Einstein

Entrada elaborada tomando elementos de los libro de MB: The unconscious as infinite sets y Thinking, feeling and being y de su artículo: Creatividad y ordtodoxia.

"Emotion is the mother of thinking".
(MB, 1975, p. 303)

Según MB la respuesta que dio Einstein a Hadamard (investigador de la psicología de la invención en el campo de las matemáticas) es un ejemplo de lo que él llamaría la antinomia básica trabajando armoniosamente. La co-presencia de los modos de ser incompatibles se ve aquí y en otros casos como la fuente y la expresión de la más alta actividad creativa.

MY DEAR COLLEAGUE: In the following, I am trying to answer in brief your questions as well as I am able. I am not satisfied myself with those answers and I am willing to answer more questions if you believe this could be of any advantage for the very interesting and difficult work you have undertaken. (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of tM rather vague play with the above mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. (B) The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will. (C) According to what has been said, the play with the mentioned elements is aimed to be analogous to certain logical connections one is searching for. (D) Visual and motor. In a stage when words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage as already mentioned. (E) It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit case which can never be fully accomplished. This seems to me connected with the fact called the narrowness of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins). Remark: Professor Max Wertheimer has tried to investigate the distinction between mere associating or combining of reproducible elements and between understanding (organisches Begreifen) ; I cannot judge how far his psychological analysis catches the essential point. 2
With kind regards . . ,
ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Einstein speaks of emotion as the guide which leads to thinking".

Einstein dice explícitamente que un juego combinatorio con signos e imágenes es el rasgo esencial del pensamiento productivo, y que éste es anterior a las combinaciones lógicas análogas a él que se buscan posteriormente. Nos informa que su búsqueda comienza con un juego emocional con imágenes, y que recién luego pasa a una labor con palabras para arribar a formulaciones matemáticas, mostrando clara y bellamente que es a partir de un estado emocional expresado en imágenes y sensaciones cómo llega a concepciones intelectuales altamente abstractas.