Click to listen
In the forties, while sitting with his biographer, Albert Einstein said:[1] "I could never understand why the theory of relativity, with its complex concepts and problems far removed from practical life, continues to receive, for a long time, a loud, vibrant resonance among public circles, I have never heard a really convincing answer to this question," and then wonders with great wonder in an interview with a New York Times journalist once: "Why doesn't anyone understand me, but, despite that, everyone loves me?"
No one knows exactly why Albert Einstein is so famous, although there are some interpretations, but in the end, an ordinary citizen would not be interested in that quantum leap in the way physics understands abstract terms such as time, space and gravity, and of course no one, even a university student from the physics department, will be able to achieve a clear understanding of the mechanisms of relativity in both parts, on a more profound level, except with some practice.
However, when Albert Einstein and his wife appeared as guests of the international actor Charlie Chaplin at the premiere of City Lights, in Los Angeles, in 1931, the two comrades had to make their way very slowly through the crowds coming to greet them, perhaps taking a precious signature from the most famous scientist on earth, so that Chaplin told Albert Einstein that day(2): "They cheer for me because they understand me, and they cheer for you because no one understands you."
Only ten scientists!
Even after Albert Einstein's death on April 18, 1955, the man's fame escalated to the point that, with his frowning poetry and famous sarcastic comments, he became a model of genius and unusual ideas. With the passage of time, up to the contemporary period of our history, Einstein had become a huge legend that does not know between its true lines from the fake, he turned into a brilliant genius who never makes mistakes and has no need to make any effort to get what he wants, in fact Albert did not need that period after his death to be in that image in front of his audience, people in his life treated him as something supernatural, even a child at school wrote to him A speech at one time saying, "Are you real?" (3).
Because of all that, Einstein was also one of the most people to whom words or actions have never happened, in their lives or even now, have been attributed to them, for example, those news that spread in the Arab world, and the whole world, for many decades, to say about the theory of relativity that it is so difficult that only ten scientists in the whole world understood it, and some added that one of these was the famous Egyptian physicist "Mustafa Mosharafa", and in another form of that news, some pointed out Arthur Eddington was once asked if there were only three who understood the theory of general relativity, and he replied, "And who is the third?"
Of course, this is not true, and Einstein answered this question more than once, telling one of the interviewers that(4) "Every time I go anywhere someone asks me about it," and then continues: "And that's ridiculous. Anyone with sufficient training in science can easily understand the theory, and there is nothing surprising or mysterious about it, it is very easy for students' minds to be trained in this style of physics, and there are a lot of such things in the United States."
Albert Einstein (social media)
And that, in fact, is an important and striking point, Albert Einstein will be annoyed, of course, and accuse you of absurdity, when you tell him that only ten are the ones who understand his theory, because the scientific community does not work in the manner of the literary medium, for example, so that the ambiguity that surrounds the text needs interpretation and speculation by interpreters, but ambiguity in scientific research, on the contrary, will mean that your theory is incomprehensible, and incomprehensible equal, to some degree, to be incorrect, the theory must be understandable to specialists, So that they can be evaluated, and that is what upset Albert about it.
Where any physics student, by making some effort in recalling advanced courses, in physics and mathematics, can actually understand the theory of relativity to the degree of depth that Albert Einstein had at the time, but let us clarify here that the theory of relativity has become after Einstein more than just a theory, it has become a broad research program that contains a number of subspecialties within it, in other words, what physicists know now, and what they study in doctoral and master's programs, has gone beyond much of it the theory of relativity, Although it falls within it, but there is always the new and more complex in physics, although relativity is still at the center of it all.
في الحقيقة، يلفت الخبر الزائف الأخير النظر إلى فكرة مهمة ستتضح بعد قليل، لكن دعنا قبل ذلك نتعرف إلى إشاعة شهيرة تقول إن ألبرت أينشتاين كان فاشلا في الرياضيات(5) حينما كان طفلا، لكن -على العكس من ذلك- ما نعرفه أن أينشتاين كان طالبا مميزا، في البداية لم يتوقع أي من أساتذته مثلا أن يكون عبقريا، لكن في سن الحادية عشرة، كان يقرأ كتب الفيزياء الجامعية، وفي سن الثالثة عشرة قرر أن إيمانويل كانط هو فيلسوفه المفضل بعد قراءة "نقد العقل المحض"، أما بحلول الخامسة عشرة فقد كان محترفا في التفاضل والتكامل كطالب جامعي.
ألبرت أينشتاين في صغره (مواقع التواصل)
I didn't say this nonsense!
Albert was, obviously, a good student, lazy at times, and did not pay much attention to anything other than mathematics and physics, but he was, as far as we know, facing any problem in the learning process itself, or in making a great effort to reach the desired academic results, but the most contemplative was always the quotes of Albert Einstein, for example, the quote wiki(6) contains a huge number of his quotes comparable, for example, to Aristotle, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, or Stephen Hawking, but despite this, Albert Einstein's most famous quotes are not true.
Take, for example, one of Albert Einstein's most famous sayings spread here in the Arab world, which is often of a political nature, which is his statement that (7) "stupidity (madness) is to do the same thing again and again and then wait for different results," or his saying that (8) "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent, but it takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction", in fact we do not find evidence, documents written as dialogues Journalist, for example, on the veracity of these quotes, which are still popular.
Moreover, the problem, at times, was to adapt an Albert Einstein quote to suit a particular task, or to be so simple that people would easily circulate it, for example, the quote that says: "Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler than that", which is, perhaps, an abridged version of (9) part of a lecture written by Einstein in 1933 in which he says: "It cannot be denied that the ultimate goal of all theory is to place its irreducible basic elements in the simplest form, and the least in the number of words used, without having to compromise on the proper representation of any of the facts."
But that state of brevity and modification was, at times, the reason for a misunderstanding of what Albert Einstein meant by his speech, here let's touch on Albert Einstein's most famous quotes that he said in a dialogue with Niels Bohr once that "God does not play dice", here Bohr replied: "You do not dictate to God what He does", in fact these do not represent Einstein's words exactly, as they are derived from a speech written in German in December 1926 to(10) his friend Max Born, in which he says exactly: "Quantum mechanics gives much, but it does not bring us closer to the mystery of the "old", I am - in any case - convinced that he does not play dice", note that Albert Einstein, here, does not use(11) the word "God" (Gott) in the German version of the quotation, but uses the word "old" (Der Alte), an expression denoting a degree of incarnation of God in nature.
This brings us to another famous misunderstanding, since Einstein's god is not a god in the understood sense, and perhaps not a driver of the equations that govern the universe as much as he is(12) the equations themselves (a monistic view that the universe and God are one reality), judgment, or say law, classical, strict and precise defined as the gear of the clock and able, therefore, to anticipate everything future and evoke everything that happened in the past, for this reason Albert Einstein will object and get very angry when he says the principle of Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty The "uncertainty" is not only caused by a lack of our expertise or tools, but it is an essential part of the basic structure of the universe, here God himself, from Albert's point of view, cannot be unable to predict the future accurately!
Einstein as a trade
That point, in turn, brings us to several important interpretations of the reasons for this great spread of quotations, and actions, which never came from Albert Einstein, or those that came from him but were altered, the first of which is the use to promote, a particular doctrine, issue or orientation, Albert Einstein is a global center of power whose power is unimaginable, if he says or does something it means, for the general public, that it is an absolute truth, so the clergy, of almost all religions, will use it to For example, to support their ideas, vegetarians will also use it to promote their orientation, even though Albert Einstein[13] refrained from eating meat for a medical reason.
On the other hand, you will find that some philosophers will use Einstein's fame to promote the sentence that "everything is relative", which supports certain moral philosophies, although this, in fact, is against what Einstein meant in his relativity, and even in an interview with "The Saturday Evening Post", Albert Einstein says, commenting on this particular point: "What relativism means has been widely misunderstood, philosophers play with words like children play with dolls. Relativity, as I see it, suggests that some physical and mechanical facts that were seen as static are relative when we consider other physical and mechanical facts.
As for the film directors, they will work to portray scientists, all of them, as non-human beings, overly genius, who deal strangely with others, to steal the demand for their films, in addition to the political use of Albert Einstein, especially by a country like Israel, to portray a particular "race", represented by a group of individuals who agree on a set of flimsy assumptions, as "special", and of course human development coaches will use his incorrect quotes to promote conversations of success and unlimited energy that opens the door to pure genius.
But to achieve all these goals, it was necessary for these parties, over many years, to glorify Albert Einstein as a genius who came to the theory of relativity "as a revelation", here this idea of magical genius found wide acceptance among the general public, some would like to imagine creativity as a secret magical product of genius characters of a special character, in other words, people imagine that "some are talented, others are not talented", and as long as we do not have that very special mental state, So we don't need to make every effort to try to get what we want, whether it's to become a novelist, a physicist, or a violinist, we can just keep sinking into our laziness as long as we're not talented, right?
For a clearer understanding of this point, let us consider the famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein, but he never said it, that (15) "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live a full life thinking that it is stupid", this quote attempts to direct the reader, implicitly, to a set of ideas that say that circumstances, perhaps education systems, or political systems, are only the cause of our personal failure, and that we therefore do not need to look for special reasons It is us, such as laziness or fear of the future, that has prevented us from achieving in our lives.
الجميع عباقرة ، ولكن إذا حكمت على سمكة بناءً على قدرتها على تسلق شجرة ستعيش طوال حياتها تظن بأنها غبية🤷🏻♂️
آينشتاين pic.twitter.com/uC6T89fjuX
— د. محمد ربيّع (@alenezi_mr) May 24, 2020
لكن ألبرت أينشتاين يقول في اقتباس(16) لن تراه كثيرا في وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي: "إن الطريقة الوحيدة للهروب من التأثير الفاسد لثناء الآخرين عليك هي الاستمرار في العمل"، هذا هو كلام رجل يعرف جيدا أن العبقرية تكمن بالأساس في بذل الجهد، لكن على العكس من ذلك سوف تجد أن أكثر ما يشتهر عن أينشتاين في مجتمعاتنا هو أنه كان فاشلا دراسيا، أو أن نظريته من التعقد بحيث لا يمكن فهمها، بحيث يكون الأول مبررا للفشل الدراسي، والأخير مبررا للتوقف جانبا والتكاسل عن الاستمرار، فالعباقرة، في رأي هؤلاء، هم مجموعات خاصة من البشر كانوا كذلك من يوم ولادتهم، ولن نكون مثلهم أبدا.
في كتابه "يوميات روائي ناشئ" يقول أمبورتو إيكو الفيلسوف والروائي الإيطالي: "لقد تعلمت أشياء كثيرة وأنا أكتب روايتي الأولى، منها أن الإلهام كلمة سيئة"، ويقصد إيكو هنا أن فكرة "الإلهام" و"الوحي" التي يتحدث عنها البعض هي مجرد لفظة لغرض الاستهلاك، كليشيه مكرر، لكن الحقيقة هي أنه عمل لسنوات طويلة، تصل إلى ثماني سنوات كاملة، في كل رواية من رواياته المهمة، دع أحاديث الأفلام الهوليوودية جانبا، واقتباسات مدربي التنمية البشرية الطاقية، السر -كما يقول إيكو، وأينشتاين، وكل شخص حقق إنتاجا جوهريا في هذا العالم- هو فقط أن تستمر في بذل أكبر قدر ممكن من الجهد حد الملل.
————————————————————————————-