Hold Strong to Your Beliefs

This week in AS Class, we read part of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance." While reading, there was a particular passage that made a fantastic connection to a show I had seen recently. A few weeks ago, I watched a show on NOVA entitled "Einstein's Big Idea." This show described how Einstein's spectacular theory of E=mc^2 came to be. The duration of the show did not focus on the German physicist's discovery of this equation, but more so on the people before Einstein that helped to shape it.

In his book, Emerson wrote, "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood" (25). He is discussing how it is important for people to hold strong to their beliefs, for the world may not understand their thoughts at first, but may eventually. This passage directly relates to the show I watched, as those who contributed to Einstein's famous equation were all misunderstood at first.

I will not go into exact details of the scientific discoveries that these contributors made, but I will explain the basics of their findings. First, an ordinary blacksmith named Michael Faraday, after years of scientific studying and experimenting discovered electromagnetic rotation. A chemist by the name of Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser made important findings regarding the conservation of mass. Emilie Du Chatelet, a french scientist, figured out the relationship between mass and speed.

The point is, is that all of these people were misunderstood by the world when they first announced their discoveries. Faraday was a poor blacksmith, Lavoisier stated a crazy theory, and Chatelet was a female; trusting these people's ideas was not easy for others at first. These individuals, however, never gave up and continued to test their theories. It took months or even years for the scientific world to comprehend these new discoveries, but once it did, a gateway of advancement opened in the scientific world.

Eventually, because these people held strong to their beliefs, the misunderstanding world came to accept and praise the three scientists for their work. Einstein was able to later combine these three theories and form E=mc^2 as a result, one of the most significant scientific formulas ever.

Emerson is truthful when he says that it is important that we have faith in ourselves and our thoughts, and do not cease when challenged by a misunderstanding world; for our individual and unique ideas, like the three scientists' described previously, can one day open the gateway to great, unheard of discoveries.

Link to "Einstein's Big Idea" story: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/ancestors.html