"You must have felt this, too," remarked the physicist Werner Heisenberg, in a conversation with Einstein: "the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared."
Newton, like Einstein, was also repeatedly astounded by the simple elegance of math's relationship with the universe. For Einstein and Newton, math was the language of god and nature and if the proof or equation was too complicated, they derived, then it could not be true because nature was always elegant and simple, breath-takingly so.
Another thing that Newton and Einstein seemed to share was that they thought in images. For example, they would both do these thought experiments in their heads, mini movies of how an experiment might go. If a human could run as fast as the speed of light what would they see, thought experiments like that, feats of imagination or magic that allowed for them to think really expansively. Einstein was known for asking simple questions. And as the mathematician Bronowski said, "and what his (Einstein's) life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple too, then you hear god thinking." Take Pythagorean's Theorem- a squared + b squared= c squared... every time. It's just how triangles work in this world. James Watson who discovered the double-helix of DNA described it as, "too pretty to be true." When these mental giants found themselves overthinking it, they would re-direct and often find that the answer was simple and beautiful and right there.
I feel like that is a useful life lesson. Human relationships can be so complex. Children are much better at cutting through all of the crap and manipulation. Children don't speak that language, they just give and receive love freely and play and are curious about the mysteries of life. I feel like, as humans, we can make things so hard on ourselves. A friend of mine's father said to him just before he died, very urgently, in that space between living and dying where all things can become very clear, he said, "Follow the love." I have thought about those words a lot since he died, their simplicity. He just cut through the crap. He saw it very simply and clearly.
Another thing... music... Einstein was obsessed with Mozart. Whenever he became stuck, he would play Mozart on his violin or listen to it. He felt like it was perfect simplicity, that it was also a form of math and symmetry and therefore God's language as well. The Greeks shared this view that truly beautiful music was so because it tapped into some perfect symmetry and simplicity of the world, of god and the universe.
Newton, like Einstein, was also repeatedly astounded by the simple elegance of math's relationship with the universe. For Einstein and Newton, math was the language of god and nature and if the proof or equation was too complicated, they derived, then it could not be true because nature was always elegant and simple, breath-takingly so.
Another thing that Newton and Einstein seemed to share was that they thought in images. For example, they would both do these thought experiments in their heads, mini movies of how an experiment might go. If a human could run as fast as the speed of light what would they see, thought experiments like that, feats of imagination or magic that allowed for them to think really expansively. Einstein was known for asking simple questions. And as the mathematician Bronowski said, "and what his (Einstein's) life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple too, then you hear god thinking." Take Pythagorean's Theorem- a squared + b squared= c squared... every time. It's just how triangles work in this world. James Watson who discovered the double-helix of DNA described it as, "too pretty to be true." When these mental giants found themselves overthinking it, they would re-direct and often find that the answer was simple and beautiful and right there.
I feel like that is a useful life lesson. Human relationships can be so complex. Children are much better at cutting through all of the crap and manipulation. Children don't speak that language, they just give and receive love freely and play and are curious about the mysteries of life. I feel like, as humans, we can make things so hard on ourselves. A friend of mine's father said to him just before he died, very urgently, in that space between living and dying where all things can become very clear, he said, "Follow the love." I have thought about those words a lot since he died, their simplicity. He just cut through the crap. He saw it very simply and clearly.
Another thing... music... Einstein was obsessed with Mozart. Whenever he became stuck, he would play Mozart on his violin or listen to it. He felt like it was perfect simplicity, that it was also a form of math and symmetry and therefore God's language as well. The Greeks shared this view that truly beautiful music was so because it tapped into some perfect symmetry and simplicity of the world, of god and the universe.
RSS Feed