SOLITARY MEALS WITH EINSTEIN 

For me, the turning point in my story is clear enough—my solitary meals in a grand hotel in Cairo in the summer of 1986. I was working for an international engineering and consulting company and we were managing a large-scale energy project with the Egyptian Electricity Authority funded by USAID. The project director was on vacation, so I was doing his job in Cairo for three weeks while he was away. The hotel was full of mothers and children from Saudi Arabia, wanting to escape the greater heat of Riyadh. The young boys tried to play soccer in the patch of green around the swimming pool. I appeared to be the only Westerner in the entire hotel. I spent my mealtimes reading books about Albert Einstein, especially his own “Autobiographical Notes,” the slender volume in which he explains how his thinking had been shaped from boyhood on. 

I had always been fascinated by Einstein—at once almost universally acknowledged as the genius of our age—but also known to be eccentric and to have had trouble in his early schooling and career. I did not know it at the time, but he was to become my main guide throughout my research—introducing me to his own heroes and intellectual mentors— especially James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday. These were names I knew only vaguely. But as I learned more, I saw that these three shared great respect and an extraordinary intellectual rapport across time— largely because they all relied heavily on their visual-spatial talents as the source of their remarkably original (and enduring) insights and discoveries. 

Over time, these considerations became the core of my research as I dug through primary sources such as letters and diaries, with one insight leading to another as I reviewed a period of nearly two centuries. I found unfolding a distinctive pattern of thought, innovation, and discovery— one that was useful to a small group long ago—but one that has become ever more pervasive over recent years with the advent of new technologies along with new discoveries in physics, biology, mathematics, and other fields. Visual thinking—once so productive for a few—was now becoming more important for the many—partly because of new approaches to science and mathematics—and partly because of increasingly powerful new tools and technologies. 

There is increasing evidence that many highly original and productive thinkers have clearly preferred visual over verbal modes of thought for many tasks. Some argue that visual-spatial abilities should in fact be seen as a special form of intelligence on par with verbal or logical-mathematical forms of intelligence. Historically, it is apparent that some of the most original and gifted thinkers in the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and other areas relied heavily on visual modes of thought, employing images instead of words or numbers. However, it is notable that some of these same gifted thinkers have shown evidence of a striking range of learning problems, including difficulties with reading, spelling, writing, calculation, speaking, and memory. What is of greatest interest here is not the difficulties themselves but their frequent and varied association with high visual and spatial talents. . . . 

In the life of Albert Einstein, the importance of visual learning and visual talents in conjunction with verbal difficulties has long been recognized. His poor memory for words and texts made him hate the rote learning methods of his early school years. However, he tended to thrive later at the progressive school in Switzerland, where he prepared to take his university examinations—no doubt, partly because the unconventional school was based largely on visually oriented educational principles. 

There is a debate among biographers and scholars as to whether the young Einstein was a brilliant student or whether he was a dullard. After some time looking at these conflicting points of view, I realized that to some extent he was both—a pattern that is typical of highly gifted visual thinkers with verbal difficulties. Einstein’s sister, Maja, recorded a number of details about his early life, commenting about his late development of speech; his slow answers but deep understanding in mathematics; and his frequent calculation errors even though he had a clear understanding of the main mathematical concepts involved. 

In secondary school, he dropped out of school in Germany (contrary to plan) to follow his parents after they moved to Italy. His reason was that because of his “poor memory,” he preferred to endure all kinds of punishments rather than to have to learn to “gabble by rote.” After he failed his first set of university entrance examinations, Einstein went to a new and unconventional school—one that was based on the highly visually-oriented educational ideas of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. It was at this school that Einstein’s abilities began to blossom and the great theories later published in 1905 began to take their initial shape. 

The coexistence in Einstein of visual talents along with verbal difficulties has been noted by several observers. Suggesting the recognition of a general pattern, the physicist and historian of science Gerald Holton has remarked: “An apparent defect in a particular person may merely indicate an imbalance of our normal expectations. A noted deficiency should alert us to look for a proficiency of a different kind in the exceptional person. The late use of language in childhood, the difficulty in learning foreign languages may indicate a polarization or displacement in some of the skill from the verbal to another area. That other, enhanced area is without a doubt, in Einstein’s case an extraordinary kind of visual imagery that penetrates his very thought processes.”

Later, in his own writing, Einstein made clear references to what he saw as two very different modes of thought, especially with regard to his own most creative and productive work. He pointed out that when he did really productive thinking, he always used “more or less clear images” and what he called “combinatory play,” as the “essential feature” in his “productive thought,” as well as of some “visual and some muscular type.”  But he explains that if he wanted to communicate these thoughts to others, he had to go through a difficult and laborious translation process, proceeding from images to words and numbers that could be understood by others.

It is anticipated that modern visualization technologies and techniques may eventually permit many more ordinary people to do what Einstein did with mental models in his mind’s eye—and permit the communication of sophisticated visual ideas without having to resort to poorly suited verbal and mathematical substitutes. 

The great power of the visual approach is underscored in one rather surprising account of Albert Einstein’s development as a professional scientist. In his later career, Einstein did become increasingly sophisticated in higher mathematics. However, some have argued that this increased sophistication may have been more of a hindrance than a help in his later creative work. The mathematician David Hilbert made clear, with some exaggeration, that Einstein’s creative scientific accomplishments came from elsewhere than through his mathematical skill. . . . 

Hilbert was not alone. Indeed, Abraham Pais, the author of a scientific biography of Einstein, observes that Einstein’s increasing reliance on mathematics over time also involved a reduced dependency on the visual methods that he used so heavily and so productively in his earlier work. (From Seeing What Others Cannot See, 2017, T.G.West, pages 54-61.)