Einstein Albert - Einstein and religion : physics and theology

ALBERT EINSTEIN is generally regarded as the greatest theoretical physicist of the twentieth century or possibly of all times. In any case, modern physics bears his impact more than that of any other physicist. His contributions to atomic physicsamong them, his study of the photo-electric effect, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and his theory of relativity with its profound modifications of the notions of space, time, and gravitationhave fundamentally changed and deepened our physical and philosophical conception of the universe. Apart from his scientific ingenuity, his courageous struggle for human rights, social justice, and international peace has assured him a unique place in the history of our age.

It is therefore not surprising that a great number of biographies and historical studies have been written about Einstein's life and work. One of them, published in 1966, stated that in recent years some four hundred books about Einstein and his work have appeared.

Yet, none of these biographies, including the recent publications on previously concealed facts about Einstein's private life, gives an adequate account, if any, of an important facet of his life: his undogmatic and yet profound religiosity and his philosophy of religion. Even John Stachel's excellent piece of documentary research on Einstein's Jewish identity deals, as does Gerald E. Tauber's Einstein on Zionism, Arabs and Palestine, with Einstein's conception of Judaism primarily from the sociopolitical point of view.

In some biographies, especially those written while Einstein was still alive, occasional references to his early religiosity can be found. But throughout Einstein's life, including his later years, religious sentiments and theological reflections played a role of much greater importance than any of his biographers seems to have realized.

To prove this contention and thus fill an important lacuna in the biographical literature about Einstein is one of the objectives of this monograph. Were it the only aim, the title of the book would have been Einstein's Religion, not Einstein and Religion.

This monograph intends to study not only how deeply religion affected Einstein and his work, but also conversely, how deeply Einstein's work, and in particular his theory of relativity, affected theological thought, a problem that has not yet been explored systematically. The investigation of such a possible interaction between modern physics and theology is, of course, apt to throw new light on the much discussed controversy about the relation between religion and science, an issue that was also of cardinal importance in Einstein's philosophy of religion.

The present monograph is a revised and considerably enlarged version of my booklet, Einstein und die Religion, published in 1995 by the Universittsverlag Konstanz in Germany. The German contains a foreword by the noted physicist and cosmologist Jrgen Audretsch and an epilogue by the well-known physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizscker. Like the present monograph, it contains three different, though interrelated, chapters. The first chapter describes Einstein's personal attitude toward religion from his early youth until his death and thus supplements the existing Einstein biographies. It is based on a lecture that I delivered on October 26, 1993, at Einstein's summer house in Caputh, a small town in the state of Brandenburg near Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin. Einstein bought this block house with his life savings in 1929 and stayed there for the last three summers before he left Germany in 1932, when he fled the impending Nazi terror and never returned to his native country. The dramatic history of this simple wooden building, the only physical reminder of the great physicist's presence in Germany, has After the reunification of Germany, the Einstein House became a center for cultural activities.

In October 1993, Caputh celebrated the 675th anniversary of its foundation. In order to commemorate Caputh's most famous former citizen on this occasion, the minister of science in the state of Brandenburg, together with Caputh's Brgermeister Dr. Grtte, invited me, because of my personal acquaintance with Einstein, to deliver a lecture on Einstein. Because the lecture should convey something new and also be comprehensible to nonphysicists, I decidedin consultation with Caputh's Pastor, Dr. H. Heilmann, advocate Ed Dellian, and Dr. Gary Smith, the director of the Einstein Forumthat Einstein's religion would be an appropriate topic. I accepted the invitation although I was at first not quite sure whether this topic would be sufficiently thought-provoking for such an occasion. I regretted, of course, that I had never raised this subject in any of my conversations with Einstein. When I consulted the Einstein Archive at the Hebrew National and University Library in Jerusalem and other sources, I soon realized that religion played an important role in Einstein's emotional and intellectual life and that the Swiss novelist and playwright Friedrich Drrenmatt was not all wrong when

In fact, the audience response at the Einstein House and the coverage of the lecture in the press showed that the topic touched upon issues whose relevance exceeded by far the confines of a specific biographical report and raised problems of general interest to every critically thinking person.

As mentioned above, the first chapter deals with Einstein's personal attitude toward religion from his school days until his death in 1955. The second chapter discusses what Einstein has written in his essays and in his correspondence about the nature of religion and its role in human society. The third and final chapter studies the influence, if any, of his scientific work on theological thought.