EINSTEIN / DOSTOEVSKY

According to Scottish theologian of science, Dr. Thomas F. Torrance, the Einsteinian Space-Time which came to supplant Newtonian Space and Time in our twentieth century Physics is not a little indebted to that decisive, transformation of the ancient Greek mind by Patristic Christian perspectives, in which Judeo-Christian onto-relational thinking replaced the Greek cosmos of "antitheses", Greek fear of the infinite was vanquished, and the view of space as "container" was opened up and replaced by the "differential" view. (See Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, Oxford / London / New York: Oxford University Press, 1969); Thomas F. Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology, Belfast / Dublin / Ottawa: Christian Journals Limited, 1980, pp.7,54,60-61,172-175). While Einstein was not a professing Christian, his science was nevertheless profoundly influenced by these Judeo-Christian thought structures.

Letting the direction of his creative imagination and theoretical attention flow out freely at the metaphysically-central "speed of light", the deeply contemplative Einstein discovered that the Absolute Space and the Absolute Time of the Newtonian logical opposition were merely *relative contrasts* which could be dissolved into a higher, deeper, more comprehensive "total-unity" of Space-Time, and which could be approximated in the higher-dimensional unity of the *affine relationship* or *guiding field* (Weyl). Aided by the *tensor* mathematics of higher directionalities/dimensionalities, he was able contemplatively to *unfold* and *ascend* into this higher unity of Space-Time and to *contract down* with experimentally-verifiable solutions of physical problems for our fractured, phenomenal world "here below". Here Einstein sounds almost "Hermetic".

The very likely "Byzantine" Christian connection of Einstein which we can take into account in order to better understand him, was not unknown to Einstein himself via Dostoevsky. As may not be well known, Relativity can be understood by analogy with the *polyhypostatic unity* of the Byzantine collective consciousness that, just as with the *Persons* (*Hypostases*) of the Holy Trinity, so also human *persons* (*hypostases*) cannot be defined as isolated individuals" but only in their relationship with one another. As Grigory Pomerants has observed, "...One...can compare Tolstoy's novels with the Newtonian universe, highly complex but inserted into the space of the author's all-embracing mind with a single system of coordinates, and Dostoevsky's novels with a relativistic universe in which there is a countless multitude of equally valid points of departure... "Dostoevsky gave me a great deal, an extraordinarily great deal more than Gauss," Einstein stated... Gauss's works helped Einstein to develop the mathematical apparatus for the theory of relativity... How [Dostoevsky]? It was, I think, by the "relativistic" structure of his novels...

"In point of fact, Dostoevsky's novels are not so much relativistic as hypostatic. But any hypostatic construction, beginning with the Christian Trinity, can be interpreted in a relativistic model. This is particularly clear in attempts to translate theological terms into mathematical language, for instance by Nicholas of Cusa [1401-64]: "God is a sphere, the center of which is everywhere and the periphery nowhere." The universe, the center of which is everywhere -- that is almost Einstein. And one might presume that Einstein, reading the novels of Dostoevsky, "translated" their structural principle into an abstract mathematical language in much the same way that Nicholas of Cusa translated the structural principle of the Trinity into abstract mathematical language. Given the keen sense of spacial and quasi- spacial forms which distinguished Einstein, this is perfectly possible" (pp.157-158 of Grigory Pomerants, "Euclidean" and "Non-Euclidean" Reasoning in the Works of Dostoevsky, in Vladimir E. Maximov (editor), Kontinent 3, New York: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1978 [trans. from the original Russian]).

Along these lines, we recall also Russian Orthodox priest-mathematician and sophiologist, Fr. Pavel Florensky, who seriously offered "a defense of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic-Dantean conception of the universe over and against the Copernican system...Florensky gives a truly fascinating account of Dante's cosmology as found in the *Divine Comedy* using principles of non-Euclidean geometry. It is worth noting that Florensky criticizes the typical sketch in commentaries on this cosmological scheme as unfaithful to Dante on two counts: first, that it is based on Euclidean geometry; and second, that it merely assumes the correctness of Kantian metaphysics, something entirely foreign to Dante's world view" (p.164 of Robert Slesinski, Fr Paul Florensky: New Bibliographical Entries, St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 30(3):162-171(1986)). [Does the Russian mind tend "naturally" toward relativistic wholeness? Note also Mikhail Bakhtin's *chronotope* (*time/space*) (Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984, p.278)]. Interestingly, Mark A. Peterson has claimed that the universe of Dante's *Divine Comedy* appears to be explicitly non-Euclidean, "a so-called "closed" universe, the 3-sphere, a universe which also emerges as a cosmological solution of Einstein's equations in general relativity theory...Dante embeds the model in four dimensions..." (Mark A. Peterson, Dante and the 3-sphere, Am. J. Phys.47(12):1031-1035(Dec.,1979)). On the possibility of non-Euclidean perception, see Patrick A. Heelan (S.J.), Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 1983.

November 1994

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