Science, Faith, and Einstein

Does Einstein's advice about thinking for yourself hold for both science and faith?

Science is a quest to understand nature. It seeks to know the natural world, to grasp its secrets. This it does by observing, testing, and constructing theories. It looks to evidence and reason. A claim in science holds no weight just because an authority says so. Its power lies in the evidence behind it and the way it sheds light on nature. Sometimes, beauty factors in too. A scientific explanation can be so clear and elegant in how it connects the dots and deepens our understanding that we feel "it must be true."

But beauty can deceive. A theory may be beautiful and yet false. Science stumbles often. It has blundered before, with alchemy, phlogiston, phrenology, the ether. Scientists have clung to these errors, certain they were right, only to be proven wrong. Their confidence is no measure of truth. Science is a fallible journey, full of traps and wrong turns.

We must guard against overconfidence, especially when scientists or politicians, invoking the name of science, try to force people into a certain view or action. Science often errs, particularly in public policy. Only if scientific discussion remains free and open can science correct itself. Sadly, this self-correction is often more myth than reality. Some theories become sacred, shutting out any challengers.

The physicist Robert W. “Bob” Bass was a friend of mine. Bob is best known for his contribution to the theory of the topological stability of plasmas. He also published calculations showing that the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky are consistent with chaotic orbits derivable from standard Newtonian mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. A believing Roman Catholic, he died in 2013 when in his eighties.

As a Rhodes Scholar, Bob had gotten to meet Albert Einstein. As he shared with me, Frank Ayedelotte, the head of the Institute for Advanced Study, was able to gather the then current batch of thirty-two Rhodes Scholars (one of them Bob), with Einstein as the guest of honor. Ayedelotte asked this question: “Now Einstein, can you give these young men any parting advice?” (Note that the Rhodes Scholarship did not start admitting women until 1977.) I’ll let Bob fill in the details and deliver the punchline:

In late 1949 I was fortunate to be one of the 32 USA recipients of a Rhodes Scholarship, and decided to apply to Wadham College in Oxford, because I hoped to study under the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics, E. A. Milne…

I would never in 1949 have even dreamed of anything so immodest, but my late father, English Literature Prof. Robert D. Bass, told Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the Director of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), and then American Secretary to the Rhodes Trust, that Einstein was my hero (true enough!) and that I had “always wanted to meet him” (a proud parental exaggeration if not outright pushy prevarication), as a result of which in the Spring of 1950 I was invited to visit the IAS.

Aydelotte’s assistant Dr. Gilmore Stott, who later became the Provost of Swarthmore College, invited me to spend the night at his home, heated by a coal-stoked basement furnace, and within walking distance of the IAS. The next morning he took me to Einstein’s office where the great man was expecting to meet us, and, as a favor to Aydelotte via Stott, eventually agreed to set aside his usual reluctance to autograph copies of his popular book The Meaning of Relativity (Princeton UP, 1922), which I was then visibly carrying with me.

When I have stated later that I once “enjoyed 15 minutes alone with Einstein,” it was not quite accurate, because Dr. Stott was also present; but he never said a word other than to explain why I was carrying a copy of the book.

After I had mentioned that I had chosen Wadham College because I hoped to study under Milne, Einstein indicated that while he respected Milne as a serious scientist, he completely disagreed with Milne’s work on relativity…

Evidently Frank Ayedelotte had thought that it was unfair to the other 31 Rhodes-Scholars Elect that one of their class had got to meet Einstein alone, so in the early Fall of 1950 he held a sailing party for the Class of 1950 in his own home, as we were getting ready to embark in September for a transatlantic voyage on one of the great ocean-liners named after a queen, and invited Einstein as the guest of honor.

As the time for our return to New York drew near, Aydelotte said, “Now Einstein, can you give these young men any parting advice?”

Einstein replied: “If I could give the young men any advice it would be this: don’t believe anything is necessarily true just because you see it in the newspapers or hear it on the radio or everybody else believes it! ALWAYS THINK FOR YOURSELF!!!”

Einstein was here giving crucial advice that he himself followed in making his revolutionary discoveries in physics. Yet, this advice clashes with what faith seems to demand. Faith is often seen as requiring obedience, even blind obedience. You are told to accept certain doctrines without question. Any deviation makes you a heretic, cast out from the true believers. Faith seems to replace "think for yourself" with "trust and obey."

Given my own faith journey, I don’t see faith and science at odds in this way. True faith needs to be a faith you own, one you’ve thought through carefully. It must support you through life’s hardships and struggles. It must not be just going through the motions, pretending to believe to please those in authority.

If you’re forced to pretend to believe something you don’t think is true, you’re asking for trouble. This applies as much to faith as to science. Science today has its sacred cows. Challenge them and face excommunication. The same goes for faith. Pretending to be a believer when you’re not makes you hate yourself. It leads to hypocrisy. You say one thing but do another because you don’t really believe.

It’s been said that God has only children, no grandchildren. Your faith is something that you must own—faith by proxy is an oxymoron. Faith is not convenient assent. It’s not about saying, “I better believe this because others will be unhappy if they think I don’t.” Faith is a deep conviction, requiring that you think it through, work it out, and embrace it wholeheartedly.

Einstein’s dictum about thinking for yourself therefore holds for faith as much as for science. It must come before commitment and obedience.