Essay on Why Were the Ideas of Einstein Revolutionary

For centuries Jews were an oppressed group of people, banned from having their own country and treated like they were worth nothing. However as time has passed on and our society has grown, the Jews have been the foundation of our growth and the reason we have been able to evolve into the twenty-first century that we know today. Things that we take for granted today, back then were not even fathomable, only with the help of Jewish people was it possible to affect the vast variety of areas that have become so important to us. Areas such as science, which was revolutionized with the help of Albert Einstein, philosophy transformed by Moses Mendelssohn, Medicine and the world-famous Sigmund Freud, music influenced by the great Felix Mendelssohn, and the world of sports through the all-star Sandy Koufax.

Albert Einstein’s impact on the world was so immense that any assessment must range beyond the sciences to take in the diverse ways he changed culture.

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It is a task made complicated by the myths and misunderstandings that coat his reputation — as Einstein himself once said, “Everyone likes me, yet nobody understands me.” It is not for a lack of trying. Library shelves and Web search engine servers groan under the sheer weight of the data, true and false, amassed about Einstein and his life.

The common story tells of how the lowly patent clerk went off by himself and, by the sheer power of his mind, came out of nowhere to shock the scientific world with the results of his “thought experiments” — products of a pure intellect undistracted by the demands of the academic world or the need to test his theories in the lab.

“The standard imagery for Einstein is the genius who fell from the sky or who’s walking down the street and bam, all of a sudden, is overwhelmed by this brilliant insight,” said Robert Schulmann, former director of the Einstein Papers Project and co-editor of his collected papers.

Einstein was indeed a government functionary in Switzerland, while the intellectual nexus of science in 1905 was in Germany. But his work at the patent office in Bern was of much greater importance than he has been popularly given credit for, allowing him to engage in sophisticated experiments in reviewing advanced ideas.

Einstein worked for 10 years on what became, in 1905, the theory of special relativity. That is to say, he probably had the brilliant insight of simultaneity within six weeks of publishing it, as he says himself.

​His famous equation, E=mc^2, led to the invention of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Before Einstein, it was never guessed the speed of light was an absolute…after all, “miles per hour” assumes that hours are always the same. Or that time’s flow was variable, affected by speed and gravity. So how do those change the world? Without those insights, engineers worldwide would be scratching their heads, wondering why space probes like Voyager fell silent as they gained speed (the radio signals still reach us at the speed of light, but the frequency shifts). GPS satellites’ signals come from a fast-moving clock in a lighter gravitational field…both of which affect the onboard time relative to slow-movers in heavier gravity. So, without a relativistic compensator to make up for that, GPS signals would lose accuracy by around 10 kilometers a day, making the entire system virtually useless.

​Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish Enlightenment Philosopher whose advocacy of religious tolerance resounded with forward-thinking Christians and Jews alike. Mendelssohn’s most important contribution to philosophy was to refine and strengthen the philosophical proofs for the existence of God, providence, and immortality. In 1763, Mendelssohn won the prize offered by the Berlin Academy for an essay on the application of mathematical proofs to metaphysics.

​Mendelssohn strove to support and sustain the Jewish faith while advancing the cause of reason. Towards the end of his life, influenced by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi he became less confident that metaphysical precepts could be subjected to rational proof, but he did not lose confidence in their truth. He was an important Jewish figure of the eighteenth century, and his German translation of the Torah anchored the Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah. In 1783, Mendelssohn published Jerusalem, a forcible plea for freedom of conscience, described by Kant as 'an irrefutable book.' Its basic message was that the state has no right to interfere with the religion of its citizens, and it suggested that different religious truths might be appropriate for different cultures.

​The founder of Psychoanalysis, was an Austrian Neurologist, Sigmund Freud. What he had created was a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior.

​Freud has been influential in two related, but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind and human behavior, and a clinical technique for helping unhappy people. Many people claim to have been influenced by one but not the other.

​Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud has made to modern-day thought is his conception of the unconscious. During the nineteenth century, the dominant trend in Western thought was positivism, the claim that people could accumulate real knowledge about themselves and their world, and exercise rational control over both. Freud, however, suggested that these claims were delusions; that we are not entirely aware of what we even think, and often act for reasons that have nothing to do with our conscious thoughts. The concept of the unconscious was ground-breaking in that he proposed that awareness existed in layers and they were occurring “below the surface.” Dreams, called the “royal road to the unconscious” provided the best examples of our unconscious life, and in the Interpretation of Dreams Freud both developed the argument that the unconscious exists and developed a method for gaining access to it.

​The Preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought which we could access with a little effort. Although there are still many adherents to a purely positivist and rationalist view, most people, including many who reject other elements of Freud’s work, accept the claim that part of the mind is unconscious and that people often act for reasons of which they are not conscious.

​Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, known generally as Felix Mendelssohn, the grandson of the great Moses Mendelssohn, was a German composer and conductor of the early Romantic period. He revived classical approaches within the Romantic movement, whose excesses and manners he condemned as vulgar. A child prodigy akin to Mozart and Beethoven, Mendelssohn composed some of his best works as a teenager. He did not experiment with novel forms, instead, he employed classical structures such as symphonies, concertos, oratorios, piano music, and chamber music.

​Born into a well-to-do Jewish family who later converted to Christianity, Mendelssohn benefited from the best education, was handsome and athletic, and could speak several languages. This overabundance of good fortune, and his Jewish background, was resented by certain fellow musicians and critics and even used as a platform for diminishing his talent as lacking in innovation and depth. Aware of his unique gifts of subtle lyricism and his mastery of technique, Mendelssohn cultivated those rather than allowing himself to be restrained by forms of virtuosity then in vogue. His performance of Bach’s ‘St. Matthew's Passion’ triggered Bach’s revival and a renewal of respect for sacred music in the era when feeling and sensuality were in fashion. In contrast to the moral excesses of many leading figures of the Romantic era, Mendelssohn was devoted to his wife and family, a source of joy and inspiration to him.

​For five memorable seasons, Sandy Koufax dominated baseball as no other major league pitcher ever had before. From 1962 to 1966, Koufax led the National League in earned run average, the only pitcher ever to do that. At the same time, he compiled a record of 111-34, a winning percentage of .766, that has never been equaled. Koufax led the National League in wins, ERA, and strikeouts for three consecutive seasons. He pitched 4 no-hitters, including a perfect game. In 1963, he threw 11 shutouts, more than any other pitcher has since in one season. In 1965, he went 26-8 and set a major league record by striking out 382 batters in one season. In 1972, he was elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame, becoming Cooperstown's youngest member at the age of 36. He remains today only the second Jewish player to enter the pantheon, and the first Jewish baseball player to not pitch in the World Series because of Yum Kippur.

​Although the Jewish people have been treated so unfairly over time, it is hard to oversee the great accomplishments that they have helped the world have. Whether it be in science or sport, Medicine or Philosophy, Jews helped revolutionize various fields of study and interest and continue to do so to this day. When modern society looks back at history books more than often history will lead to astounding things started or enhanced by the Jewish people.