History of Science Archives - Page 2 of 3

Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, by Daniela Bleichmar (2012)

The European Enlightenment occurred as an ongoing dialogue of ideas—a discourse composed of voices from around the globe. As Daniela Bleichmar demonstrates, southern Europe, long ignored in scholarship on the Enlightenment, had a crucial voice in the conversation.

In Visible Empires, Bleichmar claims that Imperial Spain, more than any other contemporary empire, used visual documents like paintings and maps to make the empire tangible and, in this way, “governable.” Images, she argues, made visible the hidden or secret. Bleichmar highlights the Hispanic World’s investment in knowledge production at the peripheries of empire. She emphasizes how scientific investigations, specifically botanist and natural history expeditions, fit into the Spanish Empire’s attempt to reestablish itself as a European political and economic power in the late eighteenth century. Her findings demonstrate how relationships between the center and periphery of empire were often a matter of perspective.

Bleichmar makes use of the long ignored and beautiful visual archive of botanical paintings produced by Spanish expeditions around the Atlantic. She reads these centuries-old detailed depictions of flora and fauna to stress the relevance of vision to governing of the empire. For Spain, these illustrations provided visual evidence of worlds across the sea and of our ability to understand nature. They buttressed Spain’s ownership of the unseen. The Spanish metropole also used this method to understand the racial compositions of distant populations. New Spain’s casta paintings and Peru’s taxonomical illustrations gave the metropole a window into their kingdoms abroad. Simultaneously, the project supplied the peripheries of empire with the agency to codify their populations. While knowledge of its far-off inhabitants gave the metropole a sense of discovery and ownership, the power to produce pictures of their world gave people on the periphery power of their own.

An image from "Flora Huayaquilensis," a visual collection of South America's plants as seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage - See more at: http://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7696#sthash.r8R9WHhx.dpuf)

An image from “Flora Huayaquilensis,” a visual collection of South America’s plants seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage)

During the Enlightenment, intellectuals and others contested and refined the themes of art, science, and knowledge using visual representations. The “correct” representation did not always come from the center or metropole but, as Bleichmar explains, it was often difficult to tell where in the empire botanical Enlightenment projects began. Indeed, knowledge moved in multiple directions. Bleichmar explores how some naturalists understood colonial agendas in ways that differed from the intentions of the Spanish metropole. Consider Basco y Vargas’ pepper initiative in the Philippines. He prioritized his local economic goals over the philosophical inquiries coming from Spain. In this case, the periphery directed knowledge production as Basco y Vargas determined what botanical investigation to support.

Allegiances and relationships to a “center” thus differed depending on local context. However, by suggesting “the goal of this intensive natural history investigation… was nothing less than to rediscover and reconquer the empire at a time of intense crisis,” Bleichmar seems to suggest that Spain held more control over the direction of knowledge production. In addition, the author admits that the only a limited audience saw or studied the visual illustrations produced by enlightenment botanist. These minor inconsistencies leave the reader with a lingering question: to what extent did “visual” knowledge shape the empire at large?

Botanical drawing from “Flora Huayaquilensis” (Pinterest/Carlos Adanero)

Aside from images, Bleichmar also examines the tremendous written archive that preserves the voices of botanist and economists. While historians typically use images in their work without fully exploring the significance they held for their creators, the author’s examination of written sources provides the reader with a fuller understanding of the botanical illustrations. Paired with Bleichmar’s engaging prose, Visible Empires constitutes a thorough interpretation of southern European Enlightenment and provides a fine example of a historical investigation achieved with beautiful visual sources.

More books on Early Modern science:

Jorge Cañizares Esguerra’s review of Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination

Laurie Wood’s review of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England 1660-1770, by Adrian Wilson (1995)

by Ogechukwu Ezekwem

Adrian Wilson writes an interesting chronicle of man-midwifery’s emergence in England. His research is based on an exhaustive analysis of manuscripts, newspapers, and the memoirs of surgeons, physicians, and midwives. He not only explains the rise of men in an otherwise female-dominated field, but explores the practice of traditional midwifery. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, childbirth, from labor to the lying-in chamber (a darkened room where the mother rested for one month after delivery) was an exclusively female space. With few exceptions, male surgeons only intervened to extract a possibly dead baby in order to save a mother’s life. They achieved this operation through the use of hooked instruments, such as the crotchet and forceps, which mutilated the baby. While midwives delivered living babies, male practitioners brought forth dead ones. By the mid-1740s, surgeons increasingly used the forceps and vectis to achieve successful births. The male sphere, thus, moved from traditional obstetric surgery to the new “man-midwifery.” The need for instruction on the forceps’ effective use soon resulted in the emergence of lying-in hospitals that increasingly gave men access to normal births.

The establishment of a “lying-in-fund” induced poor mothers to submit themselves as teaching specimens to man-midwives. By 1750s, the lying-in hospitals became a permanent feature of England’s hospital system. Its hierarchy elevated the man-midwife over the midwife. By the nineteenth century, man-midwives assumed a new name, obstetricians, and received “onset summons” in lieu of midwives. Gradually, midwives learned the use of the forceps in order to match their male rivals. In 1902, after a protracted struggle, midwives gained professional status and normal deliveries returned to their realm.

1811 Thomas Rowlandson cartoon lampooning England’s male midwives (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France)

The loophole in Wilson’s impressive text lies in his conclusion that women’s choices spurred the rise of man-midwifery. He neglects the fact that women were merely reacting to a new development that offered more positive results in cases of difficult births. Lying-in hospitals offered few options for poor women as man-midwives already dominated these facilities from their early years. Wilson’s conclusion also undermines the power of newspapers and other publications in constructing social behaviors. From the 1740s, midwives were criticized for failing to summon the man-midwife and his forceps at the onset of labor. These public criticisms by prominent man-midwives influenced collective attitudes. Thus, understanding the rise of man-midwifery requires looking beyond women’s choices to broader developments in society. Nonetheless, Wilson’s book offers a fascinating read for anyone interested in the evolution of midwifery and reproductive health.

An Emotional Database: The New Archive (No. 8)

by Henry Wiencek

One of the core values of studying history is objectivity: an ability to weigh evidence, read documents and then dispassionately judge the actions of our ancestors. But let’s be honest, it’s impossible to study the past without feeling something. Confusion, fascination, excitement—this is what motivates historians to spend their days poring over obscure manuscripts.

Is it possible that emotions actually help to produce better history? Sweden’s Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library of medical arts thinks so. So when readers navigate its stunning online archive of medical, zoological and biological documents from the 15^th-20^th-century world, “Emotion” is literally a search option. In addition to place and topic, users can select a set of documents based on the feelings they evoke.

And each category seems very appropriately titled. “Beautiful” cues a stunning collage of images from across time and space: a 17^th-century Dutch anatomical display of the human skeleton, an early modern Italian etching of mythical beasts, and one Viennese botanist’s exquisite rendering of a strawberry. True to form, “Scary” turns toward the macabre, with gruesome surgical photographs of American Civil War amputees, a 16^th-century doctor’s guide to battle wounds and a European naturalist’s perturbing bat exhibit. “Fascinating” lies somewhere in between. There are photographs of French psychiatry patients gawking at the camera as they’re examined, sublime—yet slightly unsettling—medical lithographs of the human form, and even a 19^th-century physician’s guide to the miracle of life. Depending on your mood, you can also peruse the Artistic, the Colorful, the Instructive, the Marvelous, the Remarkable and the Strange.

The Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library of medical arts is a strange, colorful and captivating resource for scholars and the general public, especially those interested in the history of science, medicine and its visual portrayals. But its unorthodox design openly challenges the assumption that historians ought to leave their emotions at the archive door. Instead, it asks users to take a risk—to forgo the comforts of traditional categories and experiment. And perhaps most importantly, the site acknowledges that our own emotional reactions are of historical significance. By declaring 17^th-century medical drawings to be “strange,” we reveal our own modern biases—arrogance, even—about the past. This is a subversive new form of research in which emotions do not distort historical understanding, but actually enable more of it.

Don’t miss the latest New Archive posts:

How does the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary relate to the present crisis in the Ukraine?

And what does the local music in Carlistrane, Ireland sound like?

Photo Credits:

Screenshot of Wunderkammer’s “Fascinating” gallery (Image courtesy of the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library)

Anatomical plate from Traité complet de l’Anatomie de l’Homme, 1867–1871. Found in Wunderkammer’s “Fascinating” section (Image courtesy of the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library)

Portrait of a psychiatric patient from Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, 1876. Found in Wunderkammer’s “Fascinating” section (Image courtesy of the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library)

Rosalind Franklin and Her Contributions to the Discovery of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid

by Danielle Maldonado

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) was an English biophysicist who made critical scientific contributions to our knowledge of DNA. Her data enabled crucial breakthroughs in the field of biochemistry, notably the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure. For Texas History Day, Danielle Maldonado produced a video performance of Franklin’s life and work, outlining her achievements and explaining what life would have been like for the iconic scientist. You can watch her dramatic and historical performance here. Danielle argues that Fanklin’s work represented a major turning point in history:

“Everyone knows who Dr. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins are. If you don’t, they are credited with the discovery of the structure of DNA. They won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Without the help of Rosalind Franklin, this great turning pointing in history wouldn’t have been possible. The base of genetic biochemistry was stabilized by Rosalind Franklin’s contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA….This knowledge has helped scientists discover other biological breakthroughs that would’ve otherwise been impossible. Told from the viewpoint of Rosalind Franklin, she expresses the struggles of completing all the main research on her own and explains how many genetic advancements have been made since then. Rosalind Franklin’s work helped pave a new road for biochemistry to travel.”

“The base of genetic biochemistry was stabilized by Rosalind Franklin’s contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA. This is a turning point in history, and is thus significant in history, because there is so little that we understand about human life. In the 21st century, being able to recognize and treat genetically inherited diseases and disorders impacts our lives greatly. The structure of DNA is one more puzzle we were able to solve, though not all puzzles are solvable. We may never be able to see the whole picture that lies at the end, but we will continue to piece it together, one strand of DNA at a time.”

Danielle Maldonado
Division II
Individual Performance

Photo Credits:

Rosalind Franklin performing an experiment (Image courtesy of Science Blogs)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

The Transistor: Humanity’s Amplifier

by Nick Walker

The transistor is one of the most essential components of modern technology. Developed in the late 1940s and early 1950’s, this device enabled scientists to amplify and redirect electrical power, a crucial innovation in the field of electronics. Nick Walker, a student at Communication Arts High School in San Antonio, created a video for Texas History Day narrating the big history of this little device. You can watch it here. Nick describes the origins of this topic in his process paper:

“I began my research with an examination of available online resources. I trawled the films made accessible online through the Internet Archive. I searched for relevant books available from within my school district’s collections. I traveled to local higher education libraries, including those of Northwest Vista and San Antonio College, to locate more extensive resources. After reading these materials and examining their bibliographies, I conducted further research to locate copies of primary materials. I also contacted the authors for interviews and the resultant discussions would further guide my research in new directions. I was able to locate the Center for the History of Physics’ Neils Bohr Library website and its oral histories, the Computer History Museum’s Corporate Histories Collection and its numerous assorted documents, and the numerous historical films released by the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation Archives. I accessed numerous research databases, primarily JSTOR, IEEEXplore and EBSCO Academic Complete. I contacted alumni from semiconductor firms and obtained further perspective on the industry. These discussions would lead to a final round of research at the libraries of the University of Texas at Austin and the J.J. Pickle Research Campus.”

“The invention of the transistor was a turning point. The immediately preceding research and the new insight into the nature of electrons and electricity it produced proved a key to unlocking hitherto mysterious corners of physics. The rapid pace of change that would see the advent of such phenomena as Moore’s Law, the persistent increase in circuit density, evinces an unprecedented trend of growth with implications for all of humanity. The rapid pace of iteration, over time, would see the creation of entirely new technologies that are now inescapably pervasive. These technologies have shaped the world we live in today.”

Photo Credits:

A replica of the first working transistor, which was invented in 1947 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Student Showcase – A Turning Point in the Communication Age: The ARPANET, The Ancestor of the Modern Internet

by Matthew Baker, Christopher Calandria and Jake Leland

In their group website, “A Turning Point in the Communication Age: The ARPANET, The Ancestor of the Modern Internet,” Matthew Baker, Christopher Calandria, Jake Leland of James Martin High School argue that the “ARPANET” system was the precursor to the modern Internet. The group site examines how it functioned, why it was created, and explain how a modest government program expanded into a globally dominant technology.

Baker, Calandria and Leland contend that that ARPANET was initially developed to facilitate greater communication between government researchers. They quote Leonard Kleinrock, one of the primary engineers of the program, recalls that what “initiated [the ARPANET] was the need to share resources among fellow researchers.” But by the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the ARPANET technology steadily entered the public as the Internet, irrevocably changing our economy and society.

However, the group argues that ARAPNET’s historical role was not uniformly positive and had a “dark side” of unforeseen consequences, including a rise in hacking, fraud and theft. They conclude by stating that the “Internet had considerable repercussions, both positive and negative” and that the “creation of The ARPANET was the significant turning point that resulted in these impacts.”

Photo Credits:

An interface message processor, or IMP, a network of small processors which allowed for the interconnection of different computers (Image courtesy of “A Turning Point in the Communication Age: The ARPANET”)

Einstein, Relativity and Myths

by Alberto A. Martínez

We’ve all heard of the theory of relativity, but what factors really led Einstein to that famous work? In this fascinating talk, Professor Al Martinez discusses how young Einstein formulated relativity, by focusing on debunking several historical myths. His talk is based on his books: Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin’s Finches, Einstein’s Wife, and Other Myths (2011), and Kinematics: The Lost of Origins and Einstein’s Relativity (2009).

Al Martínez’s piece about Einstein’s religious beliefs

Michael Stoff’s piece about the evocative “Einstein Letter”

The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe, by Glynis Ridley (2010)

by Laurie Wood

In late 1774 or early 1775, a woman named Jeanne Baret became the first woman to have circumnavigated the globe, landing in France after nearly a decade of global travel that took her from provincial France to places like Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, and Mauritius. Her story, a fellow traveler noted, should “be included in a history of famous women.”

Jeanne Baret had been born in the town of Autun in 1740 to a father was a day laborer, so she grew up poor in a rural area where her family would have worked for the local landlords in the fields. In this environment, Baret became an herb woman, an expert at identifying, gathering, and preparing useful plants to cure illnesses. Her work led her to meet Philibert Commerson, a naturalist, who relied on her expertise for his own projects and who took her to Paris as his aide and mistress. Baret’s story is fraught with intrigue and deception. She accompanied Commerson around the world on the famous expedition of Antoine de Bougainville, but only by disguising herself as a man. Commerson and Baret collaborated on this endeavor: Commerson left behind a misleading will that named Baret as Commerson’s heir if he died to conceal their journey together.

In the late eighteenth century, the French government sent many naturalists like Commerson to the South America, Madagascar, and Indonesia in search of spices and useful plants to be cultivated by enslaved Africans working on plantations in their overseas colonies. Sugar and coffee had already been established as cash crops in colonies like Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), so a new wave of explorers and scientists sought other plants to replicate these successes. In the Indian Ocean, French botanists and colonial leaders sought to transplant spices from the East Indies onto their own colonies of Mauritius and Réunion, undercutting the Dutch spice trade. Baret’s expeditions were part of a global scientific endeavor designed to cultivate profitable commodities like pepper and coffee in order to strengthen the French imperial economy. However, Baret’s story also shows that this wider project was carried out by individuals who applied local knowledge and experience, gleaned from days spent in French fields and forests, to new and uncertain environments many miles away from home.

Several journals by members of the Bougainville expedition have survived. They described a variety of supporting characters: the conniving surgeon Vivès (Commerson’s rival and Baret’s possible rapist), the androgynous Prince of Nassau-Siegen, clad in a velvet robe and high-heeled slippers, and Aotourou, the Tahitian who publicly acknowledged Baret as a woman and later accompanied Bougainville back to France. The author of this book about Baret, Glynis Ridley, notes a surprising lack of information about Baret in these journals. The Étoile’s close quarters and long voyage make it difficult to imagine that Baret’s secret could have been kept for long, but only one journalist, the antagonistic surgeon Vivès, mentioned her before the landing in Tahiti.

Philibert Commerson

In places where the historical trail is broken, Ridley provides plausible speculations. Why did Jeanne Baret sign up to go on the expedition? Without Commerson’s support, Baret lacked a home and an income (she worked as his housekeeper officially). Who first recognized Jeanne Baret as a woman? The official story was that the Tahitian chief Aotourou identified her as a cross-dresser, though Vivès’s diary makes it clear that several crew members suspected that she was a woman much sooner. Most likely, some people realized that Jean was, in fact, Jeanne, but knew that to expose her would invite a violent assault on her. Bougainville determinedly relegated Baret’s discovery to a page, refusing to acknowledge it as more than a passing incident, but Ridley insists that she was gang raped by crew members on the island of New Ireland in the South Pacific in 1768.

Antoine de Bougainville

Like other early modern French women, Jeanne Baret lived in a society in which men wielded considerable power and women were frequently excluded from historical records. Capable as a botanist, but most likely illiterate, Baret’s story has been preserved through the testimony of men like Commerson and Bougainville who wrote about her alongside journal entries about navigation and botany, though she did leave one manuscript list of medicinal plants behind. Though Baret’s discoveries were noted by the designation of a genus named Baretia, it was later renamed so that now only plants discovered by Commerson remain acknowledged by taxonomy. To understand Baret’s life thus requires readers to follow the complicated and treacherous path she took herself and that Ridley has painstakingly reconstructed.

http://lesamisdebougainville.wifeo.com/images/l/lab/La-Boudeuse-Fregate-2.jpg

Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s frigate

Ridley excels at linking together historical evidence to tell Baret’s story through the imagined eyes of Jeanne Baret. The travel journals of Vivès, Commerson, and others are supplemented with information about the geography and politics of the places and people Baret encountered. Ridley weaves together a narrative of Baret’s journey with fascinating tidbits about scientific discoveries like beaked dolphins and the Bougainvillea—a plant that Ridley argues was, in fact, discovered by Baret herself. Fans of travel literature and science writing will appreciate this story, for the description and detail of Baret’s experiences in places like Rio de Janeiro and Tahiti, as well as the many plants and animals she encountered. Readers interested in the history of women will likewise appreciate the way Baret’s story illuminates the opportunities and challenges faced by European women in the eighteenth century.

Photo credits:

All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Was Einstein Really Religious?

by Alberto A. Martínez

When he was a boy, yes. He lovingly studied the Bible, he sensed no contradiction between Catholicism and Judaism, he stopped eating pork, he wrote little songs to God and sang them as he walked home from school. But at the age of twelve, by reading science books, he abruptly abandoned all of his religious beliefs. He kept a “holy curiosity” for the mysteries and wonders of nature.

It is well-known that decades later he made witty statements about God: that He does not play dice; that God is crafty but not malicious. Einstein famously wrote: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” And the year he died, in 1955, a student quoted him as having once said that “I want to know how God created this world. I’m not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details.”

Yet Einstein’s statements on God were notoriously ambiguous. Therefore, many Jews, Christians, atheists, and others have embraced Einstein as one of their own—by picking his most appealing quotations. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are glad that sometimes Einstein clarified that by “God” he actually meant to say “nature.” Yet sometimes he remarked “I am not an atheist.” Other times Einstein said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. In the 1670s, that Dutch philosopher expressed great reverence for the lawful harmony of nature, arguing that God has no personality, consciousness, emotions, or will. In 1929 Einstein praised Spinoza’s outlook as a “deep feeling in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience.” Yet at the same time he expressed doubts as to whether he could fairly describe himself as a pantheist like Spinoza.

In his #1 New York Times bestselling biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson argues that Einstein did not use the word God as just another name for nature. Isaacson insists that Einstein was not secretly an atheist but instead, that Einstein believed in an impersonal Creator who does not meddle in our daily lives. Likewise, many other writers also think that since Einstein did not believe in a personal God, a fatherly Creator who cares about us, and not being an atheist, that therefore he believed in an impersonal God.

In 1936, Einstein wrote a letter to a little girl, in which he explained: “everyone seriously engaged in science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest a spirit which is vastly superior to man, and before which we, with our modest strength, must humbly bow.” This certainly sounds religious, but what did he mean by “a spirit”? Einstein’s replies to inquisitive strangers, children, reporters, or close friends sometimes were markedly different. In some cases, he used colloquial expressions that he preferred to rephrase in more exacting contexts. He voiced regrets that many of his casual expressions later became subject to public dissection.

In contrast to the famous quotations that portray the old Einstein as a religious man, it is less well known that he privately described himself as agnostic. In 1869, “Darwin’s bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word “Agnostic” as an attitude of temporary reasoned ignorance, to not pretend to know conclusions that have yet to be demonstrated scientifically. Twenty years later, Huxley commented: “I invented the word ‘Agnostic’ to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of maters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence…” Popularly, agnosticism became known simply as the position of admitting that one does not know whether God exists.

In 1949 Einstein wrote a letter to a curious sailor in the US Navy, explaining that “You may call me agnostic.” In 1950 he replied to another correspondent: “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.” Then in 1952, in a letter to a philosopher, Einstein frankly expressed his unsweetened opinions: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends aplenty. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this (for me).” Einstein added that the Jewish people were no better that any other groups of people: “I can ascertain nothing Chosen about them.” He said that all religions are “primitive superstitions.”

He wrote such stark comments in private letters, in contradistinction to his published pronouncements about God and religion. So, was Einstein really religious? Or was he politically correct in public? In 1930, at the age of fifty-one, an article was published in which he described himself as “deeply religious.” But by then he was a world-wide celebrity. He knew that every word he said might be analyzed and interpreted. Over the years, he explained that he was religious only inasmuch as he felt a deep sense of wonder and reverence for the laws and mysteries of nature.

But what do we usually mean when we say that someone is religious? Most of the beliefs and practices that we distinctively associate with religious people were absent in Einstein. He denied the existence of a God that cares for humans, he argued that there is nothing divine about morality, he did not believe in any holy Scriptures, he had no faith in religious teachings, he rejected the authority of all churches and temples, he belonged to no congregation, he denied the existence of souls, life after death, divine rewards or punishments. He denied the existence of miracles that suspend the laws of nature. He rejected all mysticism, he did not believe in free will, he did not believe in any prophets or saviors. He denied that there is any goal in life or in the order of the universe, he practiced no religious rituals, and he did not pray.

Having rejected most aspects of religion, the young Einstein had some options: either say that he was not a religious person, or instead, find an alternative way to define religiosity. He chose the latter path. In science, Einstein had great success by redefining traditional concepts: he redefined concepts of time, energy, mass, gravity, and more. So he tried to do the same thing with religion. In 1950, he explained to his close friend from youth, Maurice Solovine: “I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for confidence in the rational nature of reality as it is accessible to human reason.”

Instead of accepting Scriptures, rituals, or traditions, Einstein focused on the wonders of nature. By redefining religion to include at its core the emotions and attitudes that Einstein did cultivate, then and only then could Einstein describe himself as a deeply religious man. For example, he called himself deeply religious, but he did not pray. Therefore, in his new definitions, not praying became an act of a deeply religious man, one who fully trusts the laws of nature. He once wrote to Leo Szilard: “as long as you pray to God and ask him for some benefit, you are not a religious man.”

Summing up, good old Einstein was agnostic, I don’t think that he was very religious. Forgive me for making an unscientific analogy. Suppose someone tells us that he really loves pizza, but then he says that he prefers no sauce, dislikes dough, is allergic to cheese, and believes that anyone who asks for toppings does not really like pizza. Then we ask: but how can you say that you really love pizza? He answers: “because I have a deep appreciation for its essence.”

In 2008, the letter from Einstein on the subject of religion that is pictured above stunned the public and was sold at auction for a staggering £207,000 ($404,000) instead of the £6000-8000 estimated by Bloomsbury Auctions. Alberto Martínez translates part of the letter here:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends aplenty. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this (for me). Such refined interpretations are naturally highly varied and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the unmodified Jewish religion, like all other religions, is an incarnation of primitive superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mindset I have a deep affinity, have no different quality for me than other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better at anything than other human groups, though at least a lack of power keeps them from the worst excesses. Thus I can ascertain nothing “Chosen” about them.

Overall, I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and seek to defend it with two walls of pride: an outer one as a man, and an inner one as a Jew. As a man you claim a certain exemption from otherwise valid causality; as a Jew, a privilege for monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer causality, as our wonderful Spinoza had first said in the strongest terms. And the animistic interpretations of natural religions are also through monopolization not invalid. With such walls we fall essentially into self-deception, but they do not help us in our search for a higher morality. On the contrary.

Now, though I have in all honesty expressed our different beliefs, I still have the certainty that we largely agree on important matters, e.g. in our assessment of human conduct. What separates us, in Freud’s terms, are intellectual “supports” and “rationalizations.” I therefore believe that we would understand each other well if we were to talk about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes,

your

A. Einstein.

Source: Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric B. Gutkind, 3 January 1954, Einstein Archives, item 33-337

More Einstein on Not Even Past:

Michael Stoff, “The Einstein Letter-A Tipping Point in History”

Making History: Takkara Brunson

Interviewed by Zach Doleshal

In the sixth installation of our new series, “Making History,” Zach Doleshal speaks with Takkara Brunson about her research on Afro-Cuban women in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Brunson’s research experiences in Cuba, and stories of the fascinating women who form the core of her research offer a taste not only of life and work in a place few Americans get to visit, but also a window into the making of a social and cultural historian.

Brunson’s dissertation, “Constructing Afro-Cuban Womanhood: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba, 1902-1958,” is the first full-length treatment of the formation of a modern Cuban identity that examines race and gender as complementary and conflicting forces in the lives of women rather than as distinct categories of analysis.

This dissertation explores continuities and transformations in the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood in Cuba between 1902 and 1958. A dynamic and evolving process, the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood encompassed the formal and informal practices that multiple individuals—from lawmakers and professionals to intellectuals and activists to workers and their families—established and challenged through public debates and personal interactions in order to negotiate evolving systems of power. The dissertation argues that Afro-Cuban women were integral to the formation of a modern Cuban identity. Studies of pre-revolutionary Cuba dichotomize race and gender in their analyses of citizenship and national identity formation. As such, they devote insufficient attention to the role of Afro-Cuban women in engendering social transformations. The dissertation’s chapters—on patriarchal discourses of racial progress, photographic representations, la mujer negra (the black woman), and feminist, communist, and labor movements—probe how patriarchy and assumptions of black racial inferiority simultaneously informed discourses of citizenship within a society that sought to project itself as a white masculine nation. Additionally, the dissertation examines how Afro-Cuban women’s writings and social activism shaped legal reforms, perceptions of cubanidad (Cuban identity), and Afro-Cuban community formation. The study utilizes a variety of sources: organizational records, letters from women to politicians, photographic representations, periodicals, literature, and labor and education statistics. Engaging the fields of Latin American history, African diaspora studies, gender studies, and visual culture studies, the dissertation maintains that an intersectional analysis of race, gender, and nation is integral to developing a nuanced understanding of the prerevolutionary era.

Takkara Brunson received her PhD in the history department from the University of Texas in 2011. She specializes in modern Latin American history with a particular focus on race and gender, citizenship, and national identity. She currently holds a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and Africa-American Studies at the University of Rochester.

Photo credits:

“Advertisement for Pomada ‘Mora,'” 15 December, 1914

Minerva via “Constructing Afro-Cuban Womanhood: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Pre-Revolutionary Cuba, 1902-1958.”

You may also like:

Our book recommendations for readings on Afro-Cubans and Afro-Americans.

Hear UT Professor of History – and Takkara Brunson’s dissertation supervisor – Frank Guridy talk about his new, award-winning book “Forging the Transnational Diaspora” in our recent monthly feature interview.

And read Professor Guridy’s review of two recent movies about the figures behind the Cuban Revolution.

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