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Einstein's public image in the US is as a saintly scientific grandpa. This is bunk and always has been. He was a complex guy. Sometimes in ways that are good (e.g., his defense of civil rights, which earned him a 1,400 page FBI file), sometimes not (e.g., his issues with women).
This is not an Einstein defense. The guy was imperfect and often unpleasant to say the least; that's not new (to scholars anyway). But the way this is being used to frame his civil rights advocacy as hypocrisy is more revealing about the polarization of *our* time than Einstein.
A beautifully balanced set of tweets which pick up on historical nuance which is no longer fashionable. You cannot trivially judge by applying current standards. A similar treatment is needed for Feynman, amongst others, who is being vilified by “modern standards”.
Mm, it's worth talking about Einstein and Feynman here. 1. I think there's a difference between "6 months of a travel diary, selectively excerpted" and "stories you tell about yourself in public." Feynman's case is a stronger argument that his views on women were core to him.
2. Einstein's case is a question of whether being repulsed by foreign people and customs on a trip invalidates your civil rights and anti-racism advocacy. I don't think it does. Feynman's, though, doesn't have any balance to it. It's just, was Feynman misogynistic?
And in Feynman's case, it's hard not to re-read some of those parts of "Surely You're Joking" and not get grossed out. "You Just Ask Them?" isn't pretty. And yes, one could say, it's how men talked about women at the time. Maybe that's true. But still.
I think we're allowed to say, that Feynman's approach to women was pretty horrid by modern standards. It's not an argument about hypocrisy — it's just how he was. He doesn't deny it; he brags about it. There's something trickier there.
It doesn't invalidate Feynman's contributions to science — but it perhaps ought to temper the "Feynman was great in every way" approach. I'm fine with saying, "Feynman was an impressive thinker, but could be a very flawed (dumb?) human being on other fronts."
And the sexism in "Surely You're Joking" certainly means I wouldn't buy it for a young, impressionable future scientist today (male or female). It dates and mars it in the worse way. (In a way a lot of classic sci-fi is similarly dated and marred.)
Perhaps, from a different point of view, it is important to read “Surely You’re Joking” even as a young student if someone helps you to put it in perspective, if only to see how things have marginally improved.
See also his views about anti-Semitism: a much different matter when he saw how Westjuden in Berlin were treating Ostjuden. The difference between a man traveling abroad and then living in a racist society and opposing it are significant.
There's also a big temporal difference between the early 1920s and the late 1930s: namely, the experience of fascism. It's not quite clear to me why people think that views don't change.
IIRC his record on family issues was not great either.
Plus language was very different back then. When you view old census forms they have very non-pc terms these days, but that was the official terms back then.
Speaking of feet of clay, I once attended a talk by a physicist who’d played in a string quartet with Einstein. In his opinion, AE was NOT a good violinist.
I guess it’s easier to be “fair” when you are not the ethnicity being derided.
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