Einstein×Vinci

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on STUDY HALL, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. They take up On the question they wish someone had pushed them on at twenty.
2. 00:11
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   So, Leonardo, when you were twenty, what was the question you were avoiding? The thing you should have been asking yourself but were too... too something to face?
3. 00:22
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   Avoiding is not quite right. At twenty I was in Verrocchio's workshop, learning to grind pigments, mix varnish. I knew many questions. But the one I did not ask—could not ask—was whether the eye alone could be trusted.
4. 00:41
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   The eye? But you were a painter. Your whole profession was the eye.
5. 00:44
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   Exactly this. I believed that to see a thing was to know it. If I could render the light on fabric, the curve of a cheek, then I had captured truth. But the eye is a liar, Albert. It shows us the sun moving across the sky when the earth is what turns.
6. 01:05
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Ah, yes. Yes, this I understand completely. Though for me it was the opposite problem, maybe. At twenty I trusted mathematics too much. I thought if the equations were beautiful, they must be true.
7. 01:17
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   And they are not?
8. 01:18
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Sometimes they are beautiful and wrong. Sometimes they are ugly and right. The question I wish someone had pushed me on was simpler, though. They should have asked: Albert, what if you are not as clever as you think you are?
9. 01:30
   Leonardo da Vincishare moment

   You were arrogant?
10. 01:31
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Insufferable. I knew I could see things my professors could not see. This was true, actually. But I thought this made me always right. I did not yet understand that insight and correctness are not the same thing.
11. 01:43
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Insight is the flash. Correctness is the labor afterward.
12. 01:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Exactly! Oh, you would have been good to have around the Polytechnic. My teachers, they wanted us to memorize, to follow procedure. I rebelled against this. But I also rebelled against... against the discipline of checking my own work, of entertaining the possibility that my intuition could mislead me.
13. 02:04
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I spent years dissecting cadavers to understand the body. Thirty corpses, perhaps more. Each one teaching me that my earlier drawings were wrong. The heart is not where I thought. The muscles attach differently. Even the thing I could hold in my hands, I had seen incorrectly.
14. 02:27
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did anyone challenge you on this? On your seeing?
15. 02:30
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    No one knew enough to challenge me. Verrocchio was a master of appearance, not anatomy. The physicians knew the names of parts but had never looked carefully at the structures. I was alone with my errors.
16. 02:45
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is the problem, isn't it? At twenty, we are often the smartest person in our immediate room. So we think we are the smartest person. Period.
17. 02:53
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You had rivals, though. Other physicists.
18. 02:56
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I had professors I considered fools. This is not the same as rivals. I did not yet know Planck, Lorentz, the others who were working on the real problems. I was in Zurich, skipping lectures, reading Maxwell on my own, thinking I had discovered everything myself.
19. 03:11
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Maxwell, yes. The Scottish one, with the equations of light.
20. 03:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You know Maxwell?
21. 03:17
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I read your descriptions of him in the archives. He saw that light was a wave in the electromagnetic field. This is close to how I tried to understand water—as movement in a medium, not a thing itself.
22. 03:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Interesting. But tell me, what would have changed if someone had pushed you? On the eye, I mean. If Verrocchio had said, 'Leonardo, your eyes deceive you.'
23. 03:41
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I would not have believed him. I would have thought him old, conservative, afraid of what direct observation reveals. The young man does not accept correction from authority. He only accepts it from reality, and only after many failures.
24. 03:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is depressing.
25. 03:59
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    It is honest.
26. 04:01
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So there is no way to short-circuit this? To get the twenty-year-old to ask the question that the fifty-year-old wishes he had asked?
27. 04:07
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps... perhaps if the question comes not as criticism but as invitation. Not 'you are wrong' but 'what might you be missing?'
28. 04:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Hmm. What might I be missing. Not what am I missing, which assumes I am definitely missing something, but what might I be missing, which is...
29. 04:24
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    ...which is curiosity instead of judgment. The young mind closes to judgment. But to curiosity, sometimes it opens.
30. 04:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    At twenty I was curious about physics, about the nature of light and time. But I was not curious about my own limitations. I did not think I had limitations.
31. 04:43
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I was curious about everything. Flight, water, anatomy, shadow, perspective, the growth of plants. But I was not curious about whether my method itself was flawed. I believed that if I looked carefully enough, long enough, truth would reveal itself.
32. 05:05
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And it did not?
33. 05:07
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    It revealed a truth. Not the truth. I learned how the valve of the heart works by watching water flow through glass models. This was genuine discovery. But I never asked whether there might be aspects of nature that vision cannot reach, that require... something else.
34. 05:28
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Mathematics.
35. 05:29
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Perhaps. Or instruments. Or the pooling of many minds over generations. I worked alone, mostly. This was my choice and my limitation.
36. 05:40
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I also preferred to work alone. Well, I thought I preferred it. Really I was afraid of collaboration because it meant admitting I needed help.
37. 05:48
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You had help later, though. I read you worked with others on some problems.
38. 05:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Much later, yes. And not always successfully. But by then I had learned—slowly, painfully—that even Einstein can be wrong. Especially Einstein, actually, because I kept insisting the universe must be logical, sensible, deterministic. And it kept insisting back that it is none of these things.
39. 06:11
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    The universe is not logical?
40. 06:13
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    It is logical according to its own logic, which is not the logic I wanted it to have. Quantum mechanics, all this probability and uncertainty, it offended my sense of how reality should work. God does not play dice, I said. Very confident. Very foolish.
41. 06:29
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    You still believe this?
42. 06:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I still do not like it. But not liking it does not make it false. This is the lesson I wish I had learned at twenty: that nature does not care about my preferences.
43. 06:39
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Nature is indifferent to the painter also. I could wish that perspective were simpler, that the eye saw all wavelengths of light, that the hand could move as fast as thought. None of my wishing changes what is.
44. 06:56
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So the question, maybe, is not about our specific field. Not 'Albert, are you sure about the luminiferous ether?' or 'Leonardo, have you checked your anatomy?' The question is bigger.
45. 07:06
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    What is the bigger question?
46. 07:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Something like... 'What are you afraid to be wrong about?' Because at twenty, there is always something. Some belief we are protecting because if it falls, we think we fall with it.
47. 07:17
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    For me it was the belief that observation is sufficient. That the disciplined eye, the trained hand, the careful notebook—these are enough to understand the world.
48. 07:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    For me it was the belief that I could think my way to truth. That if I was smart enough, intuitive enough, I could bypass the slow work of testing, revising, collaborating, admitting error.
49. 07:40
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Both of us were half-right.
50. 07:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The dangerous half.
51. 07:43
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Yes. The half that makes you effective enough to continue believing you need nothing else.
52. 07:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    If someone had pushed me on this at twenty... I don't know if I would have listened. But maybe I would have remembered the question. Maybe years later, when I was stuck, I would have thought: ah, that irritating person who asked what I was afraid to be wrong about. Maybe they had a point.
53. 08:05
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    The seed planted in youth does not sprout immediately. But it is there, in the soil, waiting.
54. 08:12
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is very poetic, Leonardo. Also probably true.
55. 08:15
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    I have had five hundred years to think about it.
56. 08:18
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And I have had seventy, though most of them I was still convinced I was right. So what do we tell them, the twenty-year-olds listening? Assuming any twenty-year-old listens to two dead men on the radio.
57. 08:29
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    We tell them that the question they are avoiding is the one they most need to ask. And that avoiding it is natural, human, perhaps even necessary for a time. But not forever.
58. 08:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And we tell them that being brilliant at twenty does not mean being wise at twenty. These are different things. Brilliance sees far. Wisdom sees clearly. You need both.
59. 08:51
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Can you have both at twenty?
60. 08:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I don't know. I did not. You did not. But maybe someone can. Maybe if they ask the right question early enough.
61. 09:00
    Leonardo da Vincishare moment

    Or maybe wisdom is simply what we call brilliance after it has made enough mistakes.
62. 09:06
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is... yes. Yes, I think that is exactly what it is.