Einstein and the Guilt of Scientific Knowledge

            Lifton observes that a "harsh, apocalyptic, deadly rationality" led to Auschwitz. It was a deadly combination of knowledge and power. the same can be said for the attempt to exterminate the Native Americans. As Stannard observes in his conclusion to his excellent book on the American Holocaust: 

Elie Weisel is right: the road to Auschwitz was being paved in the earliest days of Christianity.  But another conclusion now is equally evident: on the way to Auschwitz the road's pathway led strait through the heart of the Indies and of North and South America.

And one might add that it went through Russia and China too, and Nagasaki and Hiroshima and many other places, helped along not only by Hitler, but by Stalin, Mao, Columbus, Andrew Jackson and many others. It was helped along by the American Dream, Manifest Destiny and the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, and by men like Laurence and von Neumann and their dream of glory and power. et the influence of the scientific mentality and its relation to the atrocities of the last 500 years has hardly been explored at all. Or at least, I have been able to find very little about this question.

            It might be useful to recall here earlier parts of this paper.  As I indicated earlier, before the bomb was dropped on Japan, Einstein wrote that " I sold myself body and soul to science- the flight from the I and the We to the It". I pointed out that the "It", i.e. science and its 'truth about the world"[1] is something fundamentally extra-human, in some cases inhuman, and that this makes it incompatible, in many cases with human rights, but not incompatible with the corporate state, or other Machiavellian structures, that are interested, as  Zinn points out, in the world "as it is", instead of the world as "it ought to be". (quoting Machiavelli's Prince). [2]

            The younger Einstein, before the dropping of the atom bomb, as new information and the release of personal letters reveals, was a cold and ambitious man.  He says he wanted to get "above the merely personal", to "isolate myself from the unpredictability of human relations" and said " I feel the insignificance of the individual--and it makes me happy". He wanted to "read the mind of God", through science. His drive for an ultimate and comprehensive description of the laws of nature made him rather inhuman, neglectful of his wives and children. One of his children died a schizophrenic. His first wife said that "fame exerts a detrimental influence on his human side" and claimed that "science is guilty" of making him cold and apparently incapable of love.[3]  Einstein was willing to sacrifice those around him to achieve knowledge, power, status and fame. [4] The artificial distinction between Einstein the man and Einstein the scientist was cultivated by Einstein himself, as well as the society around him, and the mythical Einstein ought to be dismantled. He drive for total knowledge and his love of god ought to be seen in relation to the destructiveness in his personal life as well as the destructiveness of the atomic technologies his theories helped create.

            Einstein's personal failings ought to be seen, I think, in relation to his science, and the service that his science rendered to the cold war and the nuclear terror. [5]He put knowledge and the fame it brought him before people. His science was easily adapted to the attainment of power over nature and the drive for Euro-American global dominion. His religious view of science resulted in an attempt to formulate a Unified Field Theory which would explain all of the processes of the universe in simple and elegant formulas. He does not seem to have considered the possible human and social ramifications of this drive for total knowledge until after the bombing of Hiroshima.

             After Einstein heard what the bomb did he wrote, in a complete change of mind about science, that the "ethical deterioration of people today" is due to the "scientific mentality" ..."we are guilty", meaning the scientists, and "man grows colder than the planet he inhabits".  He did not accuse the 'bad use of science' for Nagasaki, but the scientific mentality itself- science itself. There is nothing incoherent here, it is a deeply moving admission, such as one can hardly find elsewhere. He returned to the "I" and the "We", to human rights, which he had earlier repudiated for the impersonal "it". Even if this admission is an anomaly in Einstein' biography, I think this change in Einstein's heart from the impersonal to a personal understanding of the fundamental failure of science is important for human rights. Such a change in heart should be generalized far beyond Einstein himself, since it really involves the entire Western project of world conquest and total knowledge. The heart of Western man did become colder than the planet  and still threatens the earth in various nuclear, genetic, chemical and environmental ways, and this is partly the fault of the scientific mentality, and partly the fault of Einstein. Einstein's change in heart is admirable and human, and something one wishes would happen with others who take the impersonal road to elite systems of scientific, academic or religious knowledge.

             Von Neumann is a recent example of the will to power through knowledge  He wanted the power, fame and immortality that mathematical systems, nuclear weapons and the computer promised him. Laurence also wanted this, which he thought he could achieve through journalism. He imagines the mushroom cloud as the Statue of Liberty, not realizing that liberty and human rights cannot be based on acts of murder and destruction. Like the military officer in Vietnam who wanted to "save a village for freedom" by destroying the village, Einstein, Jefferson, Darwin, Innocent III, Newton, Philip II, Augustine, Aquinas, Oppenheimer, Himmler, Laurence, von Neumann and many others were caught in the paradox of systems of knowledge whose purpose is to generate power, and the cost of the knowledge and power thus gained has too often been the destruction of peoples and cultures and the conscienceless violation of basic human rights. Knowledge is not something one gains, but a problematic one enters, like Diogenies into the dark with a candle, looking for an honest man. One finds, in looking for the truth, that the truth is merely a larger series of questions. I have brought systems of truth into question here. I have done so in the beleif that what really matters is the fragile, easily downtrodden and breakable hearts of men and women. This book is about suffering and the hope of its allieviation.  I hope I have demonstrated aspects of the common mentality that inheres in the major atrocities of the last 500 years. I hope, to some small degree, I have justified those who died unjustly and brought into question men who want power and the systems of knowledge and glory that they created. I hope I have questioned those that caused suffering, killed and justified their acts with righteous claims to knowledge. I hope I have at least raised the question of how knowledge systems are constructed and how they service powers. The exact manner how this happens needs further delination, not only in regard to religions, but to the growth of modern science and the manner in which it helped culturally justify the conquest and the atrocities that attended it and still attend it. Nevertheless, more research needs to be done, if suffering and the fragility of human life is to be remembered and justified.

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