On Einstein and 21st Century Philosophy
           by Peter Bishop

Albert Einstein was the most famous scientist of the 20th century, but his achievements flowed from following through on a dramatic development at the dawn of the 20th century: a sense among scientists and mathematicians that science and mathematics had a much larger role to play in our world than anyone had ever imagined. A key event at the beginning of the 20th century was when the German mathematician David Hilbert presented a paper at the Paris conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians on August 8, 1900 in the Sorbonne describing 10 important problems that should be the focus of mathematical discovery during the 20th century. One of these problems was Fermat's last theorem. Hilbert thought that all of mathematics could be formalized to allow all mathematical truths to be proven by formal means. This was a natural leap from the growing thought that scientists and mathematicians, if they maintained a nearly inhuman thoroughness and discipline in their thinking, could discover great things: possibly all true statements. Bertrand Russell leapt into this fray after having noticed Russell's paradox in the work of Gottlob Frege, publishing Principia Mathematica with his colleague, Alfred North Whitehead, in 1910 for the purpose of formalizing all of mathematics.

Albert Einstein was doing his own early work in physics at this same time. It was the thinking of Albert Einstein, however, that would capture the imagination of everyone in the 20th century when we began to realize just what kind of incredible discoveries we could make when we applied this kind of careful, disciplined thinking to our theories of the world.

As a leader in 20th century thought, Albert Einstein dabbled in explaining many of the rest of his thoughts about life, religion, and philosophy. For those of us in the 21st century, it is useful to look back on Einstein's views in these areas. In particular, is the phrase usually attributed to Einstein: "God does not play dice with the universe." On the one had, it is interesting to explore why Einstein might think in these terms. On the other hand, it is also interesting to look at this same issue from a philosophical perspective, rather than a scientific perspective, at the dawn of the 21st century.

Now we realize that Albert Einstein's approach to the world led finally to the information revolution that we are so aware of today. In the world of the internet, we seem to be in a world governed by sound-bites. 21st century science is not built on sound-bites, but on thinking that is even more thorough than any Einstein was able to perform. Yet, the thoroughness of our scientific and mathematical analyses is becoming a challenge because we are beginning to think that we cannot afford to understand everything we need to understand as we move things forward. How will we deal with this?

I suspect that we need assistance from philosophy. When done well, philosophy can teach us how to think about areas that we do not have time to fully understand. When done poorly, however, it just creates a swamp for the mind that holds us back from understanding our world properly.

Today, we are caught between the traditions and philosophies of the past, and an appropriate philosophy for the 21st century. After Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein completed their major scientific and mathematical work, a growing area of philosophical thought started to emerge that built on this thinking and these discoveries. It started to call itself "humanism," reaching back to its early roots in the Renaissance. Today, humanism is a substantial world-view shared by virtually all people who have become dissatisfied with the philosophies or religions they grew up with or that existed prior to the 20th century.

During the 20th century, the clergy have been forced to face the changes in our world view that has left a less central place for God in our world. More than most other professions, the clergy is faced with the fact that the members of their congregations comprise the general public with a wide variety of education, ages, intelligence, and desire to think about philosophical and religious issues. It is the role of the clergy to simplify our view of the world in a way that it can be shared with congregations, not just form the basis of a course in college.

Most clergy believe that part of their job is to try to explain and defend the tradition of their religion to their congregations as their members attain advanced degrees in college. Most clergy do not agree with every decision made by their own denominations about how to explain their traditions to their "flock." Each member of the clergy feels that compromises have had to be made that they wish were not necessary.

When Rabbi Sherwin Wine founded Humanistic Judaism, it was partly in response to frustrations like these. He realized that the philosophy of Humanism could easily be combined with Jewish tradition to form a new branch of Jewish thought that would offer a revolutionary solution to some of these frustrations. Today, when I attend Jewish services at a Humanistic congregation, I do not feel the discomfort that I feel in the churches I have attended. My knowledge of the state of science and mathematics in the early 21st century is not at odds with what is being said in these services. The ability of a Humanistic rabbi to connect to the tradition of the Jewish people while staying true to our modern knowledge of our world is unmatched by other traditions.

Today, however, philosophy needs to serve not only the general populace, but even scientists need assistance from philosophy to understand more deeply the implications of the last 50 years of revolution in information technology. The nature of the advance of technology is such that important projects are more frequently interdisciplinary than in the past. Philosophy has a special role to play in assisting the productivity of interdisciplinary projects. How long will we have to wait for philosophy to catch up to the technological revolution of the last 50 years? Hopefully, not long, but such questions are best answered by history.