ian week+8

Gerald Holton said that Albert Einstein had three Paradises. These paradises were what Einstein believed in at that particularly point in time. Holton says that during his first paradise Einstein was very religious. This was when he was still a young boy and had not discovered how much he loved the sciences. Holtan says that “ He wrote that when still very young, he had searched for an escape from the seemingly hopeless and demoralizing chase after one's desires and strivings. That escape offered itself first in religion. ” This belief in religion is surprisingly similar to many other scientists throughout history including Galileo and Newton. This paradise for Einstein did not last long since it ended when he was twelve years old. “First, at age 12, he read a little book on Euclidean plane geometry – he called it "holy," a veritable "Wunder." ” (Holton). He began to almost worship math and “To that study one could devote oneself, finding thereby "inner freedom and security." He believed that choosing the "road to this Paradise," although quite antithetical to the first one and less alluring, did prove itself trustworthy.” (Holton) I find it interesting that after this he became very unlike other famous scientists and renounced his religion when he was 16. He did much of his great work on the general relativity theory and his other great works of science during this second paradise.

Eventually as Gerald Holton puts it “there were also no boundaries or barriers between Einstein's scientific and religious feelings. After having passed from the youthful first, religious paradise into his second, immensely productive scientific one, he found in his middle years a fusion of those two motivations – his Third Paradise. ” This is an interesting thing for Einstein to fall back on. I think it is interesting that during this time he used the word God a lot to describe almost anything. Einstein stayed with this mindset of religion and science together for the rest of his life and in his own words he was "a deeply religious unbeliever" (Holton). According to Holton this was Einstein’s final embrace of his third paradise.