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Lot 506
Albert Einstein on Occam's Razor and "scientific thinking....my own relationships with logic"
Description:

Albert Einstein
Princeton, NJ, September 29, 1944
Albert Einstein on Occam's Razor and "scientific thinking....my own relationships with logic"
TLS
A fine content typed letter signed "A. Einstein", one page, 8.5 x 11 in., Princeton, New Jersey, September 29, 1944. On his blind-embossed 112 Mercer Street letterhead and in German to noted scholar and Professor of Linguistics Giuliano (Julian) Hugo Bonfante. Fine condition, with original transmittal cover.

According to the original auction description for this letter, Bonfante's daughter Larissa Bonfante, herself a renowned Professor of Linguistics at NYU, states that her father had invited Einstein to discuss the topic of Logic by posing the question: "Is it a fact that when facing rival theorems, the simpler one tends to be the true one?" This is known as Occam's razor, and is intricately tied to Einstein! Attributed to William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, it is frequently cited as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, which translates as "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity",[although Occam never used these exact words. Popularly, the principle is sometimes paraphrased as "The simplest explanation is usually the best one."

This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction and both hypotheses have equal explanatory power, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Similarly, in science, Occam's razor is used as an abductive heuristic in the development of theoretical models rather than as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models.

In this letter, Einstein invites Bonfante into further discussion: "I will be very happy to hear from you personally about your scientific thinking, but you must be prepared for the fact that my own relationships with logic are more instinctive than they are considered. So you will soon notice that you have no competent assessor before you. If you think it right, you could bring along our mutual friend [Paul] Oppenheim, who rides a similar hobby horse. I ask you please to arrange an agreed time with Miss Dukas by telephone…".

Larissa Bonfante further explains: "My father and I had been discussing the idea that linguistic development, especially the spoken, tend toward consolidation and simplification, because, generally speaking, then innate approach of the human mindset does so. It is fundamentally, organic, reductive. That's when he told me that when he was at Princeton, he remembers writing to Einstein in order to ask him a deceptively plain question: ‘Is it a fact that when facing rival theorems, the simple one tends to be the true one?' ‘And what did Einstein reply?' I asked…[he ] smiled and shrugged with good-humored dissatisfaction, ‘Einstein said yes, that can be right except under certain conditions, when certain circumstances are at play, etc. etc…".

Giuliano Hugo Bonfante (1904-2005) was an influential Italian professor of Linguistics. He fled to the United States in 1939 through The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars and joined Princeton University that same year. It was there that he and Einstein met and became friendly (cf. Giuliano Bonfante nella storia della linguistica by Maria Luisa Porzio Gernia). Bonfante was already well-known as a linguist in Europe with a specialty in Indo-European linguistics. At Princeton, he worked with Roman Jakobson and corresponded with Richard P. McKeon, Thomas Sebeok and other notable semioticians and linguists. Bonfante published many pieces and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, the same year that he left Princeton for Genoa.

Einstein's suggestion to include Paul Oppenheim (1877-1977) in their discussion made a lot of sense: Oppenheim studied the philosophy of science and acted as a private tutor at Princeton. He was an old-time friend of Einstein from pre-Nazi Germany and is remembered as the co-author of several important works on the nature of scientific explanation, reduction, and the unity of science with luminaries such as Carl Hempel. Bonfante is mentioned in the references in their work "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," and particularly mentions Bonfante's articles in "The Encyclopedia of Psychology" by Philip L. Harriman.

Prior to his tenure at Princeton, Oppenheim was an executive in IG Farben, the German armaments manufacturer, and part of a social set in the 1920s which included Einstein. Hitler's assumption of power in 1933 caused Paul's immediate ouster from IG Farben, and he and his family fled (with their legendary art collection) to Brussels and then to the United States, following their friend Einstein to Princeton. He and Einstein took regular Sunday morning walks together and the Oppenheims' Sunday luncheons bringing physicists and other thinkers together, were legendary.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8.5" x 11"
  • Medium: TLS

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