Letter to Jacques Hadamard

Albert Einstein was an incredibly brilliant man. His writings are also incredibly difficult to understand. It took me several readings to finally begin to comprehend Einstein’s Letter to Jacques Hadamard. In the letter, Einstein is responding to questions posed by Hadamard about thoughts and specifically words in thoughts. Overall, Einstein says that words play absolutely no role in thoughts at all. He says that once you have a thought well established only then can words be added after a tremendous amount of effort is exerted. I find this quite interesting, but I’m not exactly sure what Einstein is implying here. Does he think that this is the way it really is, or does he think this is the way it should be? Many people often “speak without thinking”; thinking about what they are saying or thinking about the consequences what they are saying will have. So how could the thought process be so complete before words are involved and yet people still speak without thinking?

I am also slightly confused about where all of this pre-word thought takes place. I’m sure there was a much deeper place that Einstein had in mind, but I know it is very difficult if not impossible to not be thinking of words at all times. Whether it is the lyrics to a song stuck in your head or a song you’re listening to or the words in a conversation someone is having with you there are always words there. Especially when you’re purposely trying to not think of words there are words. When I’ve tried it before it usually ends up looking like this: “okay focus, don’t think of words, don’t think of words, stop thinking of words, stop, stop, stop. Let’s focus on breathing, breathe in, breathe out. Okay listen to the fan, whir, whir, whir, whir…” and so on and so forth.

I thought his phrasing was rather intriguing when he said “In a stage when words intervene at all…” This to me sounds like Einstein thinks words are superfluous and in the way. When they are intervening they are in the middle of his thought process and they do not need to be.

In section (E) the question that was posed was about mental pictures and words different positions in consciousness. I thought his word choice in the answer was interesting. He says “It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit which can never be fully accomplished.” It sounds to me as though he is dismissing the question entirely because it is irrelevant. It is true that we as humans only use a minuscule portion of our brain, but I believe Einstein is sounding rather superior in this statement.