Letter from the editor:
The following fictional letters are meant to examine the concept of interdependence—its value and place in the world—through the lenses of particular philosophies that depict its absolute truth. As an ever-present phenomenon, interdependence destroys perceived barriers between science and religion and other labels and categories that serve to separate human beings from one another. No man is an island.[1]
Introducing Albert Einstein (b. March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955), noted German theoretical physicist and philosopher; and Albert Schweitzer (b. January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965), German-French theologian and physician.
April 24, 1937
Dear Schweitzer,
I have read your “Ethics” on reverence, and I was delighted to find that your rhetoric is concerned more with a Kantian respect for life—though you see trough his dealings with “façade problems”—and has an immeasurably generous and necessary quality essential and wanted of any ethical treatise, which proves more vital and lasting than a mechanistic religiosity, a dead view of the world, that deprives humankind of its very spirit. Simply, the spirit of your ethics is a breath of fresh air sorely needed for the world’s asthmatic lungs. But enough of my fawning. You write of achieving a “spiritual harmony,” and I could not agree more. You say, “…we want to understand life in the universe, in order to enter into harmony with it.
[2]” As a philosopher asking the most essential questions, you have produced something akin to the affect of generating an equation for life, with both your logic and imagination (what is one’s intuition), as a scientist would create a mathematical formula for understanding and uncovering the underlying processes of the universe. You’ll be pleased to hear that I have found, within the folds of time and space, an equation for an organizing principle, a God principle, or “Lambda.
[3]” It is yet unfinished, but I will state that it follows a formula based on the “super interdependence,”
[4] or interdependence, evident in nature. It delights me to strain the whole of my mental, rather entire, Self around the notion of those hidden and apparent organizing processes. As you’ve well heard, Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle”
[5] did not prove occasions of “unpredictability,” or randomness in nature, as many of my colleagues have reasoned. Instead, there are some events in nature that might be too complex for the feeble human mind to grasp and predict without advocation of an easy solution, such as the dastardly idea that events are totally random at the quantum level and completely independent of one another; however, I do believe there to be the existence of some degree of freedom and choice in the universe.
[6] I am working towards a dynamic theory of interdependence and a union between the conceptual disconnect physicists are experiencing.
[7] Necessarily, one must suspend disbelief for a time before jumping to an easy solution. Wouldn’t you agree, dear Schweitzer? It is my conviction that “interdependence is the rule, not the exception, especially at the quantum level”
[8] And the mystery surrounding life, and the organizing processes within, may very well be the cause of all that is known and understood. What beautiful irony! Perhaps, each stem from the same “One”; or perhaps, mystery is that “One” and that which cannot be known but only for what it is not.
[9] I ask, what are your notions on interdependence? I look forward to any additional provocation.
Best wishes,
Yours,
Einstein
May 31, 1937
Dearest Einstein,
First and foremost, I am grateful for the time you have taken to enter into dialogue. It is my pleasure that a scientist of your caliber and fame has taken an interest in my article. It would serve you well to read Reverence for Life, an extended version of “Ethics.” You will find more complete musings, therein. I appreciate your generous compliments.
Secondly, Kant busied himself with a class of problems that do not, though intriguing, reach the essential problems. He was more concerned with those façade problems, such as questions of the problem of knowledge and the reality of the world.
[10] Kant looked for an absolute ethics and centralized the idea of the respect for the dignity of another’s humanity as his foundational motivation and tenet. Yes, Kant’s contributions were important. Yet, his interest in solving the essential questions the scientific façade were in vain, for the scientific can only lead to one thing—the mysterious. The great issue is that we want to understand this mystery and life in the universe, so as to enter into harmony with it, and to achieve a “spiritual harmony.”
[11]Thirdly, you ask about my thoughts on interdependence, and I want to press you for more on this theory within science. It seems both scientists and philosophers are seeking the essential questions and, perhaps, are finding similar answers or correlates. In a few words, the real issue is reverence for life, as I have stated, and the realization of our utter dependence on events beyond our control. Reverence for life is man’s first spiritual act; and the consequence of this is his realization of that dependence.
[12] “We cannot live alone” or, as Donne has stated, “No man is an island.” Thus, we must resign to this fact, and not out of sadness, but because of the “triumph or our will-to-live over whatever happens to us.”
[13] Our will-to-live is simply our meditation on ourselves. We find that all of life has this quality—it wills to live. To the extent propriety affords, we must meditate on this fact and come to revere life in ourselves and in others. What should be our attitude toward other life, if it wills to live just as we do? It seems we are one in the same in this respect and because of life’s very basic striving, which is the will-to-live. Science can only lead to the mystery of life, and our meditation upon other life will only lead to the truth about nature: “it longs for fullness and development as deeply as I do myself.”
[14] This truth and fact provides unequivocal evidence of the existence of what you call “interdependence,” which I assume means that your science has discovered evidence of its existence on the material plane, and is no longer as thin and airy as the purely theoretical.
Lastly, I am acquainted with Heisenberg’s principle, and that you outright reject it or sincerely question its validity.
[15] It clearly goes against the very fabric of your philosophy on life, which I’d like to know more about. What is this “Lambda” principle of which you speak? Is it an attempt to create something more tangible, concerning the Creative Force? I wonder because it seems to me as though this Creative Force is ethically neutral. It creates and destroys and works purposefully toward certain ends, but that cannot be defended. And since we are not nature’s goal, should this Creative Force be our goal?
[16] Truly, we are seeking a relation to it and wanting to give meaning to life in the world. To feign independence and to admonish life as random only serves to disconnect us from our will-to-live and our ethical strivings for meaning and place and to be our best. I venture to say that you are certainly correct: We need not an easy solution and a science that supports randomness, and meaninglessness only suggests an easy solution to a surface problem. We must venture beyond and cling to life because we revere it. Support work for conceived separation, meaninglessness, and futility, or puerile skepticism—as science tends to advocate—is in tense opposition to an ethics that would prove helpful and enabling of life to attain its highest development. This other is an evil, as it chooses to annihilate, hamper, or hinder life.
[17] Though what is mysterious cannot be proven, truth of its value and Mystery, itself, cannot be abandoned.
[18] The “incomprehensibility” of which you speak serves to support the simple fact of consciousness—“I will to live,” not “I am life,” for “life continues to be a mystery too great to understand. I know only that I cling to it. I fear its cessation—death. I dread its diminution—pain. I seek its enlargement—joy.”
[19] Mystery does not negate the evidence of life itself. We must “suspend disbelief,” as you say, and move past the “logical disconnect” between spiritually and science to a simpler groundwork. I say again, it is, “I will to live.” That is an healthy beginning.
Warmest regards to you and your wife,
Albert Schweitzer
[1] John Donne.
[2] This is one of three desires in man that Albert Schweitzer mentions in “The Ethics of Reverence For Life, ” an article he published in 1936 in the periodical Christendom, that constitute “the basis of our striving for harmony with the spiritual element” (2).
[3] Years ago, I came across a book about Albert Einstein’s scientific developments on a “dark” or an unknown fourth element or principle that he was trying to complete. The scientific community balked at his desire to prove his theory of God empirically, mathematically, and theoretically.
[4] The evolution of quantum physics has led physicists to the idea of superinterdependence; that “the message is clear […] everything in nature is interconnected and interdependent to various degrees,” according to Gary E. Schwartz and William L. Simon in The G.O.D Experiments (108). They further elucidate this concept, stating, “A system is a set of components that mutually affect one another. In the process of components joining together, interacting, and sharing information and energy, the system changes over time. The inherent property of systems to change is termed ‘dynamical’ […] anything that exists in a dynamical system is constantly changing over time through interdependence and feedback” (109). Einstein was no stranger to the profound implications superinterdependence had on our vision of the world—nature and the cosmos—scientifically and religiously.
[5] In 1927, Werner Heisenberg introduced a theoretical paper on quantum mechanics after he had applied a mathematical system, which strictly dealt with experimental data and mathematical results, to atomic processes, calling it “matrix mechanics.” His paper proved to be a turning point in physics, despite the fact that other physicists were reluctant to accept a system that didn’t provide a visual model. Puzzled over basic quantum properties of electrons, Heisenberg began to experiment with these sub-atomic particles in the lab. He found that measuring an electron’s behavior with gamma rays would change the electron’s behavior; that one could either measure the position of the particle or its momentum; that the more precisely one measured the property of one, the more the other property was affected. He dubbed his findings and theoretical paper the “uncertainty principle,” which he theorized was proof of “unpredictability” (randomness) at the quantum level. Though many resisted his idea, it eventually became accepted as a fundamental law of nature and facilitated the growth of the field as a consequence.
[6] Einstein’s beliefs about “unpredictability,” “interdependence,” and the existence of free will come from Schwartz and Simon.
[7] In 1964, J. S. bell published “Bell’s Theorem,” a theorem cast in terms of a hidden variable theory. The fundamental tenet is based on an experiment of two photons observed in the lab: “once together and now traveling in opposite directions at the speed of light—continue as if they were one […] as if there were no distance between them”; essentially, they begin together, travel to opposite ends of the universe, and what happens in one can be precisely and instantly observed in the other, which is a phenomenon known as “entanglement” (Schwartz and Simon 107-108). Furthermore, empirical evidence of what is termed “nonlocality” provokes questions in regards to the obvious logical and conceptual disconnect in the reasoning used by quantum physicists to understand quantum physics and the “logic used to apply statistical data” (Schwartz and Simon 108).
[8] Schwartz and Simon 107-114.
[9] Einstein was known to take an interest in the writings and the Jewish philosopher and codifier known as RAMBAM, an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Moses Maimonides (1135-1204).
[10] Albert Schweitzer analyzes Immanuel Kant and his philosophical dealings with so-called façade problems, which he deems are not the “real, elementary matters” and “are [only] important looking, but not really connected with the main structure” in “The Ethics of Reverence for Life.” Copyright by permission of World Council of Churches.
(1).
[11] Schweitzer 1.
[12] Schweitzer states that reverence is our real issue, and that “our dependence upon events is not absolute; it is qualified by our spiritual freedom” (5).
[13] Schweitzer deems “resignation” the “second spiritual act” and the very basis of ethics (5).
[14] This is part of Schweitzer’s argument for his ethics (7).
[15] Einstein disagreed with common interpretations of Heisenberg’s theory, charging it as incomplete if not outright wrong, and states, in 1935, “God does not play dice with the universe,” as his central objection (missing source). Einstein rejected the assumed idea of randomness, which other physicists used to explain why they were unable to predict simultaneously both the speed and momentum of quantum events, and recognized a far greater level of connectedness and interdependence, at both the “macro world of gravitational fields and the micro world of quantum fields” (Schwartz and Simon 107-108). According to Schwartz and Simon, Einstein simply imagined an as of late, still yet hidden set of complex organizing processes and could not accept independent processes within a system he believed to be intricately connected and super-organized.
[16] According to Schweitzer, man is not nature’s goal; when considering the universe, he is rather “insignificant” (5).
[17] Schweitzer’s definition of evil follows (7).
[18] Schweitzer states, “That a truth cannot be proved by argument” isn’t justification for its abandonment, as long as it, in itself, possesses value (3).
[19] Schweitzer argues for Mystery’s importance regarding our very basic human motivation. Within the text, he annihilates Descartes’ “I think” and establishes that the fact of consciousness is not enough; instead, he asserts, one must meditate on the fact of consciousness, like reflexive awareness.
