Article July 11, 2005 Issue

SCIENCE AND RELIGION A CENTURY AFTER EINSTEIN'S 'MIRACLE YEAR'

By David A. Cornell

Many regard 1905 as the most remarkable year of creative output by a single scientist in recorded history. Albert Einstein published three papers in 1905 that revolutionized our views of heat, light, and space-time. Recognizing 2005 as the centennial World Year of Physics, schools, colleges, universities, and many scientific organizations worldwide have been promoting a variety of activities to celebrate progress in Einstein's discipline of physics.

One of Einstein's papers acknowledged microscopic movement to individual molecules, and explained the cause of random motion of tiny particles—the so-called Brownian motion—in warm liquids as resulting from bombardment by moving molecules. A second paper assigned a fixed quantity of energy to a speck of light (called a photon), and proposed that the photon was absorbed by a particle, which utilized the photon's energy in lifting itself above the bonds of its environment in the process—in what's known as "photoelectric effect." In his third paper Einstein sought to remove an asymmetry between the laws of optics and those of mechanics, by advancing the postulate of relativity, which asserts that the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their motion.

Perhaps just as significant as his discoveries in physics—and what endear him more to the public at large—are Einstein's spiritual qualities. Examples abound. His three most favorite things were his sailboat, violin, and approval by colleagues. He tolerated and encouraged others to listen to thinkers who had views wildly divergent from the accepted norm. A noteworthy example of this was his open-minded encouragement of the visit to Princeton by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of the 1950 book Worlds in Collision, which was vilified for advancing novel assertions about planetary history without scientific evidence to support them. Especially pertinent to the philosophy of science and religion was Einstein's conviction of the union of Spirit and the natural universe. He expressed his urge to understand the laws of nature as a wish to hear God speak. The rest, he famously said, was "just details."

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