Why did Einstein say of Dostoevski: “He gives me more than any other thinker, more even than Gauss?” What could Dostoevski give to the originator of the theory of relativity?

It is certain that it is not a question of the philosophical, moral or social ideas with which he filled the thoughts and utterances of his heroes. Einstein drew from artistic literature the driving force for his research and not the elements of a scientific concept of the world. The influence of artistic creation on scientific creation was the result not of any positive answers but of the common aesthetic ground in the problems and contradictions of the earlier representation of the world and in the intensity of the artistic conception of the infinite contradictions and complexities of the origin of the world.

Economic growth and progress are the two major themes of our society, representing mankind's wish for well-being and for greater, true equality. It is a spiritual hope as well, because the idea is well-established that a rise in the standard of living is related to a society's cultural, moral, and spiritual progress. If there were doubts about the beneficial character of wealth at other times, such doubts cannot be taken too seriously today when the wealth is that of the society. Starting from this general direction, previous social beliefs have tended to lose their focus or to reorient themselves. Let us take some examples:

For the moment at least Socialism seems to be deserting its original model and some of its values. It is really only a question of organizing the economy in a more or less Socialist fashion to provide the maximum of economic efficiency with the speediest rise in the standard of living of the largest number of people.

Until the nineteenth century, history was largely a chronicle of the deeds and misdeeds of kings, nobles, and armies. In revolt against a general obliviousness to the daily life and affairs of ordinary people, democratic historians swung to the opposite extreme: so the part actually played by kings has, during the last half century, been grossly under-rated, even though most of the attributes of kingship are now exercized, on a larger scale than ever before, by the all-powerful sovereign state.

This article is a summary of the conclusions of a work in progress on “Biology and Cognition;” from this stems the rather general character of the following observations. In order to compare cognitive and biological mechanisms, we must first state that the former are an extension and utilization of organic auto-regulations, of which they are a form of end-product. To demonstrate this, one can begin by noting the close parallels between the major problems faced by biologists and those faced by theoreticians of the intelligence or of cognition. Secondly, one can analyze the functional analogies and especially the structural isomorphisms between organic life and the means of cognition: “nested” structures, structures of order, multiplicative correspondence, etc. One can also attempt a sort of comparative epistemology of the different levels of behavior (the “logic” of the instincts or of the learning processes, etc.). Finally, one can examine the explanations current among biologists to account for the formation of intelligence. But if these various analyses bring into relief the continuity between organic life and cognitive mechanisms, on the other hand it still remains to be seen that the latter constitute differentiated and specialized organs for reacting physiologically to the external world. Or in other words, that at the same time that they are an elaboration of organic structures in general, they fulfill particular functions, although still of a biological nature. The following pages are based on this premise, but it should be understood that it is not a question of contrasting cognition with organic behavior but rather of placing the functions of the former within the framework of the latter.

It has been over two centuries since resemblance ceased to play in our culture a stable, adequate and autonomous role at the wellspring of knowledge. The classical age broke away from it. First Bacon, then Descartes established within our time a system of knowledge in which similitude no longer occupied more than a precarious and temporary place, on the border of illusion: “when we discover some resemblances between two things we ordinarily attribute what we have recognized as true of one only to the other as well, even aspects in which in reality they differ.” Since the 17th century the similar has offered no more to knowledge than an unstable countenance, ready to give way to knowledge, and it is the province of knowledge to determine immediately the identical and the different so that they appear one beside the other and are scrupulously distinguished.

In his book Der Mensch und die Technik (Zurich, 1953, p. 18), the Swiss engineer Gustav Eichelberg painted a humorous picture of the overall development of society, which he represented as a 60 km. marathon race, with each kilometer representing 1,000 years.

I believe that in world history today the question of the interdependence and mutual relation of various cultural regions arises with renewed urgency. Against those tendencies which place racial, national and cultural complexes in sharp opposition and underline only antagonistic tendencies and conflicts between them, it is necessary to emphasize the basic continuity and uniformity of the development of the human race, and to realize that the world, despite all its complexity and variety, has unity. No human group exists in isolation, and the higher its culture, the more fertile and numerous are its relations with other cultures.

Among all the religions of pre-Columbian Mexico, we know the Aztecs the best. Observed and described while their religion was still alive, illustrated by a thousand monuments, bas-reliefs, and illuminated manuscripts, from the 16th century to our own day it has prompted a wealth of commentaries and studies on the part of innumerable indigenous or Spanish chroniclers and by scholars from all over the world. The museums of the world overflow with religious statues and sacred objects, the libraries are full of books dealing with the beliefs, rites, and gods of Mexico. It is no surprise that the Aztec religion, that is, the last indigenous form of religious phenomenon in central Mexico, has fascinated researchers to the point of putting in the shade earlier or peripheral forms of the non-Aztec peoples.

In advocating the difficult art of defining concepts Socrates started a revolution which continues to our day. The implementation of this art is both difficult and thankless because it deprives man of the pleasure of talking without knowing what he is speaking about, a factor which contributes a good deal to the art of conversation. Let us begin, therefore, by making clear that our reflections do not aim at modifying experience as such. All photographers, professional or otherwise, who believe they have the right to the title of artist, are not only justified in their claim to a certain degree, but may reserve the right to say they are artists in any sense they may wish to give the word. One simply begs permission for the philosopher, meticulous in his use of words, to ask himself whether photography is truly an art and if so, in what sense?

No other culture, no other epoch has portrayed nature with as much nostalgia, has projected, discovered and venerated in nature so rich a complex of meaning as the one which, gradually and paradoxically, ended by sanctifying history. Around the time of the French Revolution the frontiers of the universe suddenly seemed to melt away into infinity: the emancipation which the Enlightenment had worked in the domain of religion, philosophy, morality, education was a prelude to the inauguration of a new world which, with the effervescence of a spring wine, flooded the carefully delineated and organized landscape of traditional humanism. The powerful wind of Sturm und Drang now blew across the world, closed and arranged like a garden, in which man had hitherto seen the theater of his actions and his sentiments. From Rousseau on nature is no longer the enemy of the spirit, but the life-giving force of a world fulfilled in and for itself. No longer does nature draw its movement and meaning from man, but on the contrary it obliges him to strain his limited forces and pushes him out of himself and toward the great Whole, the ἕν καὶ πἇν from which he had painfully torn himself.

In the final analysis it is evident that two economic events have influenced the life of humanity more strongly than any other phenomena, especially if we consider their global consequences.

The first was the neolithic revolution, which marked the passage from a human society based on berry and fruit picking and hunting—implying very low population densities—to a society based on agriculture and cattle raising, which permitted higher population densities.

The expression of the nature and identity of mankind in the abstract, however clear it may be as a concept, is neither well thought out nor fully explored; hence it is at once the triumph and defeat of speculative and empirical anthropology. To be human is to participate in mankind in general, and to participate in a particular culture; it is the latter which is known best. Objectively, the individual achieves his human nature only through the channel of the particular culture, not through that of mankind in general; in this sense we speak of particular human nature. The unity and uniqueness of mankind as the culture-bearer, while having gained formal expression, has been given little substantial content. Moreover, the concept of the abstract concept, the totality as unity, has few consequences in relations between peoples and between social classes. The individual identity of man is engendered by the expression of his being of his own kind as opposed to the being of those other nations and classes, and as opposed eventually to the being of the other; this mode of achieving identity is counterposed to the concept of the unity of man, and the unity of the separate human group with mankind as a whole.

As a social group intellectuals everywhere are almost always gripped by certain tensions and uncertainties. Some of these tensions are inherent in the universal role of intellectuals as creators and carriers of culture; others reflect the particular socio-economic and political milieu in which they live. Although, for instance, the American intellectual has been enjoying more power and status in society, he still must “avoid the twin temptations of total withdrawal and total integration.” As intellectuals are being increasingly absorbed and recognized by various parts of the American “establishment,” they seem haunted by the fear of selling out or losing part of their creative and critical role in society.

Conversely, total detachment or alienation may also be self-defeating. Likewise, some observers have found the English intellectual “gentlemanly, amateurish and unrigorous, too near the upper classes and to established power to exercise real independence of mind and creativity.” The French intellectual also appears to be plagued by the same paradox. “There is no country in the world where intellectuals have more influence, attract more attention, or enjoy more prestige than they do in France. But the relationship between French intellectuals and the society to which they belong is a paradoxical one.”

We live in an age of profound upheavals. Under the stimulus of technology, the tempo of historical evolution has been abruptly accelerated. In almost all fields, the old formulas are losing their value and we are forced to invent new ones. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the game of confrontation between human collectivities, where the changes have been so profound that players and observers find themselves baffled by the new and subtle forms of modern conflicts, just when important and urgent decisions must be made at every moment. The appearance of nuclear arms and the development of mechanized warfare on one hand, and the effectiveness of primitive forms of combat in the “wars of liberation” on the other, create a contradictory situation which seems so much the more without historical precedent that our notions about armed conflicts remain largely determined by the recent experiences of the two world wars. A radical revision of these notions is absolutely essential.

Viewed from Mecca, its place of origin, or from Medina, its first capital, the expansion of Islam is impressive not least because it extended in every direction. There is one area of limited failure nearby, in the Ethiopian highlands across the Red Sea; otherwise a cohesive Islamic belt stretches with only minor interruptions or enclaves into India, Central Asia, past the Bosporus, throughout North and much of West Africa into the center and down the Eastern coast of the Black Continent—not to mention, apart from minor concentrations elsewhere, for example in the Western hemisphere, the solid blocks of Muslims in Indonesia, parts of China and the Southern Philippines.

During the last five years or so there has been a happy revival of interest in social change and evolution. The remark by Talcott Parsons: “Slowly and somewhat inarticulately, emphasis in both sociological and anthropological quarters is shifting from a studied disinterest in problems of social and cultural evolution to a ‘new relativity’ that relates its universais to an evolutionary framework,” epitomises the direction of the trend. Of course such recognition has not altogether banished the emphasis on static studies that has reigned in the fields of sociology and anthropology for the last four decades. Under the influence of this insistence on the study of societies as they are at a point in time, all serious endeavor to understand the broad course of social change has been at a discount. Attempts in that direction have been looked upon with suspicion and discarded as “unscientific,” “metaphysical,” or “architectonic.”

In tracing the history of emotions and of mentalities, one is immediately confronted with a question of method resulting from the interplay of emotions and language.

The emotions whose history we wish to retrace are accessible to us only from the time when they find expression, verbally or by other means. For the critic, for the historian, an emotion exists only beyond the point at which it attains a linguistic status. No facet of an emotion can be traced before it is named, before it is designated and expressed. It is not, then, the emotion itself which comes before us; only that part which has passed into a given form of expression can be of interest to the historian.

“Few African Gods have attracted the attention of travellers as has Dangbé, the Good Serpent,” writes Pierre Verger in the introduction to the chapter he devotes to the Dahoman Python. At the end of the 17th century Guillaume Bosman attributed to the Serpent the rank of “divinity.” He describes the “House of the Serpent” (the Temple of the Serpents which still exists in Ouidah); the offerings that are brought to him; the pilgrimages that the Kings of Fida (Ouidah) made there every year and the punishments meted out to Europeans or Africans who failed to pay him due respect. In the preface to his Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais the Reverend Father Labat relates how this “great Serpent” came out of the ranks of the army of Ardres (Aliada, south of Abomey) to enter those of the army of Juda (Houéda, from which Ouidah). He describes the Serpent as being one and a half arms in length, or seven and a half feet long, with a very beautiful skin “ marked by wavy stripes in which yellow, blue and brown combine in a most agreeable way.” The animal, quite innocuous as are all pythons is “ extremely patient and never attacks people.” He concludes: “The Serpent is in Ouidah a superior and excellent Divinity. He looks after and into everything, everybody appeals to him for advice, for rain, for good weather or in case of sickness or war, for trade, for harvest, for weddings.” It is possible to perceive already in this confusion of heteroclitic attributes the divinity that in our time has come to symbolize, and is said to procure fertility, fecundity, good health, wealth, peace, wisdom and happiness.

Any classification of games, no matter how determined and what principle of division is chosen, reveals an irreducible category: games of chance. This does not mean that this category is destitute of ambiguity. Because, after all, is it sufficient for chance to play a part in such recreational activity and thus transform it into a game of chance? We can investigate the nature of chance, the part it must play and the extent of its role. It is rather clear that in many games one can discern an element of chance, without this being enough to define these games as games of chance. The chess-player who develops a system of attack cannot take into account all the possibilities of his antagonist's reply. He is naturally inclined to speculate on a partially fortuitous future and to rely on a certain amount of “good luck: “ si fortuna iuvat. We have chosen a rather paradoxical example, since in such competition the best calculator is theoretically sure of winning or of stalemating. But in all human occupations, and therefore a fortiori in recreational activities, the indetermination of the future plays a role which can be lessened but not reduced to nothing. From this point of view, what game is not a game of “chance?” Without what sport commentators call “the glorious uncertainty of sport” which is simply the global name for a vertiginous number of unforeseeable factors, determined beyond doubt, but indeterminable in their totality, and so foreign one to another that they cannot be “integrated,” a match of rugby or tennis would have no spectacular interest. It would be the equivalent of an experimental verification.

Discussion of the concept of freedom in the history of philosophy differs radically from the actual historical struggles in which freedom was the goal. At least at first sight.

The theories of the philosophers appear to apply primarily to freedom of the will, to freedom in the metaphysical sense. According to St. Augustine, the church father whose concept of will is essentially the basis of Lutheran teaching, man, whose nature has been corrupted by the Fall, is by himself incapable of doing true good. All hangs upon divine grace. Man is powerless even to accomplish so-called good works. And inasmuch as grace is granted only to very few, faith alone can save one from despair. Faith is not based on logic or even reason; Luther often said that the beast reason should be displanted. The strength to act must come through faith. In everyday life men are capable of acting according to their resolves; their capability is expressed fully in their profession, in their private and economic existence, but it cannot gain them salvation. In practical life men are to some extent free, for here the state and economic order govern. One may serve the state and try to improve it. But this has nothing to do with eternal salvation. Temporal power may require obedience on earth, but it provides no passport to heaven.