Einstein

I keep fine tuning my filter.  It's a lot of work and probably little will come of it but it's useful practice.  One of the things that seeped through this week is something about Einstein, who apparently said some horribly racist stuff about... I think it was the Chinese.  I'm not sure.

Einstein occupies a difficult position because he's got this status as a folk hero of the virtues of science for people who don't really understand what he did, which I believe is most people.  I certainly don't have much in the way of understanding of his work.  People I trust tell me he was brilliant, and I believe them.  What do I know about Einstein?  I know that he was photogenic.  The quotes of his I've read also lead me to believe that he was, in many ways, wise.  That's what makes him such a great folk hero.

Many scientists do not come across as wise.  For instance, James Watson, who is also, I am told, an extremely brilliant scientist who made, with Francis Crick, a truly revolutionary scientific discovery - he comes across as a fucking fool.  I am sad that he is a fool, but do not believe science should reserve a special place for such fools.  There are plenty of people, some of whom are probably even fat women, who are just as brilliant, just as capable, as Watson, and are not fools.  There is unfortunately just no room in science for men like Watson and for brilliant fat women both, and between you and me, that's not on the brilliant fat women.

Einstein is different, and so we make Einstein a hero, and we are surprised when he has... what is the saying?  Feet of clay.  Nobody reads the Bible anymore, knows where that saying comes from, but we talk a lot about things we don't understand.  Like a lot of stuff in the Bible it's maybe not the most accurate metaphor ever, though it certainly is memorable.  I can't say I'm concerned about it.  His being a racist doesn't fit with the myth, so people will excuse it or, you know, like me, contextualize it.

He was lied to, of course.  We think maybe that shouldn't matter, that he should've innately known in his heart how stupid racism was - but we all judge based on what we have available to us.  We're liable for those judgments, we're liable for their results - even if those judgments are only in diaries buried for years, like Dickens' advocating genocide against the people of India (he was also, for the record, lied to) - well, not "responsible", both Dickens and Einstein are dead, but we can and should judge them as they have judged others.  We should try to make better judgments than they did, though.

Even if we did throw him on the trash heap of history, even if we collectively decided science needed a new folk hero - as one day, I hope we will - the great thing about science is that giving up on science because horrible people brought it about isn't an option.  However much of a fool James Watson is, nobody is going to say "Well, I guess it's time to get rid of that DNA bullshit".  Because science doesn't have "creators", only "discoverers".  Giant, midget - the shoulders are there.