

Mostly asking for advice

“I know I’m on the right track,” they’d say

“But this idea’s so hard to crystallize”

He wrote back as many letters as they

The scientific Dear Abby of his day

And he would fight, he would fight

Where his sense of order told him he was right

He knew that God had spoken to him

Shown him the works of God’s own hand

Shown him the harmony of nature

But not the harmony of man

He saw his homeland rotting

The worst of all its traits revealed

Brewing violence and terror

Hatred that could not heal

He helped many escape before the last

But the times were darkening fast

And there was war, there was war

To end with a blast never heard before

Anguish for the weapon

His own physics had borne

Into a world

That knew no self-control

He strove to unify the nations

Like theories

But the times were not yet ripe

For either goal

He knew that God had spoken to him

Shown him the works of God’s own hand

But he wondered if like Moses

He’d never reach the Promised Land

And they showered him with honors

Venerated him all of his days

But in physics they were not following him

There were other theories, other ways

He loved that God had spoken to him

Shown him the works of God’s own hand

But he had not been clever

Enough to understand.