Einstein’s Importance to Physics, Philosophy, and Politics

Abstract

Imagine that several centuries from now there will be people who are interested in phases of the history of man long since past, and let us ask ourselves which single name in our century will have the best chance of being known to them. Certainly, we contemporaries have been most shaken by the political events. But our political crises and those responsible for them will one day be overshadowed by the crises, and if we are lucky, their solutions, which are yet to come. If solutions are to be found, perhaps our radical politicians will appear too inhuman to the people of the future, our humane politicians not radical enough; perhaps of all the great men of our century, only Gandhi will stand up to their judgment. Our century’s art will perhaps be remembered as a seismograph of earth-shaking events. The earth-quakes are triggered by technical progress, and this, in turn, is made possible by science. But science is at its greatest, and is in the end most effective, where it seeks not to change the world, but rather to find truth. The most famous scientist of our century is Einstein.