Einstein, Ethics, and Action

Abstract

On the 26th of February 1979, Time magazine [5] ran an advertisement describing its coverage of the Einstein Centennial. With a magnificent picture of Einstein’s thoughtful, sensitive face covering most of the page the lead read, “Everything is relative. In the cool, beautiful language of mathematics, Einstein demonstrated that we live in a world of relative values.” (p. 53) This claim must have come as quite a surprise to those who have read Einstein’s published works on ethics, because it is contrary to them. (See, e.g., [1]) “Everything is relative” is a misunderstanding that infects popular accounts of Einstein’s work in physics no less than accounts of his views on morality. The Special and General Theories of Relativity produce objective laws of nature, confirmed true for any reference frame. Reference frames (or “bodies”), of course, can move in relation to each other, and when they do move, this affects measurements of distance and time from one body to another; hence, the name “Relativity.” But the laws are quite objective, and confirmed by experience. Einstein’s view of morality is rather similar:

It is the privilege of man’s moral genius, impersonated by inspired individuals, to advance ethical axioms which are so comprehensive and so well founded that men will accept them as grounded in the vast mass of their individual emotional experiences. Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience. [1, p. 115]