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Albert Einstein: Scientist, Artist, Violinist, Humanitarian
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My renewed fascination with Einstein isn’t about his love of classical music, but all music and art in general as being just as important as science in it’s ability to move and influence people. I remember years ago, learning from post graduate career counsellors that in the real world, knowledge is only 20% and 80% is your communication/interpersonal skills and ability to influence people that matter in your success. 🙂
I think if Einstein grew up in the 60s, he would have got into the Beatles and Hendricks, and the electric guitar would have been his choice of instrument over the violin.
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I have this special edition Albert Einstein Ink I bought some time ago, and on occasion I fill my fountain pen with Albert’s elegant grey math ink, hoping some of his genius would rub off on me as I quote some of his math formulas and grocery list in my pocket journal. I don’t know if any of the genius rubbed off on me, but I thought the writing looked clever! 🙂 I use it sparingly because it’s not made any more and it’s hard to come by. A few years ago saw someone selling an old bottle on ebay for well over a hundred dollars.
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Found some more interesting quotes from the maestro genius himself.
Interestingly that 1st quote appeared coincidently on two occasions the same day from completely different sources. What a coincidence.Einstein is certainly a hero in my books, and we need our heroes. They inspire, motivate, and leave us in awe.
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Jung, you just reminded me of this classic:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/48/c7/0548c7046705e6f15b069e6966a0bba5.jpg
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It’s wonderful to have someone understand being stuck at home living alone and
being too devoted to a software project.Thanks David
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LOL, that’s why we (engineers) shower a lot David. 🙂
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Nice article Thomas, thanks for sharing. It comes down to his famous quote, “Imagination is greater than knowledge”. Creativity and imagination are all aspects of art.
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Hey David, Jurgen, Alan, Tom, Jerry, Roger et all.
“Our favourite composer was Bach in the Beatles because it was the nearest to what we were doing, we just put a beat behind it….What I liked about it is the mathematical thing…” Paul McCartney
Ohh I absolutely love this!
This validates everything we talked about David regarding music theory and art and how mathematics has an integral part in it, and classical music, Bach, and modern rock and roll are in essence one in the same, sharing the same musical concepts, right from the greatest rock and roll song writer of all time himself, Paul McCartney!
It’s like Mozart revealing the divine truths of music.
Some great piano lesson tips from Paul for me here too.
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Hi Jung,
thanks for sharing this video and also the other posts on this topic. I’m glad to see your enthusiasm. As a non-musician and non-mathematician, I can guess what the whole thing is about, but I don’t really understand it. That’s not a bad thing, though. A good school friend of mine, who now teaches music, used to try to make me understand music theory. And I answered: “Dirk (that was his name), I’m glad you understand the whole thing, but I listen to music with my heart and less with my head. And if my heart tells me, hey, this is great music, then I’m satisfied and don’t have to understand all the rest so clearly”. But still very interesting and thank you.
Einstein, as far as I understand him, and relativity theory, as far as I understand it, have always fascinated me. Another good school friend of mine, now a doctor of physics, once gave me a little book: it explained Einstein’s ideas in an easy-to-understand way, with almost no formulas. He told me that at some point theoretical physics enters a field that has more to do with philisophy than with natural science. And from this point of view, I can well understand that Einstein took up the violin in his breaks from thinking: to integrate both hemispheres of his brain in his creative process, both the creative musical side and the rational logical side, to synchronize them and use the full potential of his brain.
Did you know that the language-dominant hemisphere works sequentially and the non-language-dominant side of our brain works in parallel? Logical processes in our head are processed sequentially. Music, images and body sensations feel can be perceived and processed simultaneously. Activate both sides and you’ll have twice as much fun, or insight, or whatever. And that is what Einstein obviously did: whenever he was faced with a problem that was difficult to solve, he played music and thus used the full potential of his brain.
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Hi Jurgen. With music theory, David Bennett explains it well I think. Music theory lets you look under the hood in a sense of a piece of music, and let’s you understand and appreciate how a song creates emotion and feelings like it does. When I listen to Beethoven or Bach, understanding a little bit of the music theory behind it and how tension and feeling of completion is achieved, or why a certain part feels melancholic, and then later joyous, just adds to the music appreciation. One certainly does not need music theory to enjoy and appreciate music, and I don’t claim to understand much music theory at all, just scratching the surface from a few videos I’ve seen about music theory, but it’s quite fascinating. The Beatles, while not trained in music theory, certainly understood and had a very practical feel for how to create all the emotions in their music, that made it so good. In this video I book marked to the section where David Bennet expresses this point about music theory.
https://youtu.be/HmjRM3AziTY?t=1025
Your explanation of the sequential processing of the analytical side of the brain, and the parallel processing of the creative side of the brain, and how in Einstein’s case his music playing enabled him to use the full potential of his brain that led him to his moments of inspiration and breakthrough in his science is fascinating. Thanks for sharing that.
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