Albert Ein­stein, 1921, by Fer­di­nand Schmutzer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Here’s an extra­or­di­nary record­ing of Albert Ein­stein from the fall of 1941, read­ing a full-length essay in Eng­lish:

The essay is called “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence.” It was record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1941 as a radio address to the British Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. The record­ing was appar­ent­ly made in Amer­i­ca, as Ein­stein nev­er returned to Europe after emi­grat­ing from Ger­many in 1933.

Ein­stein begins by sketch­ing a brief out­line of the devel­op­ment of lan­guage, before explor­ing the con­nec­tion between lan­guage and think­ing. “Is there no think­ing with­out the use of lan­guage,” asks Ein­stein, “name­ly in con­cepts and con­cept-com­bi­na­tions for which words need not nec­es­sar­i­ly come to mind? Has not every one of us strug­gled for words although the con­nec­tion between ‘things’ was already clear?”

Despite this evi­dent sep­a­ra­tion between lan­guage and think­ing, Ein­stein quick­ly points out that it would be a gross mis­take to con­clude that the two are entire­ly inde­pen­dent. In fact, he says, “the men­tal devel­op­ment of the indi­vid­ual and his way of form­ing con­cepts depend to a high degree upon lan­guage.” Thus a shared lan­guage implies a shared men­tal­i­ty. For this rea­son Ein­stein sees the lan­guage of sci­ence, with its math­e­mat­i­cal signs, as hav­ing a tru­ly glob­al role in influ­enc­ing the way peo­ple think:

The super­na­tion­al char­ac­ter of sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts and sci­en­tif­ic lan­guage is due to the fact that they have been set up by the best brains of all coun­tries and all times. In soli­tude, and yet in coop­er­a­tive effort as regards the final effect, they cre­at­ed the spir­i­tu­al tools for the tech­ni­cal rev­o­lu­tions which have trans­formed the life of mankind in the last cen­turies. Their sys­tem of con­cepts has served as a guide in the bewil­der­ing chaos of per­cep­tions so that we learned to grasp gen­er­al truths from par­tic­u­lar obser­va­tions.

Ein­stein con­cludes with a cau­tion­ary reminder that the sci­en­tif­ic method is only a means toward an end, and that the wel­fare of human­i­ty depends ulti­mate­ly on shared goals.

Per­fec­tion of means and con­fu­sion of goals seem–in my opinion–to char­ac­ter­ize our age. If we desire sin­cere­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly for the safe­ty, the wel­fare, and the free devel­op­ment of the tal­ents of all men, we shall not be in want of the means to approach such a state. Even if only a small part of mankind strives for such goals, their supe­ri­or­i­ty will prove itself in the long run.

The imme­di­ate con­text of Ein­stein’s mes­sage was, of course, World War II. The air force of Ein­stein’s native coun­try had only recent­ly called off its bomb­ing cam­paign against Eng­land. A year before, Lon­don weath­ered 57 straight nights of bomb­ing by the Luft­waffe. Ein­stein had always felt a deep sense of grat­i­tude to the British sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty for its efforts dur­ing World War I to test the Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, despite the fact that its author was from an ene­my nation.

“The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” was first pub­lished a year after the radio address, in Advance­ment of Sci­ence 2, no. 5. It is cur­rent­ly avail­able in the Ein­stein antholo­gies Out of My Lat­er Years and Ideas and Opin­ions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March 2013.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein on Indi­vid­ual Lib­er­ty, With­out Which There Would Be ‘No Shake­speare, No Goethe, No New­ton’

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Albert Ein­stein Called Racism “A Dis­ease of White Peo­ple” in His Lit­tle-Known Fight for Civ­il Rights

Find Cours­es on Ein­stein in the Physics Sec­tion of our Free Online Cours­es Col­lec­tion

Who among us has nev­er fan­ta­sized about trav­el­ing through time? But then, who among us has­n’t trav­eled through time? Every sin­gle one of us is a time trav­el­er, tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, mov­ing as we do through one sec­ond per sec­ond, one hour per hour, one day per day. Though I nev­er per­son­al­ly heard the late Stephen Hawk­ing point out that fact, I feel almost cer­tain that he did, espe­cial­ly in light of one par­tic­u­lar piece of sci­en­tif­ic per­for­mance art he pulled off in 2009: throw­ing a cock­tail par­ty for time trav­el­ers — the prop­er kind, who come from the future.

“Hawking’s par­ty was actu­al­ly an exper­i­ment on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of time trav­el,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Anne Ewbank. “Along with many physi­cists, Hawk­ing had mused about whether going for­ward and back in time was pos­si­ble. And what time trav­el­er could resist sip­ping cham­pagne with Stephen Hawk­ing him­self?” ”

By pub­lish­ing the par­ty invi­ta­tion in his mini-series Into the Uni­verse With Stephen Hawk­ing, Hawk­ing hoped to lure futur­is­tic time trav­el­ers. You are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to a recep­tion for Time Trav­ellers, the invi­ta­tion read, along with the the date, time, and coor­di­nates for the event. The the­o­ry, Hawk­ing explained, was that only some­one from the future would be able to attend.”

Alas, no time trav­el­ers turned up. Since some­one pos­sessed of that tech­nol­o­gy at any point in the future would the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be able to attend, does Hawk­ing’s lone­ly par­ty, which you can see in the clip above, prove that time trav­el will nev­er become pos­si­ble? Maybe — or maybe the poten­tial time-trav­el­ers of the future know some­thing about the space-time-con­tin­u­um-threat­en­ing risks of the prac­tice that we don’t. As for Dr. Hawk­ing, I have to imag­ine that he came away sat­is­fied from the shindig, even though his hoped-for Ms. Uni­verse from the future nev­er walked through the door. “I like sim­ple exper­i­ments… and cham­pagne,” he said, and this cham­pagne-laden sim­ple exper­i­ment will con­tin­ue to remind the rest of us to enjoy our time on Earth, wher­ev­er in that time we may find our­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stephen Hawking’s Inter­view with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Record­ed 10 Days Before His Death: A Last Con­ver­sa­tion about Black Holes, Time Trav­el & More

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Ten days before Stephen Hawking’s death, Neil DeGrasse Tyson sat down with the world-famous physi­cist for an inter­view on Tyson’s StarTalk pod­cast. “I picked his leg­endary brain,” says Tyson in his intro­duc­tion, “on every­thing, from the big bang to the ori­gins of the uni­verse.” He starts off, how­ev­er, with some soft­balls. Hawking’s favorite food? He likes oys­ters. Favorite drink? Pimms.

Your appre­ci­a­tion for Tyson’s earnest­ly awk­ward small talk may vary. He’s prone to mak­ing him­self laugh, which doesn’t elic­it laughs from Hawk­ing, whose com­mu­ni­ca­tion was, of course, extra­or­di­nar­i­ly con­strained. And yet, when it came to mat­ters most of con­se­quence to him, he was elo­quent, wit­ty, pro­found into his final days.

Though we can­not detect any tonal inflec­tion in Hawking’s com­put­er voice, we know him as a sen­si­tive, com­pas­sion­ate per­son as well as a bril­liant mind. It doesn’t sound like he’s brag­ging when—in answer to Tyson’s ques­tion about his favorite equa­tion (at 4:10)—he replies, “the equa­tion I dis­cov­ered relat­ing the entropy of black hole to the area of its hori­zon.” “How many peo­ple,” Tyson replies, chuck­ling, “get to say that their favorite equa­tion is one they came up with? That’s badass.”

Cut­away seg­ments with Tyson, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Jan­na Levin, and come­di­an Matt Kir­shen sur­round the short inter­view, with Levin offer­ing her pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise as a cos­mol­o­gist to explain Hawking’s ideas in lay terms. His favorite equa­tion, she says, demon­strates that black holes actu­al­ly radi­ate ener­gy, return­ing infor­ma­tion, though in a high­ly dis­or­dered form, that was pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost for­ev­er.

At 8:05, hear Hawking’s answer to the ques­tion of what he would ask Isaac New­ton if he could go back in time. Whether we under­stand his reply or not, we learn how “badass” it is in the cut­away com­men­tary (which begins to seem a lit­tle ESPN-like, with Levin as the sea­soned play­er on the pan­el). Rather than ask­ing New­ton a ques­tion Hawk­ing him­self didn’t know the answer to, which New­ton like­ly couldn’t answer either, Hawk­ing would ask him to solve a prob­lem at the lim­it of Newton’s own stud­ies, there­by test­ing the Enlight­en­ment giant’s abil­i­ties.

Offered ad-free in Hawking’s mem­o­ry, the pod­cast inter­view also tack­les the ques­tion of whether it might ever be pos­si­ble to actu­al­ly trav­el back in time, at 24:00 (the answer may dis­ap­point you). Michio Kaku joins the pan­el in the stu­dio to clar­i­fy and sticks around for the remain­der of the dis­cus­sion. The pan­el also answers fan-sub­mit­ted ques­tions, and Bill Nye makes an appear­ance at 42:16. Hawking’s inter­view makes up a com­par­a­tive­ly small por­tion of the show.

His answers, by neces­si­ty, were very brief and to the point. His final the­o­ries, by con­trast, are mind-expand­ing­ly vast, open­ing us up to the secrets of black holes and the exis­tence of the mul­ti­verse. While Hawk­ing’s the­o­ret­i­cal work may have been too spec­u­la­tive for the Nobel com­mit­tee, who need hard evi­dence to make a call, his lega­cy as “one of our great­est minds, of our gen­er­a­tion, of the cen­tu­ry, or maybe, ever,” as Tyson says, seems secure.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness