Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
Penetrates to the heart and soul of an amazing intellect, August 22, 2003
"Ideas and Opinions" reveals much about the thought processes, culture, and observations that shaped the character of Albert Einstein. In a remarkable series of insightful short prose selections, the reader learns a great deal about Einstein's views on morality and ethics; religion, particularly Judaism; government; the arts, literature, and higher education; philosophy; and government. His personal letters to and observations about other key persons of his time including Shaw, Freud, Gandhi, and Lorentz illustrate what a fully integrated individual Einstein truly was, a view that may counter some of the extreme depictions that render him a genius incapable of focusing beyond his science. Having some many thoughts from this astounding intellect pulled into one volume makes this book a worthwhile addition to the stack of rainy day books. It's a book to be consumed in fits and starts, with a cup of coffee on the screened porch in the rain, a treat for inquiring minds. The prose, perhaps a tad stilted by modern standards, is lucid. And seeing Einstein turn his attention on the topic everyone wrangles with forges a new link to him and his work. As he stated, " The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
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62 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
Highly Recommended, December 22, 2002
Reviewer: bugesh from New York United States
Einstein wasn't just a scientist, but a general genious and philosopher. This book offers wonderful insight into one of the greatest minds of the century, if not all time.
the book is a compilation of letters, essays and writings on all sorts of topics. He speaks about his thoughts on America, the world, life, you name it. It interested me that Einstein was an anti-prohibitionist; stating that "any law that cannot be enforced only serves to undermine the authority of the government. it is no secret that this is closely linked to the sharp rise in crime in this country." This could easily be applied to the modern-day drub problem and supports the decriminalization movement. The book is a great companion for anyone who is a fan of Einstein or who considers themselves enlightened (or in need of enlightenment). A big 5 stars!!
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38 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
Accelerated Movement, August 17, 2006
This is great reading, important reading. Impressive stuff. I know I'm not the first person to say this but, man that Einstein was a brilliant guy.
"Ideas and Opinions" is a collection of his writings over a lifetime. It is broken up into sections, with some of the more interesting work being well after his scientific genius days. Chapters include writings on freedom, religion, politics, government, pacifism, Judaism and the plight of the Jewish people, as well as a nice sampling of scientific essays.
A major theme that emerged for me, recently re-reading this, is the gradual transformation of creative, rational intelligence into true astute wisdom.
The young mind is still being myelinated, with rapid changes, lots of plasticity, pruning of excess neuronal connections, restructuring of synaptic connectivity. In this stage, memories and emotions are processed by the limbic system but drive the body and the mind by variously igniting or diminishing arousal as mediated by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The neocortex, particularly frontal lobes communicating with the parietal lobes, are the source of the brilliance of the Theory of Relativity. It takes the ability to think outside of norms, think creatively (maybe time is unreal, maybe matter and energy are the same thing...), and then have the brilliance to think it through, pull it all together. But let's take an honest look. Just about everything Einstein contributed to our scientific knowledge stemmed from thought experiments he did in his twenties. Those were some exceptional frontal lobes, and they were driven to success by a limbic system, but a limbic system speaking through that primitive endocrine axis, that endocrine system that's no more sophisticated than a rat's, little more the a chicken's.
But then something changes. The brain is mostly done sealing over new tracks of neocortex, but the limbic system is being integrated more and more with the neocortex. Emotions and logic learn to communicate in ways that bypass the reptilian paleocortex. This is when religiosity turns into spirituality. This is when lust begins to approach unselfish love. This is the source of the wisdom of the elderly. Obviously, Einstein was exceptionally bright to start with and had a nice head-start here, but one can track his thinking chronologically and really see a continuous process, a developmental process, a mode of intelligence revamping, subtle neuronal renovations yielding a distinct mode of reason.
There's so much to comment on here, volumes could be written interpreting his communications, and probably have been. There are lots of relevant angles to focus on, but nothing broke my heart like reading his essays written between the two world wars, reading these pleas to the people and governments of the world, especially reading this in short spurts on the train after listening to the world news in recent days while I trudge, half-bleary, pre-caffeinated, to the train station:
"Few of us still cling to the notion that acts of violence in the shape of wars are either advantageous or worthy of humanity as a method of solving international problems. But we are not consistent enough to make vigorous efforts on behalf of the measures which might prevent war, that savage and unworthy relic of the age of barbarism. It requires some power of reflection to see the issue clearly and a certain courage to serve this great cause resolutely and effectively"... "this failure is due not only to the intrigues of ambitious and unscrupulous politicians but also to the indifference and slackness of the public in all countries..." Boy, lucky for us we had true intellectuals around, glad we got that under control.
All this stuff I'm fumbling to say, Einstein's on it, he gets it, we see it in a private letter to Sigmund Freud, where he invokes the efforts of "Jesus Christ to Goethe to Kant" in the struggle against violence as the means to an end: "You have shown with impelling lucidity how inseparably the combative and destructive instincts are bound up in the human psyche with those of love and life. But at the same time there shines through the cogent logic of your arguments a deep longing for the great goal of internal and external liberation of mankind from war." Yeah, ditto. That's what I'm trying to say.
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