[lit-ideas] Re: Einstein -Scene 2
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:48:47 -0500
> [Original Message]
> From: Michael Chase <goya@xxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 11/1/2005 1:30:42 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Einstein -Scene 2
>
>
> Le 1 nov. 05, à 14:39, Andy Amago a écrit :
>
>>
> >
> >
> > This caricaturization captures the type of conversation Outsider
> > Einstein
> > would have had with his wife and the people in his circle. He had no
> > room
> > in his life for anything other than physics.
>
> M.C. Andy, I'm afraid your ignorance is showing. At least from the
> time he settled in the States in the early thirties, Einstein was
> extremely active in radical politics.
I guess you answered the question. He had nothing more to offer
scientifically after E=MC2 so he went into politics. When I said he had no
room in his life for anything but physics, clearly I was talking about the
period leading up to his three papers in one year. After that he burned
out and turned to good causes. Either you're right, that once he was in
mainstream academia he lost his edge, or, more likely, it didn't matter how
he spent his day while he was hot and was simply burned out after his
insight. I think he worked on a unified theory but got nowhere along with
everyone else. Certainly his grandness of spirit matched his scientific
accomplishments. No surprise that that's the part of him that is least
remembered.
Andy Amago
He fought against racism,
> agitated for control of nuclear arms, protested against McCarthyism. He
> turned down the presidency of Israel because of injustices committed
> against the Palestinians. He was friends with Paul Robeson and W.E.B.
> Dubois (this was one main reason why J. Edgar Hoover kept him under
> surveillance for the last 20 years of his life), agitated on behalf of
> the members of the Lincoln Brigade after the Spanish Civil War, joined
> the Civli Rights Congress, spoke out in favor of the Rosenbergs, became
> co-chair of the American Crusade to End Lynching, spoke on racism in an
> address to the primarily black student body at Lincoln University in
> 1946 (he almost always turned down requests to address Ivy League
> campuses) where he said, among other things
>
> "My trip to this institution was on behalf of a worthwhile cause.
> There is separation of colored people from white people in the United
> States. That separation [segregation] is not a disease of colored
> people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet
> about it"
>
> Etc., etc. There's lots of literature on Einstein's political
> activism, but I know it would be a waste of time citing titles for
> Andy.
>
>
> >
> >
> Michael Chase
> (goya@xxxxxxxxxxx)
> CNRS UPR 76
> 7, rue Guy Moquet
> Villejuif 94801
> France
>
>
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