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hello listeners buckle up for a new 
episode of the science of self where  

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you learn to improve your life from 
the inside out today is January 26 2023

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today's episode comes from Peter 
Holland's book think like a genius  

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and today we'll look at how Einstein used 
non-linear thinking insatiable curiosity  

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and a wide range of interests 
to further his thought processes

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Albert Einstein is the world-renowned 
German physicist and mathematician who  

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won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his 
work on the photoelectric effect.

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Now considered one of the most 
influential scientific theorists  

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in history, Einstein was known for being 
a deeply inquisitive and curious person.

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Reportedly Einstein didn’t 
enjoy school as a child,  

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but early tutoring experiences sparked 
his interest in the topic of light.

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When Einstein excused himself from military 
service as a young man and dropped out of  

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school (he preferred independent study), 
his parents were worried about his future.

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Nevertheless, he was admitted to 
a prestigious Zurich university  

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because of his excellent performance on 
the maths and physics entrance exams.

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After graduating he worked as a patent clerk, 
where he privately pursued some of his own ideas.

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In 1905 he published four breakthrough 
papers on the photoelectric effect,  

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Brownian motion and relativity.

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Einstein married and had children, 
but his marriage was not a happy one,  

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and he divorced and remarried in 1919.

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At the time, Einstein was less known for 
his theory of relativity than he is today,  

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and perhaps could not have predicted the 
full direction his discoveries would take  

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physics in the future (for example, his work 
foreshadowing the development of the atomic bomb).

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Einstein: not a one-trick pony

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Surprisingly (or perhaps not), the 
most notable scientist of the 20th  

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century was also known for taking time 
out of his research to play the violin.

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In so doing, Einstein was engaging in a 
combination of the “hard” and the “soft” or,  

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more accurately, he was exercising skills 
that required very different mindsets.

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Reportedly, he was even very good at the 
instrument, as he was with the piano.

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But while sawing away on the 
violin during his breaks,  

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Einstein actually arrived at some breakthroughs 
in his research and philosophical questionings.

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Allegedly one of these musical sessions was 
the spark for his most famous equation: E=mc2.

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Knowing what we do about how true genius 
sees the world, this shouldn’t surprise us.

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Einstein came up with the term combinatory 
play to describe the intangible process in  

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which his favorite pastime led to ideas that 
revolutionized the whole of scientific thought.

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He explained his reasoning as best he  

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could in 1945 in a letter to French 
mathematician Jacques S. Hadamard:

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“My Dear Colleague:

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In the following, I am trying to answer in 
brief your questions as well as I am able.

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I am not satisfied myself with those answers and I  

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am willing to answer more questions 
if you believe this could be of any  

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advantage for the very interesting and 
difficult work you have undertaken.

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(A) The words or the language, 
as they are written or spoken,  

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do not seem to play any role 
in my mechanism of thought.

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The psychical entities which seem to serve 
as elements in thought are certain signs and  

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more or less clear images which can be 
“voluntarily” reproduced and combined.

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There is, of course, a certain connection between 
those elements and relevant logical concepts.

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It is also clear that the desire to arrive 
finally at logically connected concepts is  

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the emotional basis of this rather vague 
play with the above-mentioned elements.

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But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this 
combinatory play seems to be the essential  

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feature in productive thought—before 
there is any connection with logical  

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construction in words or other kinds of 
signs which can be communicated to others.

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(B) The above-mentioned elements are, in my 
case, of visual and some of muscular type.

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Conventional words or other signs have 
to be sought for laboriously only in a  

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secondary stage, when the mentioned associative  

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play is sufficiently established 
and can be reproduced at will.

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(C) According to what has been said, the 
play with the mentioned elements is aimed  

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to be analogous to certain logical 
connections one is searching for.

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(D) Visual and motor.

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In a stage when words intervene 
at all, they are, in my case,  

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purely auditive, but they interfere only 
in a secondary stage, as already mentioned.

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(E) It seems to me that what you 
call full consciousness is a limit  

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case which can never be fully accomplished.

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This seems to be connected with 
the fact called the narrowness  

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of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins).”

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Notice, firstly, that Einstein has 
no problem engaging in metacognition,  

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or thinking about his own thinking and asking 
questions about his own question-asking.

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Einstein seemed to believe that indulging in his  

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creative tendencies was helpful for 
his logical and rational pursuits.

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That might have been the case, and it also might 
have been the case that to engage in a distraction  

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was helpful for taking on different perspectives 
and viewing problems from different angles.

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Perhaps it’s related to the 
so-called Medici effect,  

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in which the melding of different disciplines 
will inevitably lead to new discoveries,  

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and the whole always seems to be 
greater than the sum of the parts.

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Indeed, combinatory play is not simply the notion  

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that play takes your mind to 
a different world to regroup.

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It recognizes, as Einstein did, that 
taking pieces of knowledge and insight  

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from different disciplines and combining them in 
new contexts is how most creativity truly happens.

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So as mentioned, somehow Einstein saw something in  

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playing the violin that helped him think 
about physics in an entirely new way.

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The lesson here is to engage in your own 
pursuits and not feel constrained by having  

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to stay in similar or adjacent disciplines, 
thinking that only they will aid you.

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There are always parallels between 
different disciplines, so find them.

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More of the same probably will not help; 
a dash of something different just might.

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The power of the possible

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Einstein became well-known for 
another thinking technique,  

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and it is one that we use 
most days in everyday life.

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“What if humans were capable of flying?"

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“What if the world’s landmasses never 
broke up into separate continents and  

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instead remained as Pangaea to this day?”

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These are hypothetical “what if” 
questions that tickle your mind  

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into thinking from other perspectives and 
challenge you to question your premises.

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Imagining hypotheticals goes beyond simple 
thinking skills that require only memorization,  

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description of an observable event or situation, 
or even analysis of facts and concrete events.

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Because hypotheticals pose questions 
about what isn’t, what hasn’t happened,  

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or what isn’t likely to ever happen, they 
stretch the imagination in new ways and  

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sharpen creative thinking 
and practical intelligence.

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They allow a person to try on different 
perspectives as though they were lenses,  

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and suddenly see what was 
invisible to them before.

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For instance, you’ve likely never considered 
the implications of human flight because  

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it’s impossible, so there is a world of 
thoughts that have remained unexplored.

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How would traffic lights work, what kind 
of licensing process would be required,  

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would we still have cars and 
airplanes, and how would safety work?

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Now, how would those rules and laws apply to 
normal traffic situations in the present day?

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Think through the realities of how everything 
would fit together—it’s no small feat!

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Einstein in particular was known to explore 
hypothetical situations taken to the extreme.

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He called them Gedankenexperiments, which 
is German for “thought experiments."

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A thought experiment, in a more general context,  

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is essentially playing out a 
“what if” scenario to its end.

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It’s acting as if a theory 
or hypothesis were true,  

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diving deep into the ramifications and seeing what 
happens to your “what if” under intense scrutiny.

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A thought experiment allows you 
to analyze interesting premises  

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you could never manifest in reality and 
make new leaps of logic and discovery  

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because you can consider conditions that 
current knowledge doesn’t yet reach.

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Suppose the problem situation 
is needing to exit a room.

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The conventional ways to do so are to 
walk out the door or jump out the window.

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But what if the door is blocked by a raging  

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fire and the room is on the 
tenth floor of the building?

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These conditions have now rendered 
your conventional solutions fatal.

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You can only get out of the 
room either by finding a way  

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to kill that fire or by surviving 
a fall of several hundred feet.

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Something in this scenario needs 
to drastically change its usage  

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or definition, or it will break entirely.

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This is the essence of the thought experiment.

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Suppose this happens.

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What happens next?

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And then?

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And then?

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Thought experiments were one 
of Einstein’s superpowers.

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He could imagine a scenario, play it out 
mentally with shocking accuracy and detail,  

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and then extract the subtle 
conclusions that lay within.

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One of Einstein’s most famous Gedankenexperiments 
begins with a simple premise: what would happen  

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if you chased and then eventually caught up 
to and rode a beam of light through space?

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In theory, once you caught 
up to the beam of light,  

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it would appear to be frozen next to you 
because you are moving at the same speed.

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Just like if you are walking at the same pace as a 
car driving next to you, there is no acceleration  

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(the relative velocities are the same), so 
the car would seem to be stuck to your side.

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The only problem was that this was an impossible 
proposition at the turn of the century.

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If you catch up to the light and the 
light appears to be frozen beside you,  

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then it is inherently impossible that it is 
light, because of the difference in speeds.

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It ceases to be light at that moment.

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This means one of the rules of physics was 
broken or disproved with this elementary thought.

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Therefore, one of the assumptions that 
underlay physics at the time had to change,  

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and Einstein realized that the belief 
in time as a constant had to shift.

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This discovery directly laid the 
path for the theory of relativity.

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The closer you get to the speed of light,  

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the more time becomes different for 
you—relative to an outside observer.

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This thought experiment allowed 
Einstein to challenge what were  

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thought to be set-in-stone rules set forth by 
Isaac Newton’s three laws of energy and matter.

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This thought experiment was instrumental 
in realizing that people should question  

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old models and fundamental “rules” instead 
of trying to conform their theories to them.

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The strength of non-conventionality

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Let’s return now to the genius traits 
we mentioned in the previous chapter,  

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and see how Einstein measures against them.

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As we saw above, many of Einstein’s great 
Eureka moments came from his being a polymath,  

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or “cross-pollinating” ideas from one area 
to another (in this case music and physics).

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It’s probably quite obvious that another of 
Einstein’s strengths was intellectual curiosity,  

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lust for learning and insatiable 
desire to keep asking questions.

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We can see so much of the lighthearted, 
uninhibited child aspect of genius in  

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Einstein, who literally labeled 
a technique he used as “play.”

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Einstein never set out to win any prizes, or earn 
accolades as the best physicist of his generation.

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That was never his goal.

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Rather, he simply wanted to understand.

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His passion for seeing into the 
deeper nature of things led him  

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to areas of knowledge that 
were previously uncharted.

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We can see how this attitude put him 
at odds with his more conventional,  

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pedagogical early school life, and we can imagine 
that the young Einstein would not have been much  

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inspired by boring lessons about things that 
were already well known and established.

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We cannot imagine Einstein’s great 
achievements happening without his  

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enormous sense of curiosity spurring him on.

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He was not motivated by pride or fame, either, 
since he was known to regularly alienate and  

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offend other scientists and peers and was 
reportedly quite difficult to work with.

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Einstein was nothing if not a curious soul,  

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and it’s this attitude of inquiry that 
seems to have informed his entire life.

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We can see in Einstein’s case that curiosity 
so often comes with non-conventionality.

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He was a “draft dodger” and concocted a medical 
excuse so as not to complete military service,  

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and was not averse to skipping classes or 
generally failing to follow school rules.

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He seemed to have little regard 
for pre-established hierarchies and  

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preferred to trust his own estimations 
of what was important and worth doing.

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And, this trait, too, is at 
the center of his success.

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Can you imagine any scientist 
being credited with completely  

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paradigm-shifting work in the field 
without breaking the rules of the day?

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We know and love Einstein 
today as a fiercely smart,  

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independent thinker who greatly 
advanced the human scientific endeavor.

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But we need to remember that Einstein was just 
a man, who at one time saw his own vision only  

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dimly, and worked on his pursuits with 
no guarantee of where they would lead.

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The one thing that can motivate 
a person through such a path?

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Endless curiosity.

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We can imagine that Einstein would 
have been fulfilled even if he had  

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never won any awards and died completely unknown.

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Takeaways

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•Einstein’s genius traits included curiosity,  

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having broad areas of interest (i.e. being a 
polymath), and a refusal to bow to convention.

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•Einstein is known today as one of the 20th 
century’s most influential scientific thinkers,  

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and was considered by many to be a 
genius in both mathematics and physics.

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He won the Nobel Prize for his work on the 
photoelectric effect, but he is best known  

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today for his groundbreaking theory on 
relativity and his famous E=mc2 equation.

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•Einstein coined his own term for the 
kind of playful, freeform connections  

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he’d make between different topics 
and ideas: combinatorial play.

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By putting two unrelated ideas together to create 
something new, Einstein often solved problems,  

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came up with creative new ideas or 
opened new avenues of thoughts to pursue.

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•The game of “what if?” is another way to flex the  

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curiosity muscle and bring freshness 
and novelty to conventional thinking.

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By running hypothetical situations 
and thought experiments in his mind,  

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Einstein satisfied his thirst 
for learning and understanding,  

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and accessed new insights that were 
beyond conventions at the time.

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•Einstein was a polymath and had a broad range 
of interests, rather than one narrow focus.

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He played violin and piano, and had 
some of his best new ideas during play.

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This kind of broadmindedness and diversity of  

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interest promotes intellectual agility 
and wide-ranging, flexible perspectives.

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•Einstein was also non-conventional 
and worked independently,  

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regardless of the established rules 
that surrounded him in early life.

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This allowed him to engage in truly independent  

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ideas and contribute something 
entirely different to the field.

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•We can see in Einstein’s case that 
non-linearity of thought, insatiable  

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curiosity and a wide range of interests were 
not just helpful to his success, but essential.

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We can follow suit by freely engaging 
in interdisciplinary play and “what  

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if?” games in the areas that 
grab our intense interest.

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•Though conventions may occasionally be useful,  

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the best territory to explore 
is that which is uncharted!

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•To be more like Einstein, we can think of 
ways to break down artificial limits and  

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categories in our own thinking, and blend 
concepts and ideas together freely—can  

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you think of a way to combine two of your 
interests to produce a third, completely new idea?

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if you enjoyed this episode of the 
science of self please take a moment  

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in your provider to rate or leave 
a review for the episode or for the  

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podcast it's very much appreciated thank 
you have a great weekend see you next week