Page 95 - A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking... Chapter 12
advocacy of civil disobedience and public encouragement of people to refuse conscription did little to endear
him to his colleagues. Then, following the war, he directed his efforts toward reconciliation and improving
international relations. This too did not make him popular, and soon his politics were making it difficult for him to
visit the United States, even to give lectures.

Einstein’s second great cause was Zionism. Although he was Jewish by descent, Einstein rejected the biblical
idea of God. However, a growing awareness of anti-Semitism, both before and during the First World War, led
him gradually to identify with the Jewish community, and later to become an outspoken supporter of Zionism.
Once more unpopularity did not stop him from speaking his mind. His theories came under attack; an
anti-Einstein organization was even set up. One man was convicted of inciting others to murder Einstein (and
fined a mere six dollars). But Einstein was phlegmatic. When a book was published entitled 100 Authors
Against Einstein, he retorted, “If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”

In 1933, Hitler came to power. Einstein was in America, and declared he would not return to Germany. Then,
while Nazi militia raided his house and confiscated his bank account, a Berlin newspaper displayed the
headline “Good News from Einstein – He’s Not Coming Back.” In the face of the Nazi threat, Einstein
renounced pacifism, and eventually, fearing that German scientists would build a nuclear bomb, proposed that
the United States should develop its own. But even before the first atomic bomb had been detonated, he was
publicly warning of the dangers of nuclear war and proposing international control of nuclear weaponry.

Throughout his life, Einstein’s efforts toward peace probably achieved little that would last – and certainly won
him few friends. His vocal support of the Zionist cause, however, was duly recognized in 1952, when he was
offered the presidency of Israel. He declined, saying he thought he was too naive in politics. But perhaps his
real reason was different: to quote him again, “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the
present, but an equation is something for eternity.”

GALILEO GALILEI

Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science. His
renowned conflict with the Catholic Church was central to his philosophy, for Galileo was one of the first to
argue that man could hope to understand how the world works, and, moreover, that we could do this by
observing the real world.

Galileo had believed Copernican theory (that the planets orbited the sun) since early on, but it was only when
he found the evidence needed to support the idea that he started to publicly support it. He wrote about
Copernicus’s theory in Italian (not the usual academic Latin), and soon his views became widely supported
outside the universities. This annoyed the Aristotelian professors, who united against him seeking to persuade
the Catholic Church to ban Copernicanism.

Galileo, worried by this, traveled to Rome to speak to the ecclesiastical authorities. He argued that the Bible
was not intended to tell us anything about scientific theories, and that it was usual to assume that, where the
Bible conflicted with common sense, it was being allegorical. But the Church was afraid of a scandal that might
undermine its fight against Protestantism, and so took repressive measures. It declared Copernicanism “false
and erroneous” in 1616, and commanded Galileo never again to “defend or hold” the doctrine. Galileo
acquiesced.

In 1623, a longtime friend of Galileo’s became the Pope. Immediately Galileo tried to get the 1616 decree
revoked. He failed, but he did manage to get permission to write a book discussing both Aristotelian and
Copernican theories, on two conditions: he would not take sides and would come to the conclusion that man
could in any case not determine how the world worked because God could bring about the same effects in
ways unimagined by man, who could not place restrictions on God’s omnipotence.

The book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was completed and published in 1632, with the
full backing of the censors – and was immediately greeted throughout Europe as a literary and philosophical
masterpiece. Soon the Pope, realizing that people were seeing the book as a convincing argument in favor of

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