I AM A PART OF INFINITYI AM A PART OF INFINITY

A "beautifully written" (David Fideler) spiritual biography of Albert Einstein that reveals for the first time the scientific and religious origins of his personal philosophy — "a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the mind of the great physicist" (Jo Marchant)

Albert Einstein remains renowned around the world for revolutionizing our understanding of the cosmos, but very few realize that the celebrated scientist had a deep spiritual side. Einstein believed that one wondrous force was woven through all things everywhere—and this sense of the pervasive sacred influenced every aspect of his existence, from his marvelous science to his passionate pacifism.

I Am a Part of Infinity offers the first in-depth exploration of Einstein’s spirituality, showing how he drew on a dazzling diversity of thinkers—from Pythagoras to Plato, Schopenhauer to Spinoza, the Upanishads to Mahatma Gandhi—to create a novel system where mysticism met mathematics, reality was revered, and the human mind was honored as a mirror of the infinite. This wasn’t just a new way of seeing the world. Einstein asked us to commune with the cosmos, to treat every living creature with compassion, to channel the power that permeated all things and put it to use for pure purposes.

Drawing on little-known conversations, recently published letters, and new archival research, I Am a Part of Infinity reveals what Einstein really believed and why his perspective still matters today.

"Nearly everyone is familiar with Einstein's scientific accomplishments-but few know the truth of how spiritual philosophies shaped his life and work. Scientists and biographers have treated Einstein's views on the eternal as vague and metaphorical. For Einstein, however, spirituality and science were a vital pairing. In I Am a Part of Infinity, Kieran Fox examines for the first time the strength and the subtlety of Einstein's spirituality. Revealing the Greek philosophies and East Asian religious teachings that Einstein revered, Fox traces, for example, how Pythagoras and Democritus allowed Einstein to conceptualize mathematical simplicity and the power of the mind, and how the Upanishads and Jainism shaped his views on the nature of the universe and morality. Fox shows how Einstein melded those ideas with his science to create one all-encompassing philosophy, in which the cosmic oneness of his work in physics was inextricably linked to his pacificism and his moral commitments to all life. Drawing on little-known conversations, recently published letters, and new archival research, I Am a Part of Infinity shows, for the first time, what Einstein really believed, and why his perspective still matters today"--