Barths says that Einstein’s brain is objectified, reduced, it becomes reductive. It’s oversimplified into a physical organ which can produce incredible formula. So what’s wrong with objectifying, reducing people? Its wrongness lies in that people leave out the most important ethics, the spirit, the soul of this human being, and focus on some of his concrete yet virtual properties. Few people cares about the characteristics attached to him when he’s thinking, most people try to figure out what to build a brain as powerful as Einstein’s and get as smart as him. It’s unrealistic but it’s worth practicing. So don’t talk about virtual and abstract conceptions like Einstein’s mentality, or his psychological status. Nobody knows exactly what Einstein was thinking when he was alive, it’s no use to consider the mental state of his since he’s been dead. Instead, make Einstein’s brain an object, an experimental material, and conduct experiments upon the brain to determine the factors that influence his intelligence level. People try hard to figure out what does that equation mean, and they are being through a paradox, during the process they blindly and happily accepted the formula without getting what the equation means. They know that the equation means a lot to human beings, but they don’t know how this equation can make a difference, and they don’t bother that. The paradox is that people try to make Einstein and his brain less mysterious, so they are happy to see that Einstein works out such a simplified equation, but the thing is the equation is even more complicated than those harangue of theories, for the equation doesn’t have explanation, and it makes Einstein even more mysterious. Again, people don’t bother they don’t really know about Einstein and his fantastic equation, they simply label Einstein with that equation and a lot of positive adjectives.
There are two images mentioned showing Einstein together with his great achievement—E=mc2, one is that Einstein stand in front of a blackboard full of his complex equations indicating how he gets to that simple conclusion, the other one has the same background as the former one, but there’s only one single formula on a blackboard. The difference between these two images is whether Einstein gets recognized for his hard thinking work. Whether people think he pays much time and energy on pondering out the equation or suddenly sparkle out this simple but difficult equation. The former shows Einstein’s work, the latter one shows the product. People are looking at the equation as a product instead of focusing on how Einstein think out the equation. It’s stupid to try to figure out how Einstein think, or can human beings think like Einstein. There’s no way that people can get what ingredients added contributed to Einstein’s brain by just looking at the product. People all want to be smarter, so they want to gain something useful from Einstein’s brain, to see why he’s so smart, and they are trying to look at the physical brain, which is obviously impractical.
Science without consciousness is but the ruin of the soul. Scientists should maintain a set of morality in their minds while doing research, they should tell the difference between right and wrong. The atomic bomb invented should not be used in war so less disastrous misfortune would happen, and scientists should make sure that the fatal weapon is controlled by the justified side.
Work cited
Barthes, Roland (1987). Mythologies. The Noonday Press