Reading an Einstein Biography

There are several reasons for this procrastination:

First, this spring I unfortunately developed allergic rhinitis. Since I had never had allergies before, I never got the right treatment at the beginning, and it took me more than half a month of fussing around before I finally got anywhere;

Second, I really am not used to reading Chinese books on a computer. Although in middle school I read martial-arts novels in electronic form, after that I never again read a whole e-book. Once I got used to lying back and turning paper pages, it felt as though the text were “flowing” in my hands; the words I held were alive, vivid, as if I were touching them while reading, and page after page of text would pass through my fingers like water, so that even if I let it flow on soundlessly, it could still set off ripples in my heart… But once it is placed on a computer, that liveliness of language disappears, and in its place comes a sense of stagnation. The words no longer seem like a stream that gently and teasingly strokes my body; instead they stand before me like a cold stone stele. Perhaps the characters on that stele will be examined by me more seriously and carefully, unlike water, which lets me turn past it without even noticing and afterward remember nothing of the concrete content. So if the purpose of reading is to memorize knowledge, then perhaps e-books are more advantageous for me; but that sense of fluency is nowhere near comparable to that of paper books. By the way, when I read English books now, I strongly prefer reading them on the computer. Aside from the convenience of using Kingsoft PowerWord, the more important reason is also one of “feeling” — because reading English is different from reading Chinese. Even if I hold English in my hands, I still cannot feel that lively flow, let alone that sense of stroking and teasing. In my eyes, English has always been unfamiliar and stagnant, a pile of hard, cold stone steles. If it is the same thing to look at a stele, then rather than holding up that heavy stone slab in my hands, I might as well place it on the screen opposite me and set the font as large as possible, so that I can see more clearly.

In short, then, this Einstein book may well be the most time-consuming and laborious Chinese book I have ever read in my life. The total time spent on it may perhaps be comparable to the year I gnawed through Critique of Pure Reason; however, considering that when I was gnawing through Pure Reason I was mostly sitting by Weiming Lake holding the book and reading, which felt even more pleasant, whereas this Einstein biography was read by me while staring at the computer under the torment of a runny nose, the feeling was truly beyond words…

Of course, under such circumstances I nevertheless persisted and finished the entire book. This was of course not only in order to give Senior Brother Butian an explanation. In fact, the other two electronic translated manuscripts he had given me earlier were both abandoned halfway by me, and this book, too, I finished reading on the computer after I already knew that I was probably not going to fulfill my promise of a review, and before the paper version could even make it onto the shelves. From this one can see that this book is indeed splendid.

The third point is that, although this book is truly splendid, when it comes to writing a review, I have always been at a loss as to where to begin. In fact, from the reading notes on my blog, it can be seen that the books about which I am able to write more thoughts and commentary are often not the ones I admire most highly; as for those books I praise most, my comments are often sparse. In particular, books of history and biography are even harder to comment on. Take A Global History, China: A New History, or The Archives of Xue Bojing, for instance: although they are among my top recommended books, on my blog I seem not even to have mentioned them. This Einstein biography may be similar. Aside from saying “take a look at it!”, I really have nothing else to say by way of recommendation. So even after painstakingly finishing the book, I still could not squeeze out even half an article.

But in any case I should still write a few thoughts. All along I have been too lazy about writing reflections and reviews, content to savor alone my fluid and unstable impressions; perhaps this is a problem worth improving. Of course, this is also so that I may set aside the matter of the book review as soon as possible and turn instead to dealing with those tasks that can’t be pushed away no matter how hard I push…

I have always believed that the best way to “popularize science” is through historical presentation. Although I would not go so far as Marx and declare that there is only one science, namely the science of history, I very much agree with Postman’s saying: there is only one course, namely history class (“all courses are taught as a stage in human development”). To present “science” through history has an especially important significance. This way of popularizing science can effectively avoid treating science as if it were some objective and rigid set of legal clauses or even religious dogmas, as though they had been ironclad and engraved in books from the very beginning, merely waiting for students to memorize and apply them. Even if one adopts only a narrow Whiggish view of history — teaching history as a monotonous progress in which truth defeats error — the scientific knowledge thus presented has already begun to come alive, and can no longer be regarded as rigid, ossified dogma.

Broadly speaking, methods of popularizing science can be divided into so-called first-order and second-order approaches. The former tells specific scientific knowledge, while the latter tells things such as the scientific spirit, scientific method, the lifestyle of scientists, or any background that makes scientific knowledge possible in the first place. Historical methods include intellectual history and social history, among others. The former mainly tells the internal evolution and replacement of ideas, while the latter tells the mutual influence between scientific knowledge or groups of scientists and society, politics, culture, and so on — the so-called external environment. So is there a historical method that can take both first-order and second-order science into account, and that can synthesize intellectual history and social history as well?

When people speak of “history,” the form modern people more readily think of is unquestionably the annalistic style, as though to narrate history meant arranging events according to a chronology — and thus “history of science” would seem to be nothing more than a sequence of entries of the form “in such-and-such a year, so-and-so discovered such-and-such.” But such a sequence is by no means the method I mentioned earlier of “historizing” rigid scientific knowledge so as to make it vivid and alive; rather, it is the reverse — it turns lively history into “knowledge” and makes it rigid.

The significance of historical narration does not lie in displaying isolated facts and pieces of knowledge, but in being able, through historical storytelling, to connect facts and knowledge that originally seemed isolated, and present them as an organic, vivid, and full of possibility whole. Those originally fragmented facts and phenomena are reintegrated in history according to different threads. This integration is not like constructing a towering theoretical edifice of natural science knowledge, with layer upon layer tightly interlocked; rather, it is more like designing a garden or an exhibition hall, in which each thing is not indispensable, but is laid out in a scattered yet careful manner. Guided by the historical writer, the reader tours one historical scene after another, confronting those events and pieces of knowledge from different perspectives and thereby gaining unique insights. This is the marvelous thing about using historical narration as a way of conveying knowledge.

To integrate and sort through chaotic historical materials into one coherent whole is a craft no simpler than designing a beautiful garden. The threads that can link disparate events are often not ready-made; proposing a distinctive historical thread is where a historian’s insight and creativity are most severely tested. For example, formulations such as “from the closed world to the infinite universe,” “the mechanization of the world picture,” and “the Scientific Revolution” all represent the ingenious creations of various historians.

Still, there is one historical thread that is almost “ready-made,” and that is — people.

“Biography” is also a method of historiography. Modern people often classify biographies under “(documentary) literature,” placing them alongside “novels” (or simply regarding them as documentary novels), while increasingly distancing them from “historiography.” People have nearly forgotten that, until the arrival of Western learning in China, biography of persons had always been the orthodox form of Chinese historiography. From Shiji onward, all Chinese “standard histories” were in the form of biographies. Narrating history according to chronology is instead closer to the status of “(popular) novels.”

The biographical method of narration has its own unique advantages. Because it takes one person as the main narrative thread, it immediately finds a line along which events can be connected, and this line inherently ensures the possibility of “integration.” For for any person, life naturally contains different stages and different aspects, and at the same time a person’s life is always a whole; these changes and aspects — whether they appear continuous or broken, harmonious or contradictory — in fact all can ultimately interweave into a unity within the same personality.

Thus a good biography will provide an excellent perspective from which to narrate the intellectual and social history of a certain era. Of course, like any other thread or point of entry, the history displayed by biography is only a small side, not any truly “comprehensive” narration of history. But in any case, a biography of an exemplary scientist, by displaying his distinctive yet representative lived world and world of thought, can present “science” to readers in the most vivid and concrete manner — whether first-order scientific knowledge or second-order scientific spirit, whether the links between science and philosophy, religion, and so on suggested by intellectual history, or the entanglements between science and economics, politics, and so on suggested by social history… In an excellent biography of a scientist, these different aspects will be able to appear in the most natural and fullest way.

And this Einstein biography translated by Senior Brother Butian is precisely such a perfect work — the exemplary quality of its protagonist; the authority and comprehensiveness of its materials; the fluency and beauty of its prose; the depth and accessibility of its commentary; plus the impeccable translation; in almost every respect it can be called a model.

Most importantly, as Holton remarked: “It is written in a flowing, highly readable style, elegantly blending Einstein’s personal and scientific sides.” — this “elegant blending” is precisely the marvelous advantage of the biographical mode of historical narration mentioned above. This integration is not achieved through some deliberate and forced analogizing, but is simply displayed naturally as it follows Einstein’s life course — at times like an excellent popular science book on physics, explaining relativity, quantum mechanics, and other profound knowledge in the most accessible language; at times like a vivid documentary biography, telling of Einstein’s everyday life and emotional entanglements; at times again like a typical history book, showing the political and social conditions of the period… And these elements are interwoven throughout the book without the slightest artificiality, and without in the least seeming abrupt.

When we speak of the “scientific spirit,” or of the character traits of the greatest scientists, we often emphasize the word “freedom.” But can freedom be taught? If freedom is precisely a reflection on and rebellion against traditional education, then “teaching freedom” would seem to become a paradox. But are freedom and creativity really completely incommunicable? Perhaps we should not despair too early. Freedom and creativity, of course, cannot be imparted in the form of dogma; however, as human traits and qualities, like any noble quality, they can be displayed through vivid writing. The reader does not learn from great men by memorizing dogma or imitating authority, but through direct, repeated exposure and personal feeling. A good biography must by no means shape its protagonist into some lofty and sacred authority; rather, it should present a vivid and full person in the most authentic and approachable way, so that the reader may come into contact with our model in the most intimate manner. This may be the most outstanding form of education. I think this is also the idea of the author of this book and of Einstein himself — “Einstein was once asked by the New York State Department of Education, what things schools should emphasize. He replied, ‘In teaching history, one should talk more about those who have contributed to humanity by virtue of character and independence of judgment.’ Einstein certainly belonged to this category as well”