Tagore and Einstein

[Guest guest]

Tagore fundamentally disagreed with realism of the Einsteinian

kind. 'We can never go beyond

man in all that we know and feel'. This was from The Religion of

Man, and it summarized Tagore's position vis-à-vis Einstein's.

They met at Einstein's summer villa at Caputh, outside

Berlin. One of those present, Dmitri Marianoff, a journalist who

later married Margot Einstein, noted the conversation and probably

acted as interpreter. (Einstein understood English but spoke in

German). 'It was interesting to see them together- Tagore, the poet

with the head of a thinker, and Einstein, the thinker with the head

of a poet'. Neither sought to press his opinion. They simply

exchanged ideas. But it seemed to an observer as though two planets

were engaged in a chat'. This is from the published account:

 

Einstein: There are two different conceptions about the nature of

the universe - the world as a unity dependent on humanity, and the

world as reality independent on humanity, and the world as reality

independence of the human factor ..

 

Tagore: This world is a human world - the scientific view of it is

also that of the scientific man. Therefore, the world apart from us

does not exist; it is a relative world, depending for its reality

upon our consciousness.

 

A little later, Einstein took up the point again:

 

Einstein: Truth, then, or beauty. is not independent of man?

 

the Uni Bonn.htm

 

Tagore: No.

 

Einstein: If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo

Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?

 

Tagore: No.

 

Einstein: I agree with regard to this conception of beauty, but not

with regard to truth.

 

Tagore: Why not? Truth is realized through men.

 

Here, according to a later account by Marianoff, there was a

long pause. Then Einstein spoke again very quietly and softly: 'I

cannot prove my conception is right, but that is my religion'.

 

After some further discussion - in which Einstein

asserted, 'I cannot prove, but I believe in the Pythagorean

argument, that the truth is independent of human beings', and

Tagore, for his part, countered with a reference to Brahman, 'the

absolute truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the

individual mind or described by words' - Einstein became concrete:

 

Einstein: The mind acknowledges realities outside of it, independent

of it. For instance, nobody may be in the house, yet that table

remains where it is.

 

Tagore: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the

universal mind. The table is that which is perceptible by some kind

of consciousness we possess.

 

Einstein: If nobody were in the house the table would exist all the

same, but this is already illegitimate from your point of view,

because we cannot explain what it means, that the table is there,

independently of us. Our natural point of view in regard to the

existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or

proved, but it is a belief nobody can lack - not even primitive

beings. We attribute to truth a superhuman objectivity. It is

indepensable for us - this reality which is independent of our

existence and our experience and our mind - though we cannot say

what it means.

 

Tagore: In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to

humanity, then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

 

Einstein: Than I am more religious than you are!

 

Here, wrote Marianoff later, Einstein 'exclaimed in triumph'.

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