In-class Response to “The Brain of Einstein” by Roland Barthes (http://www.scribd.com/doc/4612523/Mythologies-by-Roland-Barthes-as-selected-and-translated-by-Annette-Lavers)
The Failure of Einstein
Despite the massive amount of achievements that Albert Einstein was able to accomplish in his life time, he was unable to answer all of life's questions. According to Roland Barthes, in his essay “The Brain of Einstein,” this failure of discovery was almost necessary for life to go on. Einstein has reached a mythological status in our country for many reasons, but most especially because of this failure. Barthes makes the argument that “since the world is still going on, since research is still proliferating, and on the other hand God's share must be preserved,” Einstein needed to fail in order for life to continue. If it was his destiny to fail in this, then Einstein most certainly accomplished that as well.
Barthes' argument is broken into three main components, the first being that “the world is still going on.” Which, unless you follow Descartes' theory of philosophy, is easy to prove since one has only to look around to see that this is true. Disregarding all religious implications for now, if Einstein had discovered the secret to the universe, the answer to the “why” questions, the world as we know it would almost cease to exist. There would be no more curiosity, no more debates, and all of society's progress across the world would cease to be. If humans knew the answers to everything, there would be nothing left to question and the passions of the people would die. Along with all of that, science would also suffer for a lack of creativity or even interest, since there would be nothing left to discover.
This directly ties in to the next point of the fact that “research is still proliferating.” Science and research have made astounding advancement since Einstein was alive. Although he paved the path for scientists and physicists, and also helped jump start the culture of time travel, with his theory of relativity science continues to progress. For example, in medicine, there is currently a vaccine for cervical cancer, which is monumentous in its own regard. In astronomy, one doesn't have to look much further than the Hubble telescope to see how far science has advanced since the time of Einstein. We can now photograph stars, planets, nebulas, and many other distant and amazing objects that merely appeared as miniscule smudges in telescopes of the past. If Einstein had discovered this “single secret to the world,” as Barthes puts it, these wonderful advancements might never have even occurred.
The third and final part of Barthes' argument is that “God's share must be preserved.” Despite being elevated to mythological proportions himself, Einstein was still just a man. Societies around the world are built upon the tenets of their respective religions, and if Einstein had discovered the key to the world and proved definitively the truth of our origins, the societies that are proven wrong could possibly collapse. There is a reason that Karl Marx referred to religion as the “opiate of the masses.” Most people need religion in their lives, and history has proved time and time again that people will do whatever it takes to preserve their way of life. To completely and utterly take something so inherently personal away from someone seems almost cruel. In America we have the separation of church and state, but in most other cultures around the world the church is the state. To completely demolish that in a society would almost certainly be the death of that culture. It is almost unthinkable to imagine, but the structures of religions are general there to help ensure peace and civility in a culture and that without those, there is no moral compass for many people to follow. It is almost a blessing, in this case, that Einstein did not succeed.
Roland Barthes concludes that Einstein “fulfills all the conditions of a myth,” due in large part to his failure to discover “the equation in which the secret of the world was enclosed.” Barthes deems it necessary for him to have failed because of three reasons: the world continues without him, science is still advancing without him, and religion remaining sacred without him. There are many arguments to support these three ideas, so Einstein's soul can rest easy knowing that his science, despite failing to discover the combination to the world's safe, maintained it's conscience.
