2021/02/23

Religious and philosophical views of A Einstein - Wikipedia

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albert Einstein, 1921

Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood.[1]

Albert Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza.[2]
He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve.[3]
He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist",[4] preferring to call himself an agnostic,[5] or a "religious nonbeliever."[3]
Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me."[6]

He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups.[7][8]

Contents
1Religious beliefs
1.1Early childhood
1.2Personal God
1.3Pantheism and Spinoza's God
1.4Agnosticism, atheism, and deism
1.5Belief in an afterlife
1.6Cosmic spirituality
1.7Jewish identity
1.8Views of the Christian churches
1.8.1William Hermanns conversations

2Philosophical beliefs
2.1Relationship between science and philosophy
2.2Free will
2.3Humanism and moral philosophy
2.4Teleology
2.5Epistemology
2.5.1Naïve realism
2.5.2Positivism
2.5.2.1Transcendental Idealism

2.6Opinions on philosophers
2.6.1David Hume
2.6.2Immanuel Kant
2.6.3Arthur Schopenhauer
2.6.4Ernst Mach

3See also
4References
5External links

Religious beliefs[edit]

Einstein used many labels to describe his religious views, including "agnostic",[5] "religious nonbeliever"[3] and a "pantheistic"[9] believer in "Spinoza's God".[2] Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no." He conceded that, "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds."[10]

Early childhood[edit]

Einstein was raised by secular Jewish parents, and attended a local Catholic public elementary school in Munich.[11] In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:

. . . I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.

---
It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings.

Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.[12]

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Personal God[edit]

Einstein expressed his skepticism regarding the existence of an anthropomorphic God, such as the God of Abrahamic religions, often describing this view as "naïve"[3] and "childlike".[13] In a 1947 letter he stated, "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously."[14] In a letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952, Einstein stated, "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve."[15]

Prompted by his colleague L. E. J. Brouwer, Einstein read the philosopher Eric Gutkind's book Choose Life,[16] a discussion of the relationship between Jewish revelation and the modern world. On January 3, 1954, Einstein sent the following reply to Gutkind: "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. .... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."[17][18][19] In 2018 his letter to Gutkind was sold for $2.9 million.[20]

On 22 March 1954 Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an experimental machinist in New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report which had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.[21]

In his book Ideas and Opinions (1954) Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."[3] In December 1922 Einstein said the following on the idea of a saviour, "Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance for me.[9]

Pantheism and Spinoza's God[edit]

Einstein had explored the idea that humans could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in George Sylvester Viereck's book Glimpses of the Great (1930), Einstein responded to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a pantheist. He explained:

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.

I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.[22]

Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems."[23]

On 24 April 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."[24] He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine Kaizō in 1923:

Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).[25]

Agnosticism, atheism, and deism[edit]

Einstein said people can call him an agnostic rather than an atheist, stating: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."[13] In an interview published by the German poet George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein stated, "I am not an Atheist."[10] According to Prince Hubertus, Einstein said, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."[26]

In 1945 Guy Raner, Jr. wrote a letter to Einstein, asking him if it was true that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Einstein replied, "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ...

It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies.
We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all."[27]

In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic.

I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and
ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."[5]

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people.[28] Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot hear the music of the spheres."[28][29] Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."[30]

Walter Isaacson also wrote of Einstein's deism. On page 385 of the landmark book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Isaacson stated that Albert Einstein "held a deistic concept of God."

Einstein, in a one-and-a-half-page hand-written German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954, a year and three and a half months before his death, wrote:

"신이라는 단어는 인간의 약점의 표현과 산물에 지나지 않습니다. 성경은 숭고하지만 여전히 원시적 인 전설의 모음입니다.
아무리 미묘하더라도 해석은 (나에게는) 이것에 대해 아무것도 바꿀 수 없습니다. [.. .]
저에게 다른 모든 종교와 마찬가지로 유대교는 가장 유치한 미신의 화신입니다. [...]
저는 그들[유대인들]이 '선택된' 종족이라고 볼 수 없습니다. "

"The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends.
No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...]
For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. [...]
I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them [the Jewish people]."

[31][32]
Belief in an afterlife[edit]

On 17 July 1953 a woman who was a licensed Baptist pastor sent Einstein a letter asking if he had felt assured about attaining everlasting life with the Creator. Einstein replied, "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."[33]

This sentiment was also expressed in Einstein's book The World as I See It (1935), "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.

Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."[34]

Einstein was averse to the Abrahamic conception of Heaven and Hell, particularly as it pertained to a system of everlasting reward and punishment. In a 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer, Einstein wrote, "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him."[35] He also stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."[36]

Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in determinism and his rejection of free will. Einstein stated, "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events — that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through."[37]

Cosmic spirituality[edit] 우주적 영성

In 1930 Einstein published a widely discussed essay in The New York Times Magazine about his beliefs.[37] With the title "Religion and Science," Einstein distinguished three human impulses which develop religious belief:

fear,
social or moral concerns, and
a cosmic religious feeling.

A primitive understanding of causality causes fear, and the fearful invent supernatural beings analogous to themselves.
The desire for love and support create a social and moral need for a supreme being; both these styles have an anthropomorphic concept of God.
The third style, which Einstein deemed most mature, originates in a deep sense of awe and mystery. He said, the individual feels "the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."

아인슈타인이 가장 성숙하다고 생각한 세 번째 스타일은 깊은 경외감과 미스터리에서 비롯됩니다. 그는 인간은 "자연 속에서 자신을 드러내는 숭고함과 경이로운 질서를 느낀다. 그리고 그는 우주를 하나의 중요한 전체로서 경험하고 싶다"고 말했다.

Einstein saw science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religious belief, but as a partner in the third.[37]

He maintained, "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere.

He continued:

A person who is religiously enlightened

appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability,

liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and

is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value.

It seems to me that what is important is

the force of this superpersonal content ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being,

for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities.

Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ...

In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect.

If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be...[37]

An understanding of causality was fundamental to Einstein's ethical beliefs. In Einstein's view, "the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science," for religion can always take refuge in areas that science can not yet explain.

It was Einstein's belief that

in the "struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature
to give up the doctrine of a personal God,
that is, give up that source of fear and hope" and
cultivate the "Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself."[37]

------

In his 1934 book The World as I See It, Einstein expanded on his religiosity, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."[38]

---
In 1936 Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could:
----
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural being.

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.”[39]

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1936 년에 아인슈타인은 6 학년 어린 소녀로 부터 편지를 받았다. 그녀는 선생님의 격려로 아인슈타인에게 과학자들이 기도를 하는지 물었다. 아인슈타인은 그가 할 수있는 가장 기본적인 방법으로 대답했다.

----

과학적 연구는 일어나는 모든 것이 자연의 법칙에 의해 결정된다는 생각에 기반을 두고 있으며, 따라서 이것은 사람들의 행동에도 적용됩니다. 이런 이유로 연구 과학자는 어떤 사건이 기도, 즉 초자연적 존재에 대한 소원에 의해 영향을 받을 수 있다고는 믿지 않을 것입니다.
그러나 이러한 법칙에 대한 우리의 실제 지식은 불완전하고 단편적이라는 사실을 인정해야합니다. 그러므로 실제로 자연에 모든 것을 포용하는 기본적인 법칙의 존재에 대한 믿음도 <일종의 믿음>에 달려 있습니다. 이 믿음은 지금까지 과학 연구의 성공으로 대체로 정당화되었습니다.
그러나 다른 한편으로 과학 추구에 진지하게 관여하는 모든 사람들은 <영 spirit>이 우주의 법칙에 명시되어 있음을 확신하게 됩니다. 그것은 인간보다 훨씬 우월한 <영>이고, 우리가 미약한 힘으로 직면 할때 겸손 함을 느끼게 되는 <영>입니다. . 이런 식으로 과학의 추구는 <특별한 종류의 종교적 감정>을 불러 일으키는데, 이것은 <순진한 (naive) 사람의 종교성>와는 상당히 다릅니다.”

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Einstein characterized himself as "devoutly religious" in the following sense,

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical.
It is the power of all true art and science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."

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아인슈타인은 다음과 같은 의미에서 자신이 <경건하고 종교적devoutly religious>이라고 표현했다.

우리가 경험할 수있는 가장 아름다운 감정은 <신비로운mystical> 것이다.
그것이 모든 진정한 예술과 과학의 힘이다.
이 감정이 낯선 사람이나 더 이상 궁금해하고 경외심에 휩싸 일 수없는 사람은 죽은 것이나 마찬가지이다.
우리가 헤아릴 수 없는 것이 실제로 존재하고, 최고의 지혜와 가장 빛나는 아름다움으로 자신을 드러내는 것을, 우리의 둔한 능력은 가장 원시적 인 형태로 만 이해할 수 있지만, 그걸을 알게 되는 것, 이 지식, 이 느낌은 참된 종교성의 중심에 있습니다.
이런 의미에서, 그리고 이런 의미에서만 저는 경건한 종교인의 그룹에 속합니다.

---

In December 1952, he commented on what inspires his religiosity, "My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the universe which we try to formulate as 'laws of nature.'"[40]

In a letter to Maurice Solovine Einstein spoke about his reasons for using the word "religious" to describe his spiritual feelings, "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza. (But) I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."[41]

Einstein frequently referred to his belief system as "cosmic religion" and authored an eponymous article on the subject in 1954, which later became his book Ideas and Opinions in 1955.[42] The belief system recognized a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas," devoid of a personal God who rewards and punishes individuals based on their behavior.

It rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.[42] For Einstein, "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."[43][44] He told William Hermanns in an interview that "God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified."[45] He added with a smile "some centuries ago I would have been burned or hanged. Nonetheless, I would have been in good company."[45]

Einstein devised a theology for the cosmic religion, wherein the rational discovery of the secrets of nature is a religious act.[44] His religion and his philosophy were integral parts of the same package as his scientific discoveries.[44]

Jewish identity[edit]

In a letter to Eric Gutkind dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote in German, "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."[17][18][19]

In an interview published by Time magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity.[28] Born in Germany, Viereck supported National Socialism but he was not anti-semitic.[46] And like Einstein he was a pacifist.[47][48] At the time of the interview Einstein was informed that Viereck was not Jewish,[49] but stated that Viereck had "the psychic adaptability of the Jew," making it possible for Einstein to talk to him "without barrier."[49] Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform."[28] Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. "As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."[28] Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."[28]

In a conversation with the Dutch poet Willem Frederik Hermans Einstein stressed that, "I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!' and not two or three."[50]

Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!"[50] In his 1934 book The World as I See It he expressed his belief that

"if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity."[51]

Later in a 1943 interview Einstein added, "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."[52]

Einstein interpreted the concept of a Kingdom of God as referring to the best people. "I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people."[citation needed]

In the last year of his life he said "If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker."[53]

Views of the Christian churches[edit]

The only Jewish school in Munich had been closed in 1872 for want of students, and in the absence of an alternative Einstein attended a Catholic elementary school.[54] He also received Jewish religious education at home, but he did not see a division between the two faiths, as he perceived the "sameness of all religions".[55] Einstein was equally impressed by the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the Passion of Jesus.[55] According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein immensely enjoyed the Catholic religion courses which he received at the school.[28] The teachers at his school were liberal and generally made no distinction among students' religions, though some harbored an innate but mild antisemitism.[56] Einstein later recalled an incident involving a teacher who particularly liked him, "One day that teacher brought a long nail to the lesson and told the students that with such nails Christ had been nailed to the Cross by the Jews" and that "Among the children at the elementary school anti-Semitism was prevalent...Physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent, but for the most part not too vicious."[56] Einstein noted, "That was at a Catholic school; how much worse the antisemitism must be in other Prussian schools, one can only imagine."[57] He would later in life recall that "The religion of the fathers, as I encountered it in Munich during religious instruction and in the synagogue, repelled rather than attracted me."[58]

Einstein met several times and collaborated with the Belgian priest scientist Georges Lemaître, of the Catholic University of Leuven. Fr Lemaitre is known as the first proponent of the big bang theory of the origins of the cosmos and pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology. Einstein proposed Lemaitre for the 1934 Francqui Prize, which he received from the Belgian King.[59]

In 1940 Time magazine quoted Einstein lauding the Catholic Church for its role in opposing the Nazis:

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.[60]

The quotation has since been repeatedly cited by defenders of Pope Pius XII.[61] An investigation of the quotation by mathematician William C. Waterhouse and Barbara Wolff of the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem found that the statement was mentioned in an unpublished letter from 1947. In the letter to Count Montgelas, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated.[61]

On 11 November 1950 the Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn wrote a letter to Einstein which had also quoted his alleged remarks about the Church. Einstein responded, "I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude."[62]

In 2008 the Antiques Roadshow television program aired a manuscript expert, Catherine Williamson, authenticating a 1943 letter from Einstein in which he confirms that he "made a statement which corresponds approximately" to Time magazine's quotation of him. However, Einstein continued, "I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regime—much earlier than 1940—and my expressions were a little more moderate."[63]
William Hermanns conversations[edit]

Einstein's conversations with William Hermanns were recorded over a 34-year correspondence. In the conversations Einstein makes various statements about the Christian Churches in general and the Catholic Church in particular: "When you learn the history of the Catholic Church, you wouldn't trust the Center Party. Hasn't Hitler promised to smash the Bolsheviks in Russia? The Church will bless its Catholic soldiers to march alongside the Nazis" (March 1930).[57] "I predict that the Vatican will support Hitler if he comes to power. The Church since Constantine has always favoured the authoritarian State, as long as the State allows the Church to baptize and instruct the masses" (March 1930).[64] "So often in history the Jews have been the instigators of justice and reform whether in Spain, Germany or Russia. But no sooner have they done their job than their 'friends', often blessed by the Church, spit in their faces" (August 1943).[65]

"But what makes me shudder is that the Catholic Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence...I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2,000 years had always the blessing of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the ten commandments state: Thou shalt not kill" (August 1943).[66] "With a few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church has stressed the value of dogma and ritual, conveying the idea theirs is the only way to reach heaven. I don't need to go to Church to hear if I'm good or bad; my heart tells me this" (August 1943).[67] "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanly in the past 2,000 years... Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an altar boy!" (August 1943).[67]

"Yes" Einstein replied vehemently, "It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" (August 1943).[67] "The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity." (August 1943)[68] "If I were allowed to give advice to the Churches," Einstein continued, "I would tell them to begin with a conversion among themselves, and to stop playing power politics. Consider what mass misery they have produced in Spain, South America and Russia." (September 1948).[69]

In response to a Catholic convert who asked "Didn't you state that the Church was the only opponent of Communism?" Einstein replied, "I don't have to emphasise that the Church [sic] at last became a strong opponent of National Socialism, as well." Einstein's secretary Helen Dukas added, "Dr. Einstein didn't mean only the Catholic church, but all churches."[70] When the convert mentioned that family members had been gassed by the Nazis, Einstein replied that "he also felt guilty—adding that the whole Church, beginning with the Vatican, should feel guilt." (September 1948)[70]

When asked for more precise responses in 1954, Einstein replied: "About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. [...] As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws."[71] William Miller of Life Magazine who was present at this meeting described Einstein as looking like a "living saint" and speaking with "angelic indifference."[72][73]

Philosophical beliefs[edit]

Einstein believed that when trying to understand nature one should engage in both philosophical enquiry and enquiry through the natural sciences.[74]

From a young age he had an interest in philosophy. Einstein said about himself: "As a young man I preferred books whose content concerned a whole world view and, in particular, philosophical ones. Schopenhauer, David Hume, Mach, to some extent Kant, Plato, Aristotle."[75]
Relationship between science and philosophy[edit]

Einstein believed that epistemology and science "are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled."[76]
Free will[edit]

Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe."[77] In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:

You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.[78]

Einstein's emphasis on 'belief' and how it connected with determinism was illustrated in a letter of condolence responding to news of the death of Michele Besso, one of his lifelong friends. Einstein wrote to the family: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."[79]

Einstein had admitted to a fascination with philosopher Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism. American philosopher Charles Hartshorne, in seeking to distinguish deterministic views with his own belief of free will panentheism, coined the distinct typology "Classical pantheism" to distinguish the views of those who hold similar positions to Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism.[80]

He was also an incompatibilist; in 1932 he said:

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.[81][82]

And yet, Einstein maintains that whether or not a particular human life is meaningful depends on how the individual conceives of his or her own life with respect to the lives of fellow human beings. A primitive human being in this regard is one whose life is entirely devoted to the gratification of instinctual needs. Whereas Einstein accepts that the gratification of basic needs is a legitimate and indispensable goal, he regards it nevertheless as an elementary goal. The transition of the human mind from its initial and infantile state of disconnectedness (selfishness) to a state of unity with the universe, according to Einstein, requires the exercise of four types of freedoms: freedom from self, freedom of expression, freedom from time, and freedom of independence.[82][83]
Humanism and moral philosophy[edit]

Einstein was a secular humanist and a supporter of the Ethical Culture movement. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York.[7] For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."[8] He was an honorary associate of the British humanist organization the Rationalist Press Association and its journal was among the items present on his desk at his death.[citation needed]

With regard to punishment by God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."[84] "A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."[85]

On the importance of ethics he wrote, "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action."[86] "I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others."[87] "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God."[88]
Teleology[edit]

In a conversation with Ugo Onufri in 1955, with regards to nature's purpose he said, "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic."[74] In a 1947 letter he stated, "I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere."[14]

Epistemology[edit]
Naïve realism[edit]

Einstein believed naïve realism was "relatively simple" to disprove. He agreed with Bertrand Russell that humans observe the effects objects have on them (greenness, coldness, hardness, etc.) and not the actual objects themselves.[74]
Positivism[edit]

Einstein declared that he was no positivist,[89] and maintained that we use with a certain right concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience.[90]
Transcendental Idealism[edit]
Further information: Transcendental Idealism

Einstein considered that Kant’s "denial of the objectivity of space can (...) hardly be taken seriously".[91] He also believed that "if Kant had known what is known to us today of the natural order, I am certain that he would have fundamentally revised his philosophical conclusions. Kant built his structure upon the foundations of the world outlook of Kepler and Newton. Now that the foundation has been undermined, the structure no longer stands."[74]
Opinions on philosophers[edit]
David Hume[edit]

Einstein was an admirer of the philosophy of David Hume; in 1944 he said "If one reads Hume’s books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him."[74]
Immanuel Kant[edit]

Some sources maintain that Einstein read the three Critiques at the age of 16 and studied Kant as a teenager. However Philip Stamp states that this is contradicted by some of his own claims. In 1949, Einstein said that he "did not grow up in the Kantian tradition, but came to understand the truly valuable which is to be found in his doctrine, alongside of errors which today are quite obvious, only quite late."[74]

In one of Einstein's letters in 1918 to Max Born, Einstein said that he was starting to discover this "truly valuable" in Kant: "I am reading Kant's Prolegomena here, among other things, and I am beginning to comprehend the enormous suggestive power that emanated from the fellow, and still does. Once you concede to him merely the existence of synthetic a priori judgements, you are trapped. Anyway it is nice to read him, even if it is not as good as his predecessor Hume's work. Hume also had a far sounder instinct."[74]

Einstein explained the significance of Kant's philosophy as follows:

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seems crushing: the sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of lawful relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: if we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself.[74]
Arthur Schopenhauer[edit]

Schopenhauer's views on the independence of spatially separated systems influenced Einstein,[92] who called him a genius.[93] In their view it was a necessary assumption that the mere difference in location suffices to make two systems different, with the two states having their own real physical state, independent of the state of the other.[citation needed]

In Einstein's Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Faraday, Maxwell and Schopenhauer.[94] Einstein described, concerning the personal importance of Schopenhauer for him, Schopenhauer's words as "a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance."[95] Although Schopenhauer's works are known for their pessimism, Konrad Wachsmann remembered, "He often sat with one of the well-worn Schopenhauer volumes, and as he sat there, he seemed so pleased, as if he were engaged with a serene and cheerful work."[75]
Ernst Mach[edit]

Einstein liked Ernst Mach's scientific work, though not his philosophical work. He said "Mach was as good a scholar of mechanics as he was a deplorable philosopher".[74]
See also[edit]

Religion portal

Philosophy portal
Political views of Albert Einstein
Religious views of Isaac Newton
References[edit]

^ Stachel, John (2001). Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’. New York: Science, p. 7.
^ Jump up to:a b Calaprice, Alice (2010). The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 325.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Calaprice, Alice (2000). The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 218.
^ Isaacson, Walter (2008). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 390.
^ Jump up to:a b c Calaprice, Alice (2010). The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 340. Letter to M. Berkowitz, 25 October 1950. Einstein Archive 59-215.
^ Isaacson, Walter (2008). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 461.
^ Jump up to:a b Dowbiggin, Ian (2003). A Merciful End. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 41.
^ Jump up to:a b Einstein, Albert (1995). Ideas And Opinions. New York: Random House, p. 62.
^ Jump up to:a b Jammer, Max (2011). Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 75.; Originally published in Albert Einstein (1929). Gelegentliches. ["A Miscellany"] Berlin: Soncino Gesellschaft, p. 9.
^ Jump up to:a b Viereck, George Sylvester (1930). Glimpses of the Great. New York: The Macaulay Company, pp. 372-373.
^ Baierlein, Ralph (1992). Newton to Einstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201-202.
^ Einstein, Albert (1949). "Notes for an Autobiography." Saturday Review of Literature (Nov. 26): 9.
^ Jump up to:a b Gilmore, Michael R. (1997). "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?" Skeptic 5 (2): 64; also July 2, 1945 letter to Guy Raner Jr.
^ Jump up to:a b Hoffmann, Banesh (1972). Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel. New York: New American Library, p. 95.
^ Calaprice, Alice (2000). The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 217. Einstein Archives 59-797.
^ Gutkind, Eric (1952). Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.New York: Henry Schuman Press.
^ Jump up to:a b Randerson, James (2008). "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear." The Guardian (May 13). Concerns have been raised over The Guardian's English translation. Original letter (handwriting, German). Archived2013-12-09 at the Wayback Machine "Das Wort Gott ist für mich nichts als Ausdruck und Produkt menschlicher Schwächen, die Bibel eine Sammlung ehrwürdiger aber doch reichlich primitiver Legenden.... Für mich ist die unverfälschte jüdische Religion wie alle anderen Religionen eine Incarnation des primitiven Aberglaubens." Transcribed here and here. Translated here and here.Copies of this letter are also located in the Albert Einstein Archives: 33-337 (TLXTr), 33-338 (ALSX), and 59-897 (TLTr). Alice Calaprice (2011). The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, p. 342, cites Einstein Archives 33-337.
^ Jump up to:a b Overbye, Dennis (May 17, 2008). "Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000". The New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2012.
^ Jump up to:a b Bryner, Jeanna (October 5, 2012). "Does God Exist? Einstein's 'God Letter' Does, And It's Up For Sale". NBC News. Retrieved October 7, 2012.
^ "Albert Einstein's 'God letter' sells for $2.9m". BBC News. 4 December 2018. Retrieved 10 December 2018.
^ Dukas, Helen (1981). Albert Einstein the Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 43. Einstein Archives 59-454 and 59-495
^ G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930) p. 372-373.
^ Holton, G. J. and Yehuda Elkana (1997). Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Dover Publications, p. 309.
^ Isaacson, Walter (2008). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 388-389. Reported by The New York Times 25 April 1929 under the headline "Einstein believes in 'Spinoza's God'"
^ Einstein, Albert (2010). Ideas And Opinions. New York: Three Rivers Press, p. 262.
^ Clark, Ronald W. (1971). Einstein: The Life and Times. New York: World Publishing Company, p. 425.
^ Brian, Denis (1996). Einstein: A Life. New York: J. Wiley, p. 344. Einstein's Letter of 2 July 1945; cf. Michael Shermer 13 December 2010; cf. Bonhams sale, 14 Mar 2019, Eric C. Carens collection
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Isaacson, Walter (2007). "Einstein and Faith" Time169 (April 5): 47.
^ Jammer, Max (2002). Einstein and Religion: physics and theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 97
^ Jammer, Max (2002). Einstein and Religion: physics and theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 51, 149.
^ Albert Einstein's "God Letter" fetches US $2,400,000 at Christie's New York auction house on 4 December 2018 [1]
^ "Einstein's "I don't believe in God" letter has sold on eBay...", 23 Oct 2012, io9.com
^ Dukas, Helen (1981). Albert Einstein the Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 39.
^ Einstein, Albert (1999). The World as I See It. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, p. 5.
^ Calaprice, Alice (2000). The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 201.
^ Jump up to:a b Rowe, David and Robert Schulmann (2007). Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 229-230.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Einstein, Albert (1930). "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine (Nov. 9): 3-4.
^ Einstein, Albert (2006). The World As I See It. New York: Citadel Press, p. 7.
^ Einstein, Albert (2013) Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 32-33.
^ Galison, Peter; Holton, Gerald James; Schweber, Silvan S. (2008). Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture (illustrated ed.). Princeton University Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-691-13520-5.
^ Goldsmith, Maurice, Alan Mackay, James Woudhuysen, eds. (2013). Einstein: The First Hundred Years. New York: Pergamon Press. p. 192.
^ Jump up to:a b Calaprice, Alice (2005). The Einstein Almanac. Baltimore: JHU Press, p. 91.
^ Einstein, Albert (1956). "Science and Religion," Ideas and Opinions. New York: Citadel Press, p. 26.
^ Jump up to:a b c Don Howard, Lesson no. 22, "Cosmic Religion and Jewish Identity", Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian , Course No. 8122, The Teaching Company, LLC, 2009.
^ Jump up to:a b Hermanns, William (1983). Einstein and the Poet. In Search of the Cosmic Man. Brookline Village MA: Branden Books, p. 60.
^ American National Biography Online
^ Goldsmith, Maurice, Alan Mackay, James Woudhuysen, eds. (2013). Einstein: The First Hundred Years. New York: Pergamon Press. p. 100.
^ Ito, Shingo (2005). "Einstein's pacifist dilemma revealed." July 5.
^ Jump up to:a b Viereck, George Sylvester (1929). "What Life Means to Einstein," Saturday Evening Post (Oct. 26): 17, 110.
^ Jump up to:a b Hermanns, William (1983). Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man. Brookline Village MA: Branden Books, p. 62.
^ Einstein, Albert (1954). Ideas and Opinions. New York: Bonanza Books, pp. 184-185. Originally from WAISI.
^ Calaprice, Alice (2011). The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 337.
^ Clark, Ronald W. (1995). Einstein: The Life and Times. New York: Random House Value Publishing, p. 339.
^ Fölsing, Albrecht (1997). Albert Einstein: a biography. London: Penguin, p. 15
^ Jump up to:a b Sachs, Andrew and Peter Jones (1930). Albert Einstein. Taylor and Francis, p. 32.
^ Jump up to:a b Fölsing, Albrecht (1997). Albert Einstein: a biography. London: Penguin, p. 16.
^ Jump up to:a b Hermanns, William (1983). Einstein and the Poet. In Search of the Cosmic Man. Brookline Village MA: Branden Books, p. 32.
^ Fölsing, Albrecht (1997). Albert Einstein: a biography. London: Penguin, p. 41.
^ Holder, R.D. and S Mitton (2013). Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy. New York: Springer Science, p. 10.
^ Anonymous (1940). "Religion: German Martyrs" Time 36 (Dec. 23): 38.
^ Jump up to:a b Waterhouse, William C. (2006-01-05). "Did Einstein Praise the Church?". eSkeptic. The Skeptics Society. Retrieved 2010-03-25.
^ Dukas, Helen, ed. (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 94.
^ Antiques Roadshow (2008). "1943 Albert Einstein Letter" PBS. May 19. Video
^ Hermanns, William (1983). pp. 32-33.
^ Hermanns, William (1983). p. 46.
^ Hermanns, William (1983). p. 63.
^ Jump up to:a b c Hermanns, William (1983). p. 65.
^ Hermanns, William (1983). p. 66.
^ Hermanns, William (1983). p. 105.
^ Jump up to:a b Hermanns, William (1983). p. 119.
^ Hermanns, William (1983). p. 132.
^ Miller, Pat (1955). "Death of a Genius" Life Magazine 38 (May 2): 62.
^ Somers, Cliff (2016-11-11). Is He or Isn't He? A Response to God's Not Dead. ISBN 9781684093670.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Stamp, Philip (2014). "Einstein: Philosophical Ideas." Retrieved 14 February 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b Don, Howard (1997). A Peek behind the Veil of Maya: Einstein, Schopenhauer, and the Historical Background of the Conception of Space as a Ground for the Individuation of Physical Systems. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 92.
^ "Einstein's Philosophy of Science". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2019.
^ Gardner, Martin (1996). The Night Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938-1995. p. 430.
^ Adams, John (1995). Risk. London: University College London Press, p. 17.
^ Goldsmith, Donald and Marcia Bartusiak (2006). E = Einstein: His Life, His Thought, and His Influence on Our Culture. New York: Stirling Publishing, p. 187.
^ David Ray, John B. Cobb, Clark H. Pinnock (2000). Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue Between Process and Free Will Theists, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000, p. 177. The Encyclopedia of Religion Volume 10 refers to this view as an "extreme monism" where, "God decides or determines everything, including our supposed decisions."
^ Elkana, Yehuda and Adi Ophir, eds. (1979). Einstein 1879-1979: Exhibition. New York: Jewish National and University Library, p. 48.
^ Jump up to:a b Dargie, Waltenegus (July 2018). THE REASON FOR LIFE: According to Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy, Lamsi Publication (pp. 117-119)
^ Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and Opinions (Trans.: Sonja Bergmann) New York (crown). p. 31
^ Seldes, George (1996). The Great Thoughts. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 134.
^ Calaprice, Alice (2000). The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 216. Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science" New York Times Magazine (9 Nov. 1930): 3-4.
^ Dukas, Helen (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 95. Letter to a Brooklyn minister November 20, 1950.
^ Bucky, Peter (1992). The Private Albert Einstein. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, p. 86.
^ Dukas, Helen (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 66.
^ Einstein, Albert; Dyson, Freeman (2010). Calaprice, Alice (ed.). Ultimate Quotable Einstein. From an interview with Alfred Stern, Contemporary Jewish Record (June 1945) 245-259. Princeton University Press. p. 395. ISBN 978-0691160146.
^ Albert, Einstein (1944). Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.). The Library of Living Philosophers. V, ”The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell”. ”Remarks on Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Knowledge”.
^ Weinert, Friedel (October 2005). "Einstein and Kant". Philosophy. 80 (314): 585–593. doi:10.1017/S0031819105000483.
^ Howard, Don A. (December 2005), "Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science" (PDF), Physics Today, American Institute of Physics, 58 (12): 34–40, Bibcode:2005PhT....58l..34H, doi:10.1063/1.2169442, retrieved 2015-03-08 – via University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, author's personal webpage, From Schopenhauer he had learned to regard the independence of spatially separated systems as, virtually, a necessary a priori assumption ... Einstein regarded his separation principle, descended from Schopenhauer's principium individuationis, as virtually an axiom for any future fundamental physics. ... Schopenhauer stressed the essential structuring role of space and time in individuating physical systems and their evolving states. This view implies that difference of location suffices to make two systems different in the sense that each has its own real physical state, independent of the state of the other. For Schopenhauer, the mutual independence of spatially separated systems was a necessary a priori truth.
^ Isaacson, Walter (2007). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 367. ISBN 978-0743264747.
^ Don, Howard (1997). A Peek behind the Veil of Maya: Einstein, Schopenhauer, and the Historical Background of the Conception of Space as a Ground for the Individuation of Physical Systems. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 87.
^ Isaacson, Walter (2007). Einstein: His Life and Universe. p. 391.

External links[edit]
The Reason for Life: What They Believe: Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy - by Waltenegus Dargie
Einstein on Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms - by Albert Einstein
The Genius of Einstein: The Science, His Brain, the Man - World Science Festival
Einstein's God - talk by Walter Isaacson, FORA.tv
"Einstein's "I don't believe in God" letter has sold on eBay...", 23 October 2012
Albert Einstein's "God Letter" fetches US $2,400,000 at Christie's New York auction house on 4 December 2018 [2]

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Works

Annus Mirabilis papers (1905)
"Investigations on the Theory of Brownian Movement" (1905)
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916)
The Meaning of Relativity (1922)
The World as I See It (1934)
The Evolution of Physics (1938)
"Why Socialism?" (1949)
Russell–Einstein Manifesto (1955)
Family

Pauline Koch (mother)
Hermann Einstein (father)
Maja Einstein (sister)
Mileva Marić (first wife)
Elsa Einstein (second wife; cousin)
Lieserl Einstein (daughter)
Hans Albert Einstein (son)
Eduard Einstein (son)
Bernhard Caesar Einstein (grandson)
Evelyn Einstein (granddaughter)
Thomas Martin Einstein (great-grandson)
Robert Einstein (cousin)
Siegbert Einstein (distant cousin)
In popular
culture

Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Relativitäts-Theorie (1922 documentary)
The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923 documentary)
Relics: Einstein's Brain (1994 documentary)
Insignificance (1985 film)
I.Q. (1994 film)
Einstein's Gift (2003 play)
Einstein and Eddington (2008 TV film)
Genius (2017 series)
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House
Memorial
Political views
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List of things named after Albert Einstein
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Einstein refrigerator
Einsteinhaus
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Prizes

Albert Einstein Award
Albert Einstein Medal
UNESCO Albert Einstein medal
Albert Einstein Peace Prize
Albert Einstein World Award of Science
Einstein Prize for Laser Science
Einstein Prize (APS)
Books about
Einstein

Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel
Einstein and Religion
Einstein for Beginners
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Einstein's Cosmos
I Am Albert Einstein
Introducing Relativity
Subtle is the Lord

The World As I See It: Einstein: Science and Religion

The World As I See It: Einstein:Science and Religion

White-Haired Einstein
Einstein:
Science and Religion

The World As I See It

This essay taken from Einstein's book The World as I See It . It bears the title of the book and begins on p. 1. The last paragraph is available on the Science and Religion web page as "Einstein on the Mysterious."

What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals ! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

Einstein with His Sister at the Palestine Pavilion of the 1939 World's Fair

To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves-such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship which men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour--property, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude--a feeling which increases with the years. One is sharply conscious, yet without regret, of the limits to the possibility of mutual understanding and sympathy with one's fellow-creatures. Such a person no doubt loses something in the way of geniality and light-heartedness; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to take his stand on such insecure foundations.

Next Article Segment

The photograph of Einstein with his sister at the Palestine Pavilion of the 1939 World's Fair comes from Louie de Broglie et al.

===

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알라딘: 아인슈타인과 랍비

아인슈타인과 랍비 - 영혼을 찾아서

나오미 레비 (지은이),최순님 (옮긴이)한국기독교연구소2020-12-15원제 : Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul (2017년)

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이 시간, 알라딘 굿즈 총집합!

책소개영혼의 실체에 대한 철학적이며 추상적인 설명이 아니라, 구체적인 삶의 이야기들을 통해 영혼을 찾는 길을 확인시켜 줌으로써, 인간의 실존적 불안과 공허함, 현대 문명과 종교의 망상에 대해 근원적인 깨달음을 제시한다.

영혼과 종교의 본질에 대한 아인슈타인의 과학적 이해와 탈무드, 하시디즘 같은 유대인들의 오래된 지혜, 그리고 저자 자신의 다양한 목회경험들을 연결시켜, 우리가 영혼을 찾고 살찌우는 길을 구체적으로 제시한다. 왜 삶이 불안하며 공허한지, 영혼은 왜 쉽게 시들고 마비되는지, 우리는 어떻게 각자의 영혼을 치유하여 아름다운 삶을 살 수 있는지에 대해, 일상적 이야기들을 통해 단계별로 접근함으로써, 삶의 진실과 용기를 깨닫게 한다.

제1부 영혼을 찾아서 __ 13

영혼을 만남 / 15

아인슈타인과 랍비 / 28

내 안의 나 / 46

솔피(soulfie) / 50

영혼의 세 가지 차원 / 58

제2부 생명의 힘 일깨우기: 비전과 행동을 여는 열쇠 __ 67

영혼의 음성 볼륨 키우기: 영혼을 먹이고 깨우기 __ 68

영혼이 바라는 대로 / 69

명상, 영혼의 치료제 / 75

음악으로 영혼 드높이기 / 85

영혼에 평안을 주는 음식 / 93

이해의 열쇠, 기도와 공부 / 100

자연의 품에서 / 109

영혼의 신부, 안식일 / 113

확장된 영혼의 시각 __ 120

한 발 물러서면 / 121

넓은 영혼의 눈으로 / 130

우리 스스로 말하는 “진실” / 138

태피스트리 속의 숨겨진 연결 / 150

행동할 능력 __ 158

고루한 경향성 벗기 / 159

영원한 임신 / 165

제3부 사랑의 힘에 귀 기울이기: 친밀감과 부름의 열쇠 __ 175

사랑을 깊게 배움 __ 176

돌 같은 심장, 살 같은 심장 / 177

용서함으로써 ‘힐링’ / 190

거룩한 두려움 / 205

진정한 친구 / 213

영혼의 동반자 / 219

결혼생활과 영혼 / 223

영혼 챙기기 / 227

영혼과 부모 역할 / 233

거룩한 부르심 __ 242

영혼의 부름 / 243

적임자 / 249

영혼의 잡아당김 / 266

취약함의 힘 / 275

노동에 영혼을 / 284

영혼의 적수 / 290

나는 누구인가 / 299

제4부 영원한 힘: 더 고귀한 앎을 위한 열쇠 __ 319

일치의 경험, 영원의 맛 __ 320

귀향 / 321

마흔두 곳을 거치는 영혼의 여정 / 327

삶이 위축될 때 / 334

그대의 천국 / 344

시간과 영원에 대한 보다 더 높은 이해 __ 352

소멸하지 않는 축복 / 353

영혼의 시간으로 살아가기/ 363

하나됨의 경험 / 377

환희에 찬 영혼 / 385

연결의 실타래 / 392

제5부 제자리로 돌아오기: 편지 __ 411

감사의 말씀 / 431

참고문헌 / 437

접기

책속에서

P. 17~18 아버지의 영혼이 나에게 말을 걸어오는 거라고 사람들은 말했다. 장례식장에서 랍비는 하나님의 보호하는 날개 아래 아버지의 영혼이 평안한 안식을 얻었노라고 기도했다. 하나님이 새였던가? 내 아빠가 돌아가신 사실만이 내가 알고 있는 현실의 전부였다. 아버지가 그리워서 죽을 것만 같았다... 나도 죽었다... 내 기도도 죽었다. 하나님,... 더보기

P. 22~23 대부분의 인생에 관한 질문은 실제로 영혼에 관한 질문이라는 것을 나는 랍비 직을 시작한 초반부터 알아차렸다. 사람들은 지금 현재의 삶이 우리가 애당초 누려야 할 마땅한 삶이 아니라는 생각 때문에 시달린다... 그 이유는 어느 순간, 우리는 자신의 영혼으로부터 분리되어 버렸고, 우리 존재의 목적을 향해 우리를 인도하기 위해 여기 있는 내부의 목소리와도 단절되었기 때문이다. 접기

P. 31~32 불행이 닥치면 사람들은 자기의 목회자를 찾기 마련인데, 성직자들은 누구를 찾아가야 할까? 랍비 마커스는 분명 깊은 아픔을 겪어내며 답을 찾느라 방황했을 것이다. 그러나 도대체 왜 하필이면 아인슈타인에게 편지를 썼던 것일까? 의아했다. 그로부터 약 3년 동안을 나는 책과 편지들을 뒤지기 시작했고, 먼지 쌓인 다락방과 기록보관소를 찾아다녔고 수많은 인터뷰를 했다. 내 속에 생긴 하나의 의문이 뉴욕, 신시내티, 예루살렘으로 나를 이끌었다. 나는 천천히, 겹겹이 쌓인 신비의 층들을 벗겨가기 시작했다. 접기

P. 34~35 그는 시체더미 사이에서 가슴 조리며 숨어 있던 어린 소년을 발견했다. 얼굴에 주체할 수 없는 눈물이 흘러내리던 랍비 샥터는 그 아이를 들어올렸다.

“네 이름이 뭐니, 꼬마야?”라고 그는 이디쉬어로 물었다.

“룰렉,” 하고 소년이 대답했다.

“몇 살이지?” 랍비가 물었다.

“나이가 무슨 상관인데요?” 일곱 살짜리 룰렉이 말했다. “아무튼, 내가 아저씨보다 더 늙었어요.”

“왜 나보다 네가 더 늙었다고 생각하니?” 랍비가 웃으며 물었다.

“아저씨는 아이들처럼 울기도 하고 웃기도 하잖아요.” 룰렉이 대답했다. “나는 웃어본 적이 언제인지 모르겠어요. 나는 이제 더 이상 울지 않아요. 그러니까 누가 더 늙었나요?” 접기

P. 71 에고를 키움으로써 욕구는 어느 정도 충족시킬 수 있으나 영혼의 목마름은 사라지게 할 수 없다. 적당한 양분을 공급하지 않으면 영혼은 생명력을 잃는다. 목이 마르고 계속 굶주리게 되면 영혼은 아프고 쇠약해진다.

How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human: Kohn, Eduardo: 9780520276116: Amazon.com: Books

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human―and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction–one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

4.4 out of 5 stars 66 ratings

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288 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review

"What’s so welcome about Kohn’s approach is that he walks a tightrope with perfect balance: never losing sight of the unique aspects of being human, while refusing to force those aspects into separating us from the rest of the abundantly thinking world." ― Times Literary Supplement

"How Forests Think is an important book that provides a viable way for people educated in Western philosophy to approach indigenous animism without being credulous or inauthentic. It is refreshing to read a book of this intellectual caliber that takes Runa stories seriously and enters into dialogue with their claims using the tools of Western philosophy." ― Anthropos

"Kohn pushes the reader to step out of an anthropocentric view and re-evaluate how humans can interpret the world. Indeed, the author stresses that the field of anthropology has been too short sighted and has not yet fully explored how other beings constitute what it is to be human." ― Space and Culture

"How Forests Think is a remarkable book. Eduardo Kohn uses language that captures your attention and makes you want to say “no” until, sometimes reluctantly, you will see what he wants you to see. Do forests think? No, of course not. And yet, in the way that this ethnography unpacks what that question means, the reader comes to understand that they do." ― American Anthropologist

"This study seduces at once by its methodological seriousness, the quality of its writing, and its construction. Indeed, the style is both rich and accessible, offering us clear—and often picturesque—explanations for complex concepts, using an intelligent syntax." ― Current Anthropology

"Kohn’s engaging and intellectually dynamic ethnography of the Runa and their relations to the world around them demonstrates that interrelations among people and dogs and forests, as just one example, play important, interactive and creative roles in the formation of human selves and their life histories. " ― Anthropology Now

From the Inside Flap

A thinking forest is not a metaphor. Rooted in richly composted, other-than-symbolic semiotic worldings, this book teaches the reader how other-than-human encounters open possibilities for the emergent realization of worlds, not just worldviews. The semiotics in this well-wrought book are technical, worked, demanding, tuned to form and modality, alert to emergent properties, multinaturally and ethnographically precise. Thinking with the other-than-human world shows that what humans share with all living beings is the fact that we all live with and through signs. Life is constitutively semiotic. Besides all that, this book is a powerfully good read, one that changed my dreams and reworked my settled habits of interpretation, even the multispecies ones. -- Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz

I can only call this thought-leaping in the most creative sense. A supreme artifact of the human skill in symbolic thinking, this work takes us to the other side of significationitself doubly manifest in what gets noticed and not noticedwhere it is possible to imagine all life as thoughtful life. It has been done hand in hand with the Runa. It could not have been done without the delicacy of Kohns ethnographic attentiveness. However far along the track you want to travel with Kohn, you will see that the anthropological landscape has already changed. -- Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

...A work of art... [and] an immensely refreshing alternative [for] philosophical anthropology. Bruno Latour, Sciences Po

Radically innovative and original [and] beautifully written. Anna Tsing, UC Santa Cruz

A remarkable aspect of [this book] is the complex and often beautifully written intermingling of subtle theoretical propositions with an even subtler ethnography. Philippe Descola, Collège de France

[Kohn] means to attach us again to the world we thought our thinking removed us from by showing us that the world too thinks. … I know dancers and painters who would groove to Kohn's expansion of self and thought and living, and I want to see the dances, paintings, films, buildings that come out of dreaming over this book. Bookslut

From the Back Cover

“A thinking forest is not a metaphor. Rooted in richly composted, other-than-symbolic semiotic worldings, this book teaches the reader how other-than-human encounters open possibilities for the emergent realization of worlds, not just worldviews. The semiotics in this well-wrought book are technical, worked, demanding, tuned to form and modality, alert to emergent properties, multinaturally and ethnographically precise. Thinking with the other-than-human world shows that what humans share with all living beings is the fact that we all live with and through signs. Life is constitutively semiotic. Besides all that, this book is a powerfully good read, one that changed my dreams and reworked my settled habits of interpretation, even the multispecies ones.” — Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz

“I can only call this thought-leaping in the most creative sense. A supreme artifact of the human skill in symbolic thinking, this work takes us to the other side of signification—itself doubly manifest in what gets noticed and not noticed—where it is possible to imagine all life as thoughtful life. It has been done hand in hand with the Runa. It could not have been done without the delicacy of Kohn’s ethnographic attentiveness. However far along the track you want to travel with Kohn, you will see that the anthropological landscape has already changed.” — Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

“...A work of art... [and] an immensely refreshing alternative [for] philosophical anthropology.” — Bruno Latour, Sciences Po

“Radically innovative and original [and] beautifully written.” — Anna Tsing, UC Santa Cruz

“A remarkable aspect of [this book] is the complex – and often beautifully written – intermingling of subtle theoretical propositions with an even subtler ethnography.” — Philippe Descola, Collège de France

“[Kohn] means to attach us again to the world we thought our thinking removed us from by showing us that the world too thinks. … I know dancers and painters who would groove to Kohn's expansion of self and thought and living, and I want to see the dances, paintings, films, buildings that come out of dreaming over this book.” — Bookslut

About the Author

Eduardo Kohn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McGill University.

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Product details

ASIN : 0520276116

Publisher : University of California Press; First edition (August 10, 2013)

Language : English

Paperback : 288 pages

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5.0 out of 5 stars Book Review- How Forests Think: Toward and Anthropology Beyond the Human (2013)

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2014

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Eduardo Kohn’s book, How Forests Think (2013) is an inquiry on how to think beyond human as subject of anthropological study. Thus, it provides us with academic understanding of our strongly relational ties with non-human beings, which are constitutive in and for our presence in the world. In this study, ethnography is not an object, but a medium to comprehend multiple ontologies; hence, it is much different from traditional anthropological works, which mostly focus on cultural representations. Without giving up being “human,” the writer discloses how our “selves” are interwoven with other “beings.” In this sense, he offers us to approach the human and non-human as active agents in our thinking of anthropological study.

Kohn conducts his ethnographic fieldwork from 1996 to 2000 in Avila, an Upper Amazonian village in Ecuador. He uses ethnographic methods, such as participant observation and interviews, in addition to his linguistic analysis and epistemological explorations. Thus, I was expecting an ethnographic examination on culture, gender, or kinship structures in Avila. Also, I was wondering if he would theorize social, economic and political dynamics of the region in relation to the larger historical context. However, Kohn does not do what many of the previous ethnographies have aimed to do. Rather, Kohn criticizes human-centric approach of the Western anthropology by focusing on other-than-human beings, and he proves us the importance of studying human within a relationship with its surroundings. I will explain how.

Although his fundamental theoretical approach is based on semiotics and semiosis, Kohn does not see signs just as human affairs. In his account, signs are constitutive in life both for human and nonhuman beings (43). In drawing our attention to those signs, Kohn delicately interrogates how different “beings” relate to and communicate with each other. He calls this relationality “ecology of selves,” which he finds and formulates within the rainforest of an Amazonian village, where trans-species semiosis pervades and connects all living selves. A very good example of his idea of relationality is the example he gives about ants and blowing tobacco smoke in Chapter 2. Because rain starts when ants appear, people become able to impede rain by using tobacco, whose smoke prevents ants from coming out. Similarly, when Juanicu whistles like a siren, the flying ants understand as the call of their “mothers” and they answer by coming to the source of the sign (81). As a result of such communication, a relational world, where both human and animal coinhabit, is created.

However, Kohn’s book is not only about humans and animals. In Chapter 5, he talks about “perceptions” of cross-species. For instance, Runa puma, shape-shifting human jaguar, also has a perception of seeing things around himself. Whether Runa sees you as a human being or a piece of meat totally depends on Runa’s perception of you, as well as the way you present yourself before him. Therefore, you may or may not be eaten by the jaguar depending on your visual representation. In a similar vein, the Runa in their everyday life see the game animals that they hunt in the forest as wild animals, but they know that this is not their true manifestation. Hence, they do not eat, for instance, the spirit master’s chicken (178). In other words, people, Runa, and all other organisms in the forest use signs primarily to survive in this relational world.

Therefore, he draws our attention to the revolutionary potentials and scholarly possibilities of studying another type of anthropology, in which we open up ourselves to various "selves." His study converts Redfieldian notion of “worldviews” into different “worlds” of non-human beings. Kohn introduces us another world—a world where human and non-human melt into each other through semiosis of all life. Focusing on the potentials of thinking beyond human in anthropology, he provides alternative ways of thinking within scholarly language and unconventional ways of using ethnography. Kohn uses ethnography as a tool to explore the spectrum of forest, which seems larger than "little communities." However, my critic starts right there, as I would like to know more about ethnographic aspects of his work related to the Avila community. What kinds of people are able to relate themselves to the non-human selves of the forest was one of my curiosities while reading this book. How is their society organized in relation to their semiotic relationship with the world? What are their spiritual motivations and cosmologies? How does food function in this society where hunting is a fundamental phenomenon? Is there any relationship between their colonial history and their hesitation to use power upon other beings in their surrounding? I believe, in order to understand humans’ relationality with their surroundings, we also need to know such constitutive aspects of their lives. I would like to learn more about Avila community as human is already at the center of this book. Who else is going to talk about this, if not Kohn?

Moreover, I left confused about the distinction made in the book between living and nonliving forms. The writer says that patterned distribution of rivers or the recurrent circular shapes of the whirlpools are among the nonliving emergent forms in Amazonia, as they are constrained, and thus, they cannot flow freely as much as the water itself (159). However, within a new relationality, which is supposed to be developed in the new environment, they will be living in different ways and within different forms, even though they are constrained. Furthermore, he continues discussing whirlpools as simpler forms than the freer flow of water (166). However, I left wondering what makes the water free. Shall we still consider this flowing water as free, even there is a whirlpool on its way? Or, is the water also constrained affected by the whirlpool? What is the relationship between whirlpool and water? What is the relationship between water, whirlpool, and rubber trees? In order to understand “how forest thinks” as a whole, we need to understand this relationality in a larger context with more ontological explanations.

Yes, the language is tough, and it necessitates from the reader to have some background information on semiotics, ontology, and epistemology to the extent of postmodernism and posthuman critics. I do not think that the book is for the general reader, but inevitably an innovative contribution to anthropology with its writing performance. Just as a snowflake having a provisional form between present and absent, Kohn presents us a language whose form can change in any moment. His poetic language is robust yet also fragile—as if the words may rebel at any time and break apart in front of your eyes. He perfectly uses possibilities that are provided by the language, as another sign system. Among the non-textual ways of communication with the reader, the writer’s use of photography perfectly fits with the philosophical profundity of the text. I could not prevent myself from looking at the series of very well selected photographs over and over again.

Although his book is not considered as a traditional ethnography for the reasons that I mentioned above, since he opens up the scholarly work into dialogic epistemologies and provides multiplicity of experiences from an unconventional inter-species analysis of subject-object relationships, it must be considered one of the finest examples of critical ethnography.

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Trevor Neal

4.0 out of 5 stars Review of How Forests Think

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2014

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In 'How Forests Think,' the author, Eduardo Kohn, has undertaken an ambitious project, challenging anthropology to be inclusive of non-human life. To carry out this project, Mr. Kohn has employed 4 perspectives; ecology, colonial history, semiotics, and the Runa, an indigenous group in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador. He seeks to weave each perspective together symbiotically in order to gain a deeper understanding of the context the Runa participate in, and through the eyes of the Runa, a different viewpoint on how we can relate to the non-human world.

For a reader, the challenge is to pull apart the strands of thought which he has weaved together, in order to contemplate his main ideas. There is much to contemplate which I doubt I can give justice to in this short review. Therefore, I will highlight a few key thoughts.

The biodiversity of the rainforest is set up as the stage for this ethnography. Through the rainforest, Mr. Kohn contemplates the continuity and dynamics of form. Two examples he provides are the characteristics of amazon whirlpools, and the evolution of the walking stick insect. Insinuating that a certain geometry is inherent to both life and non-life, he feels it is this geometry that propels life forward into its manifold aspects. To me, it sounds like he is proposing something similar to the idea of the 'elan vital' introduced by Henri Bergson.

The work of Charles S Peirce, a semiotician, provides Mr. Kohn with his next main theme. Semiotics is the study of meaning making, and is the study of signs. Mr. Kohn believes that not only is life inherently geometric, but it also is communicating and thinking to itself in it's diverse aspects through signs.

This perspective also informs the Runa, a group of hunter gatherers that practice animism, or a belief that the natural world is animated by spirit. Interestingly enough, the Runa have been in contact with the outside world for centuries and have been acculturated to the extent that their beliefs bear the trappings of a cargo cult. Yet, despite the outward form of their belief system and practices there has been continuity of their animistic beliefs since they were first 'discovered.' Through the eyes of the Runa, a reader can get a picture of life and its forms as not only symbolic, but enchanted.

Here, I think Mr. Kohn is attempting to say that we don't have to perceive life in the same way as the Runa or ascribe to their meaning-making system. Their symbol system merely provides a case study of what an anthropology beyond the human could look like. Yet, we do need to subscribe to a view that sees life as inherently symbolic, sentient, and made up of a multitude of selves that an anthropology beyond the human needs to recognize.

He also seems to be saying that we need to recognize that life has some type of animating presence propelling it forward, whether we recognize this animating presence as spirit informing matter or some kind of intrinsic geometric sign system is up to us, but an anthropology beyond the human cannot move forward without adopting a viewpoint similar to this, because an anthropology beyond the human would have to honor life in all of its diverse aspects.

As a reader it is challenging to mine the gems that are in this book and it may take more than one reading and some reflection to understand everything that Mr. Kohn says, since there is so much set on the feast table. Even my interpretation may not capture all of what Mr. Kohn is trying to say. If there is a critique, it is here. Possibly, a reader may feel that Mr. Kohn is developing too many themes and is inadequately synthesizing them together.

Yet, if one is to adopt a systemic perspective, as Mr. Kohn attempts to do, I am not sure how else one could write a book like this because Mr. Kohn seeks nothing less than a revolution in our way of thinking. He strives to achieve this by exposing us through the eyes of the Runa shamans, and the shape shifting jaguars that participate in the life of the Amazon. It is due to the challenge that Mr. Kohn raises and his method of delivery that makes this a compelling read..

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A. R. Masters

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and challenging—better in print than audio

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2020

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A brilliant, mind-blowing work, but too challenging in the audio format for those without a degree in semiotics.

I audited this to help my brain re-wire itself after a cochlear implant. That worked well for the travelogue sections. The philosophical passages have complex—post-graduate level—vocabulary, syntax and concepts. I just couldn’t follow the mix of technical jargon, Spanish, and native words on top of the unfamiliar ideas. In print, I could separate each language and stop to think whenever I needed to. That worked well.

Spoiler alert—Forests really do think, not only because their constituent animals and plants do, but also because evolved behavior and structure legitimately count as thought without language. Do you ever think without the use of language? Forests do too, and in additional unexpected ways. Read the book! It will expand your appreciation of the natural world.

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Cliente Amazon

4.0 out of 5 stars Bella lettura

Reviewed in Italy on August 3, 2017

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Arrivato in ottime condizioni. Libro un po' complesso, ma dal contenuto molto interessante. Non c'é attualmente una traduzione in italiano.

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avik chatterjee

5.0 out of 5 stars Being non human by avik chatterjee

Reviewed in India on June 13, 2017

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What a non anthropocentric post human treasure ! Kohn should be a known property by now. Ponge connecting deleuze connecting haraway .

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Luigi

1.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book!

Reviewed in Germany on October 16, 2020

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Amazing book!

Pity the courier bent my mailbox door to squeeze it in and ruined the book too

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David Rietti

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a major contribution to how we should view ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2016

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This is a major contribution to how we should view the World if we are all to survive! Read it !!!

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Lorraine

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2015

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Compelling reading from the first paragraph.

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How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

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How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

by Eduardo Kohn

3.90 · Rating details · 462 ratings · 51 reviews

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human—and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction–one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings. (less)

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Published August 10th 2013 by University of California Press (first published January 1st 2013)

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Eelin Hoffström

Mar 14, 2016Eelin Hoffström rated it it was ok

Note to self: if you write a book about how FORESTS think, define what you mean by 'forest'. This book is all about thinking, and many different ways of thinking, by many different thinkers in a forest. But if you are wanting to read something about the agency and thinking of the actual trees or other less animate objects in a forest, you'll be disappointed. I think then you should probably read: The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries From a Secret World by Peter Wholleben. (less)

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Elizabeth

May 05, 2014Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

The best book I've read that I can't recommend to anyone. Readers must be comfortable with ontological, epistemological, anthropological thinking with an understanding of semiotics. (less)

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Dagezi

Oct 25, 2015Dagezi rated it did not like it

This was a crushing disappointment. His AE essay on how dogs dream was terrific and made me briefly hopeful that he was someone pursuing the ontological turn who was equally ready to look at both political economy and Viveiros de Castro. But really there's nothing even remotely like that here. Instead this is ~280 pages of turgid meditations on whether Terrance Deacon or C.S. Peirce is more awesome (answer: they're both awesome). There's nothing about Forests thinking here, rather we are given the gospel of how Deacon would have us think about Forests thinking. And then there's this giant fuck you to his informants:

"I recognize of course that those we call animists may well attribute animacy to all sorts of entities, such as stones, that I would not, according to the framework laid out here, consider living selves. If I were building my argument from within a particular animistic worldview, if I were routing all my argumentation through what, say, the Runa, think, say, or do, this discrepancy might be a problem. But I don't. Part of my attempt to open anthropology to that which lies beyond the human involves finding ways to make general claims about the world. These claims don't necessarily line up with certain situated human viewpoints, like, say, those of animists, or those of biologists, or those of anthropologists."How Forests Think, not How Natives Think, about Forests (cf Sahlins 1995); if we limit our thinking to thinking through how other people think we will always end up circumscribing ontology by epistemology."

Translation: I realize that my little model of a Peircean/Deaconian cosmos doesn't fit all that well with what the Runa, say, believe about the world, but that's okay, because I'm trying to generalize here.

Kohn's new, generalizing anthropology like its nasty colonial predecessors is more important than what any one set of informants happens to think, especially if they disagree with Peirce and/or Deacon. Nice. (And, David, this is what a negative review looks like). (less)

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Sevi

Jun 08, 2014Sevi rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Eduardo Kohn’s book, How Forests Think (2013) is an inquiry on how to think beyond human as subject of anthropological study. Thus, it provides us with academic understanding of our strongly relational ties with non-human beings, which are constitutive in and for our presence in the world. In this study, ethnography is not an object, but a medium to comprehend multiple ontologies; hence, it is much different from traditional anthropological works, which mostly focus on cultural representations. ...more

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Jenessa

Mar 29, 2016Jenessa rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2016

An incredibly interesting book on anthropology and how indigenous people of South America see the world.

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Min Joo

Dec 28, 2015Min Joo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human asks humans to understand the world through the perspectives of other than humans. Further, through his research, Kohn encourages anthropologists to engage in ethnography beyond the human. Kohn weaves his own ethnographic research conducted alongside Amazonian Avila with various theories such as that by Viveiros de Castro, John Berger, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and Tim Ingold to just name a few whose ideas make appearances in the book. Through the intricate weave between ethnographic research and theories, Kohn claims we need to see the world/us from beyond the human perspective because such paradigm shift will not only bring about drastic destabilization of what we take for granted, but also completely change the way we see and interpret the world. Through this book, Kohn gives an example of how humans can remain distinct yet maintain their connection to other than humans at the same time. Kohn, an associate professor of Anthropology at McGill University, divides the book into six chapters. Each chapter lays a building block for understanding the following chapters.

Justifiably, Kohn begins the first chapter by discussing language structure, the basis of human ontology. In Chapter One: The Open Whole, Kohn sets out to separate thought and language. The difference between symbols, icons, and indices is key to understanding the author’s claims. To borrow Kohn’s words, “unlike iconic and indexical modes of reference, which form the bases for all representation in the living world, symbolic reference is, on this planet at least, a form of representation that is unique to humans” (31). Icons are based on their virtue of resemblance to the objects/events that icons are attempting to represent, while indices represent through direct link to the objects/events (32). Any beings in non-human form have access to icons and indices. On the other hand, symbols built upon icons and indices are only privy to humans as context-dependent form of communication/language (39). Based on such framework, Kohn claims the symbolic is both continuous with the rest of nature and novel at the same time (56). In other words, through a breakdown of language into icons, indices, and symbols, Kohn convincingly claims humans are distinct and linked to nature at the same time. If one is interested in how humans are deeply related to nature, I suggest one read David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous alongside this book because it gives an especially accessible explanation of the relationship between human language, temporality, and landscape.

In Chapter Two titled The Living Thought, Kohn builds from the claim he made in the previous chapter that humans are simultaneously distinct from and very much related to nature, to suggest that all living beings think, not just humans. Through this chapter, Kohn attempts to explore thoughts beyond the realms of language. The key term for this chapter is semiosis. According to Kohn, any living organism will exhibit characteristics of forgetting and remembering which fosters semiotic change in the living being (76). Semiosis is what differentiates living beings from non-living beings. Forests, as living beings, have a lineage of the past, present, and futurity while non-living beings like snowflakes exist just for themselves (77). Semiotic growth in living beings serves as proof of thinking that non-human living beings engage in. Thinking is an inevitable and generalizable condition of all living beings in order for them to semiotically grow with their environment. This chapter is particularly interesting in light of the popular idiom “I think therefore I am.” While scholar Kenneth Morrison disposes of the term in favor of “I relate therefore I am” in his article “Animism and a Proposal for a Post-Cartesian Anthropology,” Kohn extends the definition of thought to all living beings. I believe the chapter would have been made more interesting had Kohn engaged in Rene Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” to link Kohn’s theory of thought to the popular idiom engrained in our (Western culture’s) ontology.

If the two chapters I mentioned above were theory-based in order to lay the groundwork for the book, the remainder of the book is more evenly balanced in terms of intertwining ethnography with ontological theory. In Chapters Three (Soul Blindness) and Four (Trans-Species Pidgins), Kohn incorporates his first chapter claim on human relationality to nature, and second chapter assertion that all living beings think, into Amazon Avila context. For Avila, death is only a way that the self surpasses the embodied limitations (105). Selves exist beyond physical death because beings have souls (105). Kohn supports such analysis by discussing “Aya,” the dead and soulless beings who lost connection with living humans (112). Not all dead humans become Aya, most maintain their souls and go to the forest master’s underground domain where the dead beings with souls take on different physical shapes and can interact with their living human relatives (110). Dead beings are not the only ones at risk of being alienated with their souls, living humans are just as likely to lose connection with souls. The “cosmic soul-blindness” makes one lose connection with other souls, and “radical soul blindness” makes one become blind to one’s own soul (130). Beings who maintain such soul-blind state may become the odd-one-out in the grand scheme of semiotic growth that all living beings partake in. Such alienation inevitably leads to ultimate death or extinction of the being.

Through a more detailed analysis of connection through souls in Chapter Four, Kohn notes of clear hierarchical order among Avila inter-species context which is not an ethically condemnatory practice but a reasonable practice born out of the Avila problem of maintaining a connection with others but also not losing oneself in the connection. Clear hierarchy exists between dogs, humans, and spirits of Avila with dogs coming at the bottom, humans in the middle, and spirits at the very top (144). Unlike many other hierarchies in Western society such as class and gender hierarchy, this particular Avila natural hierarchy, in Kohn’s observation, is not morally despicable because morality rises from symbolic language (133). Therefore, morality is confined to the human domain; the ethics used in human society cannot be utilized in understanding natural order. Instead, the dog-human-spirit hierarchy symbolizes Avila (or perhaps all human) struggles to “negotiate the tension between It and Thou” (152). In order for Avila to address the dogs through trans-species pidgin, Avila raise the dogs above the “it” status, but if humans address dogs as Thou or vice versa, humans fall to the ranks of the dog. Such precariousness represents Avila understanding of human location in nature. If a reader unfamiliar with Martin Buber’s I and Thou read this chapter, I believe this chapter would be quite difficult to comprehend. Although Buber’s theories are integral to the chapter at hand, besides an epigraph at the beginning of the chapter, Kohn does not spend much time in describing Buber’s theories.

Finally, in the two final chapters of the book, Eduardo Kohn makes, shall I say, much more overtly politically nuanced claims. While Chapter five: Form’s Effortless Efficacy expands Kohn theories via Amazonian colonial rubber industry practices, Chapter Six: The Living Future (and the imponderable weight of the dead) extrapolates on Chapter Three to make a final push to support Kohn’s claim that links us to the past and future as well as other non-human living beings. Form is the word Kohn uses to describe patterns that emerge from ways of thought (158). Like icons and indices, or thought for that matter, form does not just belong to humans. Amazon rubber trees have their own form; because of parasites that target rubber trees, the trees are widely distributed throughout the Amazon, not just clumped together in patches (161). In fact, non-human beings all have their own forms which are amplified by the ways humans or other non-humans use such form to their own benefit (225). Beings’ (especially human beings’) distinctive way of thinking, which leads to particular forms, makes one blind to other forms of life as well as our own form which constrains us from seeing other ways of living (185). Therefore, in Chapter Six, in a beautifully written sentence, Kohn summarizes the stakes of this book as going into the realm of the living into the world of spirit masters in hopes that we can better understand what continuity and growth means so that we can find better ways of living (196).

How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human is a critical and insightful read for anyone interested in understanding human position in the larger ecological context. Although the book is theoretically dense and difficult to get through because each consecutive chapter builds on the previous chapters’ theories, the book has the potential of being a reference for wide range of folks from environmental activists and anthropologists to politicians. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human is also applicable for readers who just want to find their position in the vast array of beings that crowded the past, interact with us in the present, and will arrive in the future. The book may be more difficult to understand than a common self-help book, but for anyone willing to spend serious time and thought into the issues that I described throughout this review, this is the book for you.

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Adam

Sep 06, 2018Adam rated it really liked it

Shelves: environmental-history, pomo, non-fiction, ebook, phil-of-science

I first shelved this ages ago I think mostly on the strength of the title, and picked it up with a bunch of other books earlier this summer. When I dipped in to sample the first chapter, I realized it had some bearing on an upcoming project, so I put it off until the time when I was prepared to confront that project. In the meantime, I pursued another line of research that I knew was vaguely related, but which actually turned out to be important context for this book, so by the time I went back to it, a lot of the theoretical context was no longer unfamiliar. With that information in hand, I could appreciate that the project this book is engaged in is fundamentally the same one I was trying to achieve on my own: expanding postmodern epistemology to coherently describe all life.

Kohn does that by integrating anthropology with biosemiotics (the latter is the context I gained from other reading). He uses the ethnography of his study population, the Avila Runa, not so much for its own sake as for a series of nested and layered examples to illustrate his broader approach. That ingredient provides the flavor that keeps everything grounded, unsentimental, and comprehensible. There are a lot of pitfalls along the way and the book mostly avoids them. First of all, semiotics is fairly dreadful to read about, almost as bad as postmodernist critical theory itself.

Then there's the new age dimension. My reading for this project has also brought my attention back to phenomenology, and reminded me of the work of David Abram. Abram uses phenomenology in almost exactly the same way that Kohn uses semiotics, as a way to bridge human culture back into the perceptual and sensual web of complete ecosystems. I think both approaches are fundamentally valid (they are basically two sides of the same coin), but Abram is pretty unabashed about using that idea as a framework for deep ecology prose poems and meditations, Kohn is strictly business. Both of those goals are acceptable, but for a work of philosophy, I appreciate the rigor.

One of the most important things Kohn achieves is in distinguishing the biosemiotics approach from Actor – Network Theory, which fails (to my limited knowledge) precisely because it tries to achieve the same thing by throwing many meaningful distinctions out with the realist bathwater. That kind of precision is important, as is dispelling notions that this opens up channels to oneness with the universe or something. Kohn carefully articulates a hierarchy of processes, forms, and sign relationships and specifies the ways in which they do, and do not, enrich the perceptual world available for the ethnographer to describe. He is especially careful to emphasize that the highly attuned ecological consciousness of the Runa doesn't necessarily produce results that are kinder or even more sustainable than how we would see the same landscape.

So to recap the argument, where postmodernism sees human worldviews as webs of symbols (concepts and language), and therefore at least implicitly makes nonhuman animals incapable of having a worldview (I've never heard anyone articulate or defend this implication but nor have I heard anyone explain why it doesn't follow), semiotics recognizes two kinds of signs that are not symbolic. These signs, called index and icon, are the currency with which nonhuman life represents its worlds. And because we share these kinds of signs, is a currency we can tentatively use to translate nonhuman representations into our own. Where Actor-Network Theory tries to do this by simply asserting that nonhuman and even nonliving beings have functionally linguistic agency, biosemiotics keeps account of which kinds of signs mean what things to what selves. Rather than introducing a metaphysical and epistemological nightmare, Kohn is just opening anthropology's eyes to a kind of shared perceptual, motivational ecology that is just as scientifically as the shared energetic economies it took up much earlier.

One particularly interesting implication, which I hope there's some more research on somewhere, is the unexpected overlap with Chang's Active Scientific Realism. He even (purely coincidentally) explicitly uses Lavoisier as an example of a case where thought and symbol become icon and index and back again. I'm not necessarily confident enough to articulate it yet but it seems like there's a philosophically interesting way to articulate "true knowledge as ability to do things" in a way that spans science and perception in here somewhere.

One of the most interesting things about the Runa worldview is what Kohn calls "multinaturalism." Our multicultural perspective assumes that nature is static and perception of it is variable. The Runa imagine perception is static and nature is variable. When a vulture smells carrion, it has the same experience that a Runa woman has smelling manioc beer. The spirit master of game animals controls the economy of the jungle in the same way the white man controls the economy of trade goods, so the spirit master is in some sense a white man. Wild animals are the property of the spirit master in the same way that chickens and pigs are property of Runa. Using dreams and hallucinogens, one can assume the perspective of someone above you on the chain, so game animals appear as domestic animals in dreams, shamans take ayahuasca to see the forest as the spirit master does and to speak with them, and people give toxic hallucinogens to dogs so that dogs can temporarily understand their masters. It's weird and fascinating and you wonder what a science grown from a worldview like that would learn. (less)

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Selaine Henriksen

May 03, 2014Selaine Henriksen rated it it was amazing

I'm having a hard time processing this book into 'regular' language. I suppose that means I haven't understood it so well, which is likely true. The language is so densely academic that I understand while I'm reading (or think I do) but have a difficult time relaying what I've understood.

The author lived with the Runa in the Amazon but, although an anthropological study, this is not a study of how they see the world. Or how 'we' see them. It tries to go beyond to how all living creatures have to think to solve their problems. And if we understand how they think we can move past our ways of speaking about the world which tends to divide us into us (people) and it (the natural world) or them (animals). As humans, with language, we turn images into words. Animals understand images. A crude representation of a hawk with its defining characteristics emphasized can be used as a scarecrow to frighten parakeets away from crops; they recognize the image as dangerous and humans can use this knowledge for their own purposes. We would have a greater understanding of our world if we could understand the relevant images of the non-human beings around us.

An ambitious book, the author tries to show how the forest itself is alive, a living entity that also thinks in images. Here, from what I understood, he's speaking of the genetic algorithm. Much can be learned of the shape of an anthill by looking at the shape of an anteater's snout. More than that, the anteater's snout today and now, is haunted by all the anteater's snouts before it that weren't perfectly constructed to fit the anthill and therefore are no longer represented; they're dead. In this way the past informs the present. Beyond that a living entity, in order to survive, must also be able to 'see' into the future, to predict where the prey is likely to be at a given moment, for example.

Trying to re-phrase how the author describes the forest itself as a living entity is where I get a bit lost. I have to quote: "...a world characterized by self-organization need not include life, and a living world need not include symbolic semiosis. But a living world must also be a self-organizing one, and a symbolic world must be nested within the semiosos of life."

This isn't a great summary. There are a lot of big ideas here that I can't address properly. It's truly fascinating. And for all the density of language it's a compelling, extremely original book. (less)

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Forrest Gander

Mar 10, 2018Forrest Gander rated it did not like it

My Aussie eco-poetic friend Stuart Cooke gave this 3 stars, and I respect him, but I found the book completely preposterous, and I did want so much to like it. But Eduardo Kohn hyper-romanticizes the Amazonian Runa as the nearly perfect community, the paragons for all of us (in large part, no doubt, because the Runa happen to be the culture he has spent some time with over a brief four years; if he'd spent time with the Havyakas in Karnataka, one gets the feeling he would make the same claims for them). The Runa could be machine-gunning monkeys from trees and setting fire to the forest to scare out monkeys too hidden to shoot, and Kohn would go into ecstasy about how perfectly attuned and sensitive the Runa are to their environment, to their spiritual communion with the forest, to their genius for "intimate engagement with thoughts-in-the world." Every gesture the Runa make serves to teach us the limitations of our "assumptions about the logic of linguistic relationality." Kohn ends up sounding as much like those hippies who insistently attached themselves to Native American communities in the 1960's as like Heidegger or T.S. Eliot mooning over some imagined cultural purity. (less)

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Sanjay Tillani

Oct 21, 2020Sanjay Tillani rated it liked it

I love how the book is composed and divided in chapters. It makes us think about the semiosis and semiotics models of communication in a new light. It also talks about the rituals and hierarchies which are more than humans. Although the book is quite an interesting read and talks about some interesting things, But, somehow I felt cheated because the preface promises something which is quite extraordinary, it ends in a very humanistic view of both the non-human and human world used in the context of the books.

It uses bold statements and tries to challenge our views on the principles of communication and how that is similar and different from other non-human aspects of both co-existence and evolution. But it still lacks the promise of what it advertised. Maybe because I am not a student to anthropology and also the reason that I was here to fulfil something else which was advertised on the cover as well as on the summary of the book. I found interesting things but not what I wish to find. (less)

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Adhy

Dec 29, 2018Adhy rated it really liked it

Life is constitutively semiotic

Charles Sanders Peirce's 3 types of signs: icons, indices, symbols

Only the third type of sign (symbol) specifies human language, but humans and non human animals represent themselves and the world through the first two

An anthropology beyond the human accounts for the semiosis (interpretation and representation) of living beings

All living beings are selves - loci of a living ecology

All living beings live to inhabit a future

All living beings have a tendency to take on habits - the generality of living thought

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Aidan Vosooghi

Jun 10, 2014Aidan Vosooghi rated it it was amazing

Eduardo Kohn’s highly theoretical and intellectually rigorous work, How Forests Think, invites its readers to critically engage with the site of Kohn’s fieldwork -- the uniquely enchanted, semiotically rich “ecology of selves” that comprises the Upper Amazonian Forest – in this fascinating discussion of thinking selves. Rooted in concrete ethnographic experiences, the text is simultaneously dedicated to thoroughly developing Kohn’s argument for an expanded view of the kinds of selves that think and make meaning. This argument serves as the basis of what Kohn envisions as an anthropology beyond the human, in which semiosis through the symbolic modality of language is deemphasized and humans are understood as but one, distinct kind of self. How Forests Think thus challenges the anthropocentric conventions of anthropology in this admittedly dense, but rewarding work.

The very title of Kohn’s book, How Forests Think, is a striking testament to the endeavor within the text. Suggesting that forests think in the first place immediately places the reader in an unfamiliar territory, yet also makes possible all the different kinds of entities that can think in the forest’s oft-referred to “ecology of selves”. Throughout the text, Kohn uses the conceptual framework of semiosis to relate the many different kinds of selves recognized by the Runa people of Ávila, from humans, to wild/domesticated animals, and even the spirit masters that so complexly govern Runa daily life. Yet, the ingenuity of Kohn’s work comes from his ability to represent and creatively unpack the semiotic processes that take place in the real, ethnographic encounters observed in his fieldwork. In many instances, Kohn explicates his claims both through purely theoretical discussion and then through analysis of isolated events that take place in Ávila.

Kohn draws particular attention to semiotic modalities that exist outside of the solely human domain of symbols (of which language is an example), leaning heavily on Charles Pierce’s theoretical contributions to the study of semiosis. Though symbols have their own, distinct properties, they are dependent upon an interrelated hierarchy with two other classifications of signs – icons and indexes. Non-human selves, Kohn argues, can relate iconically and indexically, and are thus semiotically engaged in the world around them in ways that may not be apparent to humans. In Chapter 1, he provides a memorable example of this triad of signs, recalling a monkey being startled as the branch she perches on is cut down. The sound as the tree is cut down, pu-oh, is iconic, as it harbors meaning without any external reference; the crashing of the tree is an index, as it factually represents the event in itself; yet, the event cannot be symbolic as a monkey, linguistically inhibited, cannot indirectly refer to the tree being cut down (31-32). Most importantly, Kohn demonstrates here that a monkey, as representative of non-human beings, has the capacity to interpret signs as a self in a way that is unique but equivalent to humans. As the text progresses, Kohn moves beyond even physical entities in attesting the semiotic capacities of the forest’s selves.

Despite urging an anthropology beyond the human, How Forests Think still embraces and elucidates distinct features of human relations. Among these are the moral co-opting of self-emergent hierarchies, such as those existent in the biosocial rubber economy of the Upper Amazon, and the linguistic nuances of human symbolic reference (Chapter 5). Discussion of the latter comprises my favorite subsection of the book, “The Play of Form”, in which Kohn offers two differing accounts of an antbird call. When an antbird (chiriquíqua in Quichua) is startled by a jaguar, it, according to the Ávila, calls out chíriqui. While Luisa’s account maintains that the antbird uttered its natural call, Amériga’s holds that the bird actually said Chiriquíhua, which attaches symbolic meaning, (175). Kohn brilliantly emphasizes Luisa’s non-symbolic engagement with the bird as an example of the possibilities of the kind of beyond-human interactions that would be employed by an anthropology beyond the human. As evidenced in this section of the text, Kohn’s intention is not to remove human subjectivity in the anthropological encounter so much as reimagine it so that humans are more considerate of the ecology selves in which they exist.

The intricacy with which Eduardo Kohn compiles his theory requires the focus, engagement, and, at times, determination of the reader in their analytical endeavor, although the text is certainly not insurmountable. Despite finding myself rereading passages several times, I appreciated the intellectual rigor of the work and took away many new and rewarding insights into this ontologically driven moment in anthropology. I should say that while How Forests Think masterfully incorporates the tools and attentiveness of ethnographic research, the work itself is not an ethnography. Yet, readers of ethnography will appreciate Eduardo Kohn’s representative capabilities and his brilliant way of extracting relevant generals from the specific experiences of the Runa people with whom he worked. Those who make it through the text will be rewarded with a rich, theoretical framework with which to engage a world urgently in need our environmental sensitivity.

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Alexis

Oct 19, 2020Alexis rated it really liked it

I loved how this book made me feel.

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Audible review

Overall 2 out of 5 stars
Performance 4 out of 5 stars
Story 2 out of 5 stars

Amazon Customer
23-11-2019

Painful, arcane gibberish.

So, this is going to sound harsh and one doesn't like to be so harsh, but it has to be, I'm afraid.

First, if you're a sociocultural anthropologist then you *might* get a lot out of Kohn.

I was trained as an ecologist and historian, and lately have made forays into the social sciences, hence the reason I picked up 'How Forests Think'.

I didn't learn anything much about how forests think, alas.

Instead, and I found utterly unlistenable/unreadable drivel.

(I made it a few chapters in and perhaps it gets better... and perhaps not.)

The premise seems to be that anthropologists ought to take account of nonhuman living things. Well, duh. OK, fine. I mean, welcome to the party.

Nice to see you even if you're a century or so late.

But then Kohn throws rigour out the window in exchange for a swag of romantic presumptions about the natural world and Indigenous peoples' relationship to it that would make the proverbial noble savage blush.

I found myself by turns muttering and shouting aloud at the book,

'But how do you know that?!'

I'm told his stuff makes more sense if one grasps semiotics. In which case, a little Semiotics 101 mightn't have gone astray. (But hell! Why would an author actually want to communicate?!)

Rarely—and here I'm being generous!—does Kohn actually test his pronouncements about how nonhumans see the world against decades of zoology, ecology, behavioural science, or any other relevant field.

The writing is wretchedly opaque, arcane, verbose, and just plain bad.

Thus, even the patient reader, prepared to hear Kohn out, is left wondering what the hell he's on about and why. If ever there was an award based on Michael Billig's 'Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences' this book would win it in spades.

All the author manages to do is reinforce the stereotype of the out-of-touch anthropologist too distracted by the voices in their head and seduced by their own wordiness to be worth a jaguar's poo in the woods.

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How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human: Kohn, Eduardo: 9780520276116: Amazon.com: Books