FREE ESSAY ON A PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE

A PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE

A PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE
December 1, 1998
Paper # 2
Intro to Philosophy
Fifty years ago the single greatest philosopher walked upon this earth. How can I be so
dauntless as to refer to one man as The Greatest philosopher? The answer is simple. All
philosophers ask questions. Few of these questions will produce earth-shattering
revelations and even fewer will change the world. Out of the handful of philosophers who
have made a difference in the world I can think of only one who has, by use of an amazing
mind and knowledge of complex mathematics, changed the world forever.
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm Germany on March 14, 1879, and spent his youth in Munich,
where his family owned a small shop that manufactured electric machinery. He did not talk
until the age of three, but even as a youth he showed a brilliant curiosity about nature
and an ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts. At the age of twelve he
taught himself Euclidean geometry.
Einstein hated the dull regimentation and unimaginative spirit of school in Munich. When
repeated business failure led the family to leave Germany for Milan, Italy, Einstein, who
was then fifteen years old, used the opportunity to withdraw from the school. He spent a
year with his parents in Milan, and when it became clear that he would have to make his
own way in the world, he finished secondary school in Arrau Switzerland, and entered the
Swiss National Polytechnic in Zurich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction
there. He often cut classes and used the time to study Physics on his own or to play his
beloved violin. He passed his examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of
a classmate. His professors did not think highly of him and would not recommend him for a
university position.
For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902 he secured a
position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903 he married Mileva
Maric who had been a classmate of his at the Polytechnic ("Einstein, Albert"). They had
two sons but eventually divorced. Einstein later remarried.
After 1919, Einstein became internationally renowned. He accrued honors and awards,
including the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, from various world scientific societies.
His visit to any part of the world became a national event; photographers and reporters
followed him everywhere. While regretting his loss of privacy, Einstein capitalized on
his fame to further his own personal and political views.
The two social movements that received his full personal support were Pacifism,
opposition to war and other violence, and Zionism, movement to unite the Jewish people of
the Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine. During World War I he was one of a
handful of academics willing to publicly decry Germany's involvement in the war. After
the war his continued support of Pacifist and Zionist goals made him the target of
viscous attacks by anti-Semitic and right -wing elements in Germany. Even his scientific
theories were publicly ridiculed, especially the theory of relativity ("Einstein,
Albert").
When Hitler came to power, Einstein immediately decided to leave Germany for the United
States. He took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. While
continuing his efforts on behalf of world Zionism, Einstein renounced his former Pacifist
stand in the face of the awesome threat to humankind posed by the Nazi regime in
Germany.
In 1939 Einstein collaborated with several other physicists in writing a letter to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out the possibility of making an atomic bomb
and the likelihood that the German government was embarking on such a course. The letter,
which bore only Einstein's signature, helped lend urgency to efforts in the U.S. to build
the atomic bomb, but Einstein played no role in the work and knew nothing about it at the
time.
After the war, Einstein was active in the case of international disarmament and world
government. He continued his active support of Zionism but declined the offer made by the
leaders of Israel to become president of that country. In the U.S. during the late 1940s
and early '50s he spoke out on the need for the nations intellectuals to make any
sacrifice necessary to preserve political freedom. Einstein died in Princeton on April
18, 1955.
Einstein's works cover areas of physics which many of us cannot fully understand. He
introduced ideas which may one day bring the many mysteries of the universe into light,
ideas which made it possible for man to destroy himself or launch himself toward bigger
and better things, possibly the next step in the process of intellectual evolution.
Many people have problems agreeing with Einstein's work. The problem that others have
with his work is not because it was too mathematically complex or technically obscure;
the problem resulted, rather, from Einstein's beliefs about the nature of good theories
and the relationship between experiment and theory. Although he maintained that the only
source of knowledge is experience, he also believed that scientific theories are the free
creation of a finally tuned physical intuition and that the premises on which theories
are based cannot be connected logically to experiment. A good theory, therefore, is one
in which a minimum number of postulates is required to account for the physical evidence.
This sparseness of postulates, a feature of all Einstein's work, was what made his work
so difficult for colleagues to comprehend, let alone support.
My fascination with Einstein as a philosopher does not stem from his positions on
Pacifism or Zionism. It is the ability he held to philosophize formerly incomprehensible
elements in nature and the implications of his ideas today. Einstein's Special Theory of
Relativity (e=mc2) made it possible for us to extract amazing amounts of power from one
of the smallest elements in nature, an atom. His General Theory of Relativity made the
existence of black holes and wormholes possible. A black hole is a celestial body so
extremely dense with a gravitational pull so intense that light cannot escape. Since
there is no light coming from a black hole it can't be seen, however scientists have seen
evidence of them. The prospect of a wormhole makes it possible to travel freely through
the time and space continuum. Possibly Einstein's most mind-boggling theory, and one of
great interest to me, is the Unified Field Theory. This theory proposes to unify the four
known interactions or forces—the strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational
forces—by a simple set of general laws. Four distinct forces are known to control
all the observed interactions in matter: gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong force
(a short-range force that holds atomic nuclei together), and the weak force (the force
responsible for slow nuclear processes, such as beta decay)("Unified Field Theory"). The
attempts to develop a unified field theory are grounded in the belief that all physical
phenomena should ultimately be explainable by some underlying unity. Einstein spent the
last thirty years of his life trying to develop this theory without an acceptable result.
However other scientists did to apply his findings.
During the Second World War, all participant countries were looking for a way to end
hostilities quickly, no matter how fantastic the manner. If some unorthodox or
revolutionary invention could do the trick, all the better, as long as the war terminated
triumphantly for them. The U.S. Navy seemed obsessed with the idea of the perfect
camouflage, invisibility. If only one of their ships could be made invisible it could
possibly end the war. On October 28, 1943, an experiment was conducted at the
Philadelphia Naval Yard. This event became known as "The Philadelphia
Experiment"(Moore).
The U.S.S. Eldridge lay in its dock with tons of electronic equipment on board. When the
experiment involving the Unified Field Theory began the ship and all its occupants
vanished and were teleported to the Norfolk Naval Yard. The ship reappeared within a few
minutes but the crew would never be the same again. Some walked through solid walls;
others became molecularly fused with the ship. More than half went insane due to the
effects of pulsating energy fields and were confined to the Bethesda Naval Hospital out
of contact with everybody. The Navy denies that any such experiment took place.
No one has absolutely confirmed the events that took place on that day in October of
1943, but the possibilities are brain-rattling if they did actually occur. The
Philadelphia Experiment is one of many incomprehensible results of the thinking of Albert
Einstein. I believe Einstein experienced premature maturation of the human mind. His
thought processes may have been 500 years ahead of his time. We can learn more from him
than atomic bombs and black holes. His theories are the blueprint for our future. We will
continue learning from him well into the next millenium. 
Bibliography:
"Einstein, Albert", Microsoft? Encarta? 98 Encyclopedia.? 1993-1997. Microsoft
Corporation.
Moore, William (1980). The Philadelphia Experiment. New York: Fawcett Crest.
The Philadelphia Experiment. Http://www.ndirect.co.uk/`narnia/phil1.htm
"Unified Field Theory", Microsoft? Encarta? Encyclopedia ? 1993-1997. Microsoft
Corporation.