In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of (...) the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Racial Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism. (shrink)

This essay discusses attempts that have been made to explain the striking similarities between two theories propounded in 1905 by Albert Einstein and Henri Poincaré without any mutual reference.

1946. Translated by Amy Allen and Maxim Newmark.

ArgumentThe paper is an exploration of the interactions between Einstein and Oppenheimer. It highlights the sharp differences in Einstein's and Oppenheimer's approach to physics, in their presentation of self as iconic figures, and in their relation to the communities they considered themselves part of. To understand their differing approaches to physics it briefly reviews the kinds of unifications that took place in physics during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and points to the 1961 MIT centennial celebration to demonstrate (...) the potency of Einstein's vision that there might be a fundamental theory from which all known theories could be derived. It also briefly reviews various aspects of the development of theoretical physics and of general relativity in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, to better understand the context of the sharp, negative remarks that Oppenheimer made about Einstein and about his theory of general relativity in 1965 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Einstein's death. To answer the question: “Why the antagonism on Oppenheimer's part?” it looks at Oppenheimer's and Einstein's relation to their Jewish roots, their stance regarding nationalism, and their philosophical commitments. (shrink)

Einstein proclaimed that we could discover true laws of nature by seeking those with the simplest mathematical formulation. He came to this viewpoint later in his life. In his early years and work he was quite hostile to this idea. Einstein did not develop his later Platonism from a priori reasoning or aesthetic considerations. He learned the canon of mathematical simplicity from his own experiences in the discovery of new theories, most importantly, his discovery of general relativity. Through his neglect (...) of the canon, he realised that he delayed the completion of general relativity by three years and nearly lost priority in discovery of its gravitational field equations. (shrink)

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)

Die Relativitatstheorien (RT) Einsteins gehoren zu den meistdiskutierten Theorien der Physik des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nach der Formulie­ rung der sog. 'speziellen Relativitatstheorie' (SRT) im Jahr 1905 nah­ men zunachst nur einige Spezialisten von ihr Kenntnis, bis mit ungefiihr fiinf Jahren Verspatung dann auch zunehmend Nicht-Physiker sich mit ihr zu beschaftigen begannen, angeregt durch populiirwissenschaftliche, all­ gemeinverstiindliche 'Einfiihrungen' von Kollegen Einsteins wie z. B. Paul Langevin in Frankreich oder Max von Laue in Deutschland. Diese Pha­ senverschiebung zwischen fachwissenschaftlichem Ausbau der Theorie (...) und offentlicher Notiznahme wiederholte sich bei Einsteins 'allgemeiner Theorie der Relativitat und Gravitation' (ART). Zwischen 1913 und 1915 in ihren wesentlichen Ziigen ausformuliert, wurde sie erst nach einer spektakuliiren experimentellen Bestatigung im Jahr 1919 einem breiterem Publikum be­ kannt. In meiner Arbeit werde ich den Facettenreichtum der Ausdeutungen, die beide RT erfuhren, zunachst zu referieren und durch repriisentative Zi­ tate aus der Literatur der Zeit zu belegen haben. Der Umfang dieser Arbeit geht wesentlich auf das Konto dieser ausgewahlten Belege - davon verspre­ che ich mir, dafi nicht nur bislang unveroffentlichte Dokumente, sondern auch entlegene Texte hier in ihren zentralen Passagen leicht zuganglich ge­ macht werden. Fernerhin werde ich aber auch zu analysieren haben, warum derartig vielfaltige, einander mitunter diametral entgegengesetzte Interpre­ tationen einer wissenschaftlichen Theorie vorgelegt wurden. (shrink)

Albert Einstein's most important public and private political writings are put into historical context in this firsthand view of how one of the twentieth century's greatest minds responded to the political challenges of his day.

This absorbing intellectual history vividly recreates the unique social, political, and philosophical milieu in which the extraordinary promise of Einstein and scientific contemporaries took root and flourished into greatness. Feuer shows us that no scientific breakthrough really happens by chance; it takes a certain intellectual climate, a decisive tension within the very fabric of society, to spur one man's potential genius into world-shaking achievement. Feuer portrays such men of high imaginative powers as Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, de Broglie, influenced by and (...) influencing the social worlds in which they lived. (shrink)