{"id":57470,"date":"2015-05-04T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=57470"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:24:42","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:24:42","slug":"einstein-on-the-common-language-of-science-in-a-rare-1941-recording","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/05\/einstein-on-the-common-language-of-science-in-a-rare-1941-recording\/","title":{"rendered":"Einstein on the Common Language of Science in a Rare 1941 Recording"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPerfection of means and confusion of goals seem \u2014 in my opinion \u2014 to characterize our age.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ideasandopinions<\/a>What makes Albert Einstein<\/strong> endure as \u201cthe quintessential modern genius\u201d<\/a> isn\u2019t merely his monumental contribution to science but also his unflinching faith in the human spirit and in our civilizational capacity for good even in the face of undeniable evil. At the peak of WWII \u2014 exactly a decade after his little-known correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois on racial justice<\/a> and exactly a decade before his letter to a disheartened young woman (incidentally, a Brain Pickings<\/em> reader\u2019s mother) affirming why we are alive<\/a> \u2014 Einstein penned a piece titled \u201cThe Common Language of Science,\u201d which aired as a radio broadcast for London\u2019s Science Conference<\/em> in September of 1941 and was soon published in the journal Advancement of Science<\/em>. It was eventually included in the altogether indispensable anthology Ideas and Opinions<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), which also gave us Einstein\u2019s views on the value of kindness<\/a> and the combinatory nature of creativity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Einstein traces how language developed as a tool of transmuting thought into acoustic expression and evolved into \u201can instrument of reasoning,\u201d then argues that science is the most international language there is \u2014 humanity\u2019s sole shared instrument of reasoning \u2014 but the scientific method alone, without moral direction, is insufficient in assuring our civilizational welfare.<\/p>\n

\"einstein1\"<\/a>But there is another, subtler aspect of the recording that makes it profoundly pause-giving \u2014 perhaps one more discernible to those of us who live and think in a language not our native: Here is one of humanity\u2019s most extraordinary minds, struggling to articulate its brilliant contents in a foreign language \u2014 slowly, imperfectly, with painfully measured words. There is no more jarring a reminder of our chronic tendency to mistake the presence of an accent for the absence of acumen \u2014 how often do people, even well-meaning and educated people, hear such verbal delivery by a stranger and immediately judge her intelligence as inferior to their own?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to tell the world how to treat you [or else] you are in trouble,\u201d<\/em> James Baldwin told Margaret Mead in their superb conversation on identity and the immigrant experience<\/a>. And yet a central source of trouble in the immigrant experience is precisely the world\u2019s inability to unbridle what you are saying from how you are saying it. It is wholly reasonable to surmise that even Einstein \u2014 who was once a little boy reticent to use even his native language<\/a> \u2014 felt the weight of the unconscious social biases to which we are all susceptible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This original recording of the piece, in Einstein\u2019s own wonderfully accented voice, is nothing short of a cultural treasure. Transcribed highlights below \u2014 please enjoy.<\/p>\n