"Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula"
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Barthes points to how modern culture turns a complex, historical practice into a soothing emblem. Einstein is not only a physicist but a celebrity-sign, and his signature formula, E=mc^2, becomes an icon promising that the world can be grasped at a glance. The adjective "blissfully" signals the relief that comes when uncertainty and laborious inquiry are replaced by a talismanic figure. Knowledge no longer appears as debate, experiment, error, and collective labor; it appears as a single, elegant string of symbols on a blackboard, guaranteed by the aura of a solitary genius with wild hair.
This is the operation of myth Barthes describes in Mythologies: history is transformed into nature. The historical conditions of discovery, the mathematics, the instruments, the institutions, the wartime funding, even the moral ambiguity of nuclear power, are effaced. What remains is a naturalized image of intelligence itself, crystallized into a formula. The signifier, the tiny equation, stops pointing to its specific scientific content and begins to signify capital-K Knowledge. It functions like a brand logo for truth.
The reassurance matters. Postwar audiences, confronted with new physics that overturns common sense, and with the terror of atomic weapons, are offered a digestible picture. The formula becomes an amulet promising mastery: science knows, therefore we are safe. That comfort is ideological. It depoliticizes science by presenting it as timeless and absolute, and it centers the myth of the lone genius, hiding the networks and power that shape research.
Barthes is not attacking Einstein so much as the cultural craving that produces such myths. Reducing knowledge to a formula flatters the desire for clarity while shielding us from the difficulty and contingency of understanding. The image circulates, endlessly reproduced in textbooks, films, and ads, and the world can bask, blissfully, in the fantasy that what matters most can be compressed into a neat, shining sign.
This is the operation of myth Barthes describes in Mythologies: history is transformed into nature. The historical conditions of discovery, the mathematics, the instruments, the institutions, the wartime funding, even the moral ambiguity of nuclear power, are effaced. What remains is a naturalized image of intelligence itself, crystallized into a formula. The signifier, the tiny equation, stops pointing to its specific scientific content and begins to signify capital-K Knowledge. It functions like a brand logo for truth.
The reassurance matters. Postwar audiences, confronted with new physics that overturns common sense, and with the terror of atomic weapons, are offered a digestible picture. The formula becomes an amulet promising mastery: science knows, therefore we are safe. That comfort is ideological. It depoliticizes science by presenting it as timeless and absolute, and it centers the myth of the lone genius, hiding the networks and power that shape research.
Barthes is not attacking Einstein so much as the cultural craving that produces such myths. Reducing knowledge to a formula flatters the desire for clarity while shielding us from the difficulty and contingency of understanding. The image circulates, endlessly reproduced in textbooks, films, and ads, and the world can bask, blissfully, in the fantasy that what matters most can be compressed into a neat, shining sign.
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| Topic | Knowledge |
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