When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.-- Albert Einstein.
If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.-- Albert Einstein.
I encountered these two quotations in Graham Joyce's excellent novel SOME KIND OF FAIRY TALE. Both quotations appear on the Net, which does not necessarily mean that Einstein said those precise words, given the many ways in which celebrity figures are frequently misquoted.
But if one could prove definitively that Albert Einstein, a genius in the realm of the physical sciences expressed these unbounded sentiments in favor of unrestrained fantasy-- what would that mean?
My guess is that Einstein felt that fantasy enlarged the scope of his ability to imagine new patterns, and then to test them as to whether or not those "shadows of imagination" represented anything in the perceived patterns of consensual reality. If this was the case, then one might accuse Einstein of advocating fantasy for utilitarian purposes, as Peter Washington said of Calvino in this quote:
By presenting possible worlds, [the writer] can remind us that there are alternative orders of reality.-- Peter Washington, 1993 introduction to Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER, Everyman's Library.
But of course Einstein didn't make any definitive statement as to the utility of fantasy. All he says is that fairy tales are good for intelligence, and that the gift for fantasy has meant more to him than his lauded capacity for "abstract, positive thinking," which I compare to Cassirer's concept of "discursive thinking."
Purely for motives of self-flattery, I'd like to think that he had some intuition along the lines of my own: that the capacity for fantasy, for representing what may not be real, goes hand in hand with the capacity for testing reality, for representing what seems to be real.
But as I said-- no one really knows.
3 comments:
These are great, supportive quotes of the genre and I was confident that the magic of Google could pinpoint the direct quotes quickly, but not so. After a sort of "deep dive,” I found an e-book titled The Nature of Scientific Thinking* which includes two quotes by Einstein related to imagination--including the one that introduces this post--and cites two articles, one from 1945 in The Atlantic** and the other from 1929 in The Saturday Evening Post.*** (Skimmed through both of these and the quotes could not be located.)
Some online articles indicate that the "...the gift of fantasy..." quote first appeared in R.W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times. I cannot find a free version online, but a New York Times articles states attributes the quote to Janos Plesch, which stems from a “conversation about the creative similarities between writing fiction and working in mathematics."****
According to folklorist Stephen Winick, the second quote first appeared in 1958's “Fairy Tales and More Fairy Tales” in the New Mexico Library Bulletin, where the author recounted a conversation with Einstein.*****
Don't know if these two quotes from Philipp Frank's Einstein: His Life and Times****** are relevant, but they seem interesting:
"Our experience up to date justifies us in feeling sure that in Nature is actualized the ideal of mathematical simplicity. It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to understanding nature… In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.."*******
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know 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.”********
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*Nature of Scientific Thinking: link.
**Atlantic Monthly: November, 1945: link.
***Saturday Evening Post: October 26, 1929, Pg. 17: link.
****New York Times: "Celebrating Einstein," Feb. 18, 1979: link.
*****"Einstein's Folklore," Library of Congress Blogs, 2013: link.
******Philipp Frank's Einstein: His Life and Times, Pg. 282, 284: link.
*******Einstein's "On the Method of Theoretical Physics," 1933: link.
********Einstein's The World As I See it, Pg. 17: link.
Wow, what great research! Based on one site I didn't really think a lot of the quotes could be verified, and of course for the more literal-minded people, a quote doesn't count if someone else relates what a figure like Einstein said. All this info may provoke me to read further into Einstein's bio and history.
I've encountered that final quote before, and it dovetails perfectly with Einstein's regard for fairy tales. As I read it he's advocating something like what I was talking about. Fantasy doesn't just work to open up new real-world alternatives, as that Calvino-derived quote implied, though certainly that can be one application. But the reverence for mystery has more to do with stimulating our "dull faculties" just to improve our interactions with other people and with the universe as a whole. Martin Buber might call that an "I-thou" relationship if I remember correctly.
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