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| Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology
ISBN: 9781400840878
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Einstein Albert 1879–1955 -- Religion; Religion and science;
Given the voluminous literature on Albert Einstein (including more than a dozen biographies in the 1990s alone), it is surprising that so little scholarly attention has been paid to the scientist's religious views. Israeli physics professor Jammer, who knew Einstein personally, shows us an Einstein whose nominal childhood faith turned to atheism while preparing for a bar mitzvah that never took place. From then on, Einstein's religious views were a bundle of apparent contradictions: he corresponded with the world's great spiritual leaders yet disapproved of religious instruction for his sons, arguing that it was "contrary to all scientific thinking." He claimed that "science without religion is lame" but never set foot in a synagogue and requested not to be buried in the Jewish tradition. While eluding definitive conclusions about Einstein's deistic "cosmic religion," Jammer demonstrates that religion fascinated the man throughout his career, prompting him to publish articles in the New York Times and elsewhere. Chapters 1 and 2 profile Einstein's religious development and the controversial reception his ideas found with theologians, rabbis and Christian clergy. The more recondite chapter 3 explores the theological implications of Einstein's theories (Jammer does not exaggerate when he cautions the reader that this section "requires some familiarity with the foundations of modern physics"). Jammer's writing is not always as sophisticated as his ideas; he relies too heavily on long quotations from other sources and abstruse jargon. In all, though, this is a compelling, long overdue treatment of a neglected topic. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Max Jammer is Professor of Physics Emeritus and former Rector at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He is the author of a number of treatises on the foundations of physics, including Concepts of Space , which contains a preface by Albert Einstein, and The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics , which was read in draft by Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg. For his publications, most of which have been translated into several languages, Jammer has received numerous awards, among them the prestigious Monograph Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In writing Einstein and Religion , Jammer used as his sources the Einstein Archive at the National and University Library in Jerusalem and the library of the Union Theological Seminary in New York. |
