Ideas And Opinions
by Albert Einstein
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Book Summary Information
Author: Albert EinsteinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-06-06
ISBN: 0517884402
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Broadway
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780517884409
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Ideas And Opinions
Book Review: Accelerated Movement
Summary: 5 Stars
This is great reading, important reading. Impressive stuff. I know I'm not the first person to say this but, man that Einstein was a brilliant guy.
"Ideas and Opinions" is a collection of his writings over a lifetime. It is broken up into sections, with some of the more interesting work being well after his scientific genius days. Chapters include writings on freedom, religion, politics, government, pacifism, Judaism and the plight of the Jewish people, as well as a nice sampling of scientific essays.
A major theme that emerged for me, recently re-reading this, is the gradual transformation of creative, rational intelligence into true astute wisdom.
The young mind is still being myelinated, with rapid changes, lots of plasticity, pruning of excess neuronal connections, restructuring of synaptic connectivity. In this stage, memories and emotions are processed by the limbic system but drive the body and the mind by variously igniting or diminishing arousal as mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The neocortex, particularly frontal lobes communicating with the parietal lobes, are the source of the brilliance of the Theory of Relativity. It takes the ability to think outside of norms, think creatively (maybe time is unreal, maybe matter and energy are the same thing...), and then have the brilliance to think it through, pull it all together. But let's take an honest look. Just about everything Einstein contributed to our scientific knowledge stemmed from thought experiments he did in his twenties. Those were some exceptional frontal lobes, and they were driven to success by a limbic system, but a limbic system speaking through that primitive endocrine axis, that endocrine system that's no more sophisticated than a rat's, little more the a chicken's.
But then something changes. The brain is mostly done sealing over new tracks of neocortex, but the limbic system is being integrated more and more with the neocortex. Emotions and logic learn to communicate in ways that bypass the reptilian paleocortex. This is when religiosity turns into spirituality. This is when lust begins to approach unselfish love. This is the source of the wisdom of the elderly. Obviously, Einstein was exceptionally bright to start with and had a nice head-start here, but one can track his thinking chronologically and really see a continuous process, a developmental process, a mode of intelligence revamping, subtle neuronal renovations yielding a distinct mode of reason.
There's so much to comment on here, volumes could be written interpreting his communications, and probably have been. There are lots of relevant angles to focus on, but nothing broke my heart like reading his essays written between the two world wars, reading these pleas to the people and governments of the world, especially reading this in short spurts on the train after listening to the world news in recent days while I trudge, half-bleary, pre-caffeinated, to the train station:
"Few of us still cling to the notion that acts of violence in the shape of wars are either advantageous or worthy of humanity as a method of solving international problems. But we are not consistent enough to make vigorous efforts on behalf of the measures which might prevent war, that savage and unworthy relic of the age of barbarism. It requires some power of reflection to see the issue clearly and a certain courage to serve this great cause resolutely and effectively"... "this failure is due not only to the intrigues of ambitious and unscrupulous politicians but also to the indifference and slackness of the public in all countries..." Boy, lucky for us we had true intellectuals around, glad we got that under control.
All this stuff I'm fumbling to say, Einstein's on it, he gets it, we see it in a private letter to Sigmund Freud, where he invokes the efforts of "Jesus Christ to Goethe to Kant" in the struggle against violence as the means to an end: "You have shown with impelling lucidity how inseparably the combative and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with those of love and life. But at the same time there shines through the cogent logic of your arguments a deep longing for the great goal of internal and external liberation of mankind from war." Yeah, ditto. That's what I'm trying to say.
Summary of Ideas And Opinions
A new edition of the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein's popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The selections range from his earliest days as a theoretical physicist to his death in 1955; from such subjects as relativity, nuclear war or peace, and religion and science, to human rights, economics, and government.Collections & Readers Books
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