EINSTEIN AND FAITH

No, not that type of faith. (If you're interested in Einstein's religious beliefs, look elsewhere.) I'm writing about faith in one's own intuition--the belief that "one's gut felling" reflects reality. I'm using Einstein as an example of how one's intuition can sometimes be right, sometimes wrong, and what significance this realization might have for the rest of us. This is not an article about physics, but I will need to discuss briefly his achievements and failures, since his intuition played a key role in each.

AN OVERVIEW OF EINSTEIN'S ACHIEVEMENTS

When one thinks of the outstanding artists, musicians, and authors--to name just a few categories--of the past century, one will probably come up with several candidates for each field. If one is asked to name the most famous scientist of the twentieth century, I doubt if there would be any competition: Einstein. His theories of special relativity and general relativity revolutionized science and greatly expanded our knowledge of the cosmos in unexpected new directions. Before Einstein, all physicists--to my knowledge, at least--believed that Newton's Laws were valid under all circumstances. There was a problem, though, that became apparent: the speed of light. It had already been determined to be about 186,000 miles per second before the century began. But according to Newton's Laws if one were traveling in the same direction as the light in question, at, say, 50,000 miles per second, one should perceive the light, logically, to be traveling at 136, 000 miles per second. This was proven not to be the case: light, no matter the frame of reference, always travels at the same speed. It had been thought that light travels through a substance called the (luminiferous) ether, just as sound travels through air. But since light travels always at the same speed no matter the direction, the ether put up no resistance to light and was therefore proven not to exist. Einstein solved the mystery in 1905 with his special relativity--that is relativity without considering gravity. The more one speeds up the more time slows and space shrinks. The person in that frame of reference wouldn't notice, since everything shrinks proportionally. We don't notice the relativity of time and space because it only becomes apparent at very fast speeds. Yes, what you learned in high school is correct: a space traveler who traveled at a very fast speed might return to earth with an age now, say, ten years less than the twin he left behind. Einstein also discovered that the speed of light was the upper limit of speed possible. At the speed of light, time stops, but to reach this speed is impossible for non-elementary particles, because the mass that is traveling would acquire an infinite value. (Not an easy job, pushing along something that heavy!) Einstein ten years later discovered many of the mysteries of gravity. Namely that it is transmitted at the speed of light--(Newton had thought gravity's effects were instantaneous--According to Newton, if the sun suddenly disappeared, the effect of gravity would disappear instantaneously with it. Einstein's equations correctly predicted that there would be an eight or so minute pause for earthlings to become aware of the sun's disappearance, since it would take the speed of light that long to bring us that information.) Gravity warps the fabric of space; objects obey gravity much the same way as a roulette ball follows the groove of the roulette wheel. Space is therefore a thing, not nothing. All these discoveries of Einstein are truly mind-boggling, ground-breaking achievements. No other scientist of the twentieth century changed our views so radically and single-handedly. (Quantum mechanics progressed as science usually does, as a sum of contributions from many individual scientists.)

EINSTEIN'S INTUITION

Intuition is a prominent factor in scientific progress. For instance, the belief that the universe is "elegant," has made many scientists believe that the most elegant equations reflect reality, years before the equations in question have been corroborated by data. In modern physics, for instance, the belief that symmetry underlies the cosmos has led to exciting new discoveries and theories. I am not sure, but I don't believe Einstein intuited the relativity of time and space prior to his discoveries. Einstein's intuition was very much right in its belief that the enigma of the speed of light could be solved. Many of his hunches that sprang from his intuition, however, were wrong, some of which, interestingly, proved right for the wrong reasons. I shall explain this later in this article.

Einstein worked with large entities and not sub-atomic ones. He was thus following the footsteps of Newton, who discovered the laws of gravity and motion some three hundred years earlier. Like Newton, he believed in absolutes. A matter of fact, he didn't want to call his theory the theory of of relativity but the theory of invariance. Space and time might indeed be relative entities, but they were part of a spacetime unit that was absolute. Like Newton, he believed that any traveling thing had both a specific velocity and a specific position at any instant; if they could not be determined it was the fault of the technology. Similarly, it was a matter of faith for him to believe that everything is determined. He would not have disputed LaPlace, who asserted that if you knew the velocity and position of everything, everything could be predicted. Einstein's famous formulation in response to the discoveries of quantum physics was "God does not play dice." Quantum physics not only asserted the random basis of the micro-world, but that velocity and position of an elementary particle could not be simultaneously determined, not because of inadequate technology, but because of the fuzzy nature of quantum reality. Einstein would have none of this; his insight was fixed. He was, of course, wrong in this regard; the randomness and non-locality of quantum events have been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was ironic--Einstein's intuition helped him to make great discoveries, but hindered him from acknowledging the discoveries of quantum physics. His intuition told him that although quantum physics made accurate predictions, it was not basic--something that underlies it, presumably demonstrating the victory of determinism, was yet to be discovered. Not so! It is now thought that quantum physics is primary; we live in a quantum world, as physicists say.

Because of his refusal to acknowledge discoveries that ran counter to his intuition, Einstein became more and more marginalized. One wag said that not long after his discovery of general relativity, Einstein, who lived many more years, might as well have gone fishing. This is a bit unfair, but there is truth to it. Who knows what Einstein would have discovered if his intuition had let him keep pace with new discoveries?

Newton's system remained unquestioned for three-hundred years after his death. Einstein, alive during an epoch during which physics developed rapidly, was not so lucky. Quantum physics, which ran counter to his intuition, developed while he was still very much alive. It is difficult to speak of this as a tragedy, for Einstein was often wrong in such a way that helped advance science. For instance, by his intuition he was convinced that the universe was static and eternal, even though his equations of general relativity only allow a universe to be either expanding or contracting. To get around this, Einstein came up with the idea of the cosmological constant, a repulsive force to counteract either contraction or expansion. He provided no science behind this; it simply allowed his intuition to be right. Later, when it was discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein abandoned the constant and viewed it as a great mistake. Much later on, it has been discovered that there is indeed a cosmological repulsive force that is causing the universe to be in a state of accelerated expansion. Thus, Einstein was right for the wrong reason. Another example of faulty intuition: Einstein was convinced that there was no such thing as what he called, "spooky action at a distance." In 1935 he devised the famous EPR thought experiment that he believed proved that even at the quantum level position and velocity could not be random variables. The EPR experiment encouraged others to work on this problem; eventually the concept of quantum entaglement was proven, disproving Einstein's belief. If one entangled elementary particle was determined to have a certain spin, the other entangled particle would instantly correspond before something traveling at the speed of light could reach it. Beyond all doubt, "spooky action at a distance," occurs in the quantum world. His later intuitions were not always wrong, however: Einstein worked in his last decades on a theory of unification of all forces. Unfortunately, there are four cosmic forces, and two were yet to be discovered during Einstein's lifetime, so all his efforts had to fail. Today many physicists are at work trying to realize Einstein's dream of unification. His belief that all the forces of the universe can be unified is an intuition, although not yet proven, which most modern physicists believe to be correct.

SUMMARY

We are convinced that our "gut feeling" reflect truth. I wanted to prove in this article that this is not necessarily so--intuition can be a great help but it can also be a great hindrance. Einstein is a great example of this fact of life. How can the insight that we might sometimes need to change our intuition help us? Examples abound. Researchers of depression, notable Paul Gilbert, have discovered that depressives have the intuition, the gut feeling, that their emotional state will never improve. For instance, a widower whose only child dies might become depressed and contemplate suicide, imagining that his life is over. Five years later, he might find himself remarried with step-children. This will of course not replace his loss, but he might well have come to the realization that his life has become worthwhile again. One needs to go no further to find another good example than by listening to pundits on the right and left debate. They almost always talk past each other and never consider that the other person might have a point. They are fixed in their political intuition--obviously each opposing position can't be completely right! Additional examples: does your intuition tell you, say, that there is free will and that you are a self, a separate entity? Your intuition just might be wrong!

As Buddhism and Hinduism have taught us, the world is in a constant state of flux. Nothing is fixed, certainly not intuition. We must find the balance in trusting it and, if need be, changing it to better accomodate reality.

Let me finish with an example of an open mind, the willingness to change when confronted with convincing data which oppose one's intuition. The prominent physicist Brian Greene in his book, "The Fabric of the Cosmos" states that although his intuition makes him think time-travel to be very unlikely, at this moment the possiblily remains that--a possiblilit--albeit a remote one. Greene states, however, that he will keep an open mind and would be willing to modify his view as a result of future discoveries.


Yes, as they say, even Homer nods. Though Einstein's stature is unassailable, I think it best to follow Greene's example regarding intuition. None of us can ever be absolutely right about anything; it might be a little frightening for us to admit this, but without this admission we can miss out on something that makes life a delight: the wonder of new discoveries about the world and about ourselves. For intuition is not a god, but a vehicle: if it takes us off the road it might be time to get a new one. The road ahead might seem unneogtiable at first without our trusty old car, but the initial anxiety might be well worth trading it in for something that will take us wondrously in a new direction.