Cosmic ReligionNo less a fi gure than Einstein implied something similar. He
was the individual who raised the possibility of a cosmic reli-
gion so powerfully in the twentieth century, and he also seems
to have pitched his answer about right. He was quite happy
to talk about God, though the exact nature of his religiosity is
continually contested. Walter Isaacson, in his biography of the
genius of relativity, concludes that he was religiously-minded
and probably an agnostic. But he believed that science was not
possible without a spiritual sensibility. He concluded: ‘Science
without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind’, and
wrote:
Behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains
something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for
this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my
religion.I think it would be fair to say that Einstein was pious in this way.
He did not fear being caught on the boundaries between science
and spirituality where the sense of wonder and a useful force of
intuitive suggestion are at play. But he was also conscious of the
limits of what science can tell you. ‘Enough for me,’ he wrote in
The World as I See It, ‘the inkling of the marvellous structure of
reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to compre-
hend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests
itself in nature.’ His piety is expressed in the suggestion that the
greatest achievement of science is not to explain it all, but is to
point more clearly to that which is beyond its scope:
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is
the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of
religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He
who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then
at least blind... To me it suffi ces to wonder at these secrets
and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image
of the lofty structure of all that there is.