5 Valuable Lessons from Albert Einstein

The United States is the land of immigrants and pilgrims. It’s also the land of expats and émigrés, of the banished and the victims of authoritarian regimes. Historically, our country has been (and today for many it remains) a sanctuary from hostile powers. We can still take pride in saying, “I live in the land of the free.”

Among the forcibly exiled who have called the U.S. “home,” Nobel Prize laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn left his native Russia due to the reception of The Gulag Archipelago and resettled in rural Vermont. He remained critical of both the Soviet brand of Communism and the narratives of Western media.

Among the modern escapees who enjoy peace and citizenship in the country, the blind lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng fled house arrest in China and made it to a U.S. embassy in Beijing. From there, he gained safe transportation to the states. His crime was digging up too much dirt on the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of citizens and going public with it.

The lives of both these men present us with two facts. A free press is a powerful thing. So is immunity from harm. Both, for the moment, seem as accessible as the air we breathe here in the U.S.

This article concerns another man who faced authoritarianism in his motherland and abandoned her for westerly shores. It was not Communism that Albert Einstein faced — but fascism. In 1933, the world-famous scientist decided to leave Germany, where he was the target of intensifying Nazi aggression.

“As long as I have any choice in the matter, I will live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule,” stated Einstein. He could no longer breathe easily in Germany.

He immigrated and accepted the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton University. The papers heralded his arrival, dubbing him the “pope of physics.” By 1940, Mr. Einstein was a full-fledged U.S. citizen.

It was on American soil and on behalf of this country’s interests that Einstein suggested to President Roosevelt that U.S. scientists begin the research that paved the way to the atomic bomb, although he was later distraught by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Often the poster child of science, Einstein’s philosophical merit is typically neglected. But here we plan to dive into five of Einstein’s most evocative ruminations that we might apply to society and to our lives.

Against Nationalism

In a mini ramble published in the New Yorker in 1933, editorial writer and children’s author E.B. White praised Einstein for the message in a then-recent speech about nationalism. White writes, “‘Behind it,’ he said, ‘are the forces inimical to life.’” Einstein would know. He had but recently come from Germany, whose political leaders put on airs of superiority. In the years to come, the Nazis would destroy life on a scale previously unimaginable.

White paints a picture of the theoretical physicist: “Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise…a great thinker, speaking not as Jew but as philosopher, warns us: these are the forces inimical to life.” Indeed, they are.

Let us be clear: Patriotism and nationalism are not synonymous. Patriotism involves love and fervor for one’s country but not at the expense of other countries or peoples. Nationalism, on the other hand, is marked by aggression and superiority, a belief that one’s own race is above all other nationalities.

It was this kind of superiority, this breed of nationalism, that distinguished the atrocious actions of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. The only remedy for this hate is to show charity toward others, even those who are different from us. It means treating others the way we wish to be treated and respecting their inalienable dignity.

Curiosity about an Ordered Universe

In his book Not Forgotten, George Weigel includes a reflection on Einstein. In the author’s eyes, he exemplified intuition as well as curiosity. Both characteristics contributed to what Weigel sees as one of Einstein’s greatest virtues — belief in a universe that displays orderly structure and inherent meaningfulness.

Einstein disagreed with Werner Heisenberg and other peers who believed that, on the subatomic plane, the principles of cause-and-effect cease to apply. That means that the inherent order of creation would deteriorate. Einstein failed to subscribe to the notion and instead searched for a “unified field theory” but was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the search showcases a noble determination. Curiosity spurs us on to find an answer.

As Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Metaphysics Is Necessary

In “Remarks on Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Knowledge,” Einstein takes a brisk walk through the history of philosophy. He says that Plato, in “philosophy’s childhood,” overstressed ideas, or theory, in contrast with the senses and “empirically experienceable things.” The opposite of this is another line of thinking which he calls the “illusion of naïve realism, according to which things ‘are’ as they are perceived by us through our senses.”

For a scientist of Einstein’s standing to say that perceiving things as they appear to our senses is “naïve” may surprise us. What he goes on to say is that metaphysics, or a more abstract mode of thinking rooted in a priori knowledge (based on theoretical deduction) is necessary. Building off Kant’s thoughts on the matter, Einstein says that “in thinking we use, with a certain ‘right,’ concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience, if the situation is viewed from the logical point of view.”

He says that when we ponder the propositions of geometry or a series of integers, for example, we utilize reason and logic to order some of our sensory experiences. Yet, “there is no way in which this concept could be made to grow…directly out of sense experiences.” In other words, there was an element of creativity and of logic in developing a system of integers. Man’s logic molded a tool to help him reveal part of the numerical order.

Something else that falls into the realm of such theoretical deduction is the principle of causality, which states that every effect has a cause. For instance, if I see smoke billowing up over my neighbor’s fence, I know fire is the cause. If my bird bath is filled with water, I can reasonably presume the cause was last night’s rainfall. And if, by evening, I look at the cat food bowls and find them empty, I understand our furry feline friends are the culprits. All of these take into account sensory observations but also depend on theoretical presumptions.

According to Einstein, the philosopher David Hume bequeathed an unhealthy “fear of metaphysics,” which is a “malady of contemporary empiricistic philosophizing.” Science is a path to knowledge, but so is metaphysics. In Einstein’s words, “one can, after all, not get along without ‘metaphysics.’”

Science and Religion Work Together

Einstein was a firm believer that science cannot be blamed for man’s moral shortcomings because ethics is outside the realm that science pertains to. Science helps us understand and explain nature; it does not tell us how to interact with nature or with one another. In a 1939 address at Princeton Theological Seminary, Einstein said that “knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.”

And how do we determine the highest goal of the human person? Einstein says, “The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.”

Religion then deals with ethics. Not only this, but these two branches of thought work well together. They share “strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies,” claimed Einstein in a 1941 essay as part of the symposium Science, Philosophy and Religion. Religion directs us to the right goals, he says, but science shows us what is at our disposal for meeting those goals. Complementarily, scientists are “imbued with the aspiration toward truth,” a sentiment which “springs from the sphere of religion.”

Existence is rational, and scientists believe this. “I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith,” says Einstein. “The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Faith and reason can and should be integrated, thus being mutually beneficial.

The Meritorious Life

The last and most significant idea of Einstein’s that I wish to leave you with can be summed up in a single quote: “I believe in one thing — that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.” 

Our lives are not meant to be our own. Life doesn’t run on egotism and self-accomplishments. Life comes from love and is directed toward love, which means selflessly giving what we do have to those who need it, whether it be our time or talents or money.

Charity means doing what is best for those around me, even and especially when doing so doesn’t guarantee my own self-gain. As Einstein might say, in living for others, we find ourselves fulfilling that higher goal.