Rhetorical analysis of the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Media Artifact Proposal

Introduction to the Text or Archive

The artifact proposed for this project consists of the written works of the infamous 20th century physicist and philosopher Albert Einstein. The artifact could consist of a set of four books, three of which consist of the lifetime writings of Einstein translated and consolidated into books published posthumously and one book written by another scholar for which Einstein provided the Foreword. In the alternative (to including all four books), the proposed artifact is the extracted collection (see Appendix) of essays authored by Einstein on the matters of God, theistic religion, and the appropriate definition of "spirituality" and "religiosity" in human life as articulated by Einstein. Specifically, the writings proposed for this artifact are found in the following three books of Einstein's writings: Ideas and Opinions (Crown, 1954), Out of My Later Years (Citadel, 1956), the World as I See it (Citadel, 1979), and the book Man and His Gods by Homer W. Smith (Little Brown & Co., 1952).

Statement of Relevance, Significance, and Uniqueness

Albert Einstein is the most renowned scientist of modern times. His seminal works provided the first explanation of the fundamental structure of the universe in terms of understanding gravity and the relationship between energy and mass. Einstein's infamous equation E = mc2 and the concepts embodied in it paved the way for the conceptual understanding of atomic energy and led directly to the development of nuclear weapons and the peaceful civilian use of nuclear energy. On one hand, Einstein's scientific accomplishments are so monumental that even more than a half century after his death, he is widely recognizable and his name used colloquially as a synonym for genius.

On the other hand, it is much less well-known that Einstein was also a prolific philosopher and writer who authored so many essays on non-scientific topics that they have filled multiple volumes of works published after his death. Some of the topics addressed by Einstein in his writings include his views on government, education, human morality and social ethics. One of the most interesting areas addressed by Einstein is his personal beliefs about the existence of God and the merits of theistic religion in human society. Besides the fact that his intellect alone makes his philosophical beliefs (about almost anything of consequence) relevant, the fact that Einstein's scientific accomplishments imply certain conclusions in connection with the notion of a timeless God makes his writings especially relevant. In fact, any Internet search of the terms "Einstein" and "God" will reveal that much has been made by proponents of theistic religion of a statement of Einstein that "God doesn't play dice with the universe." Other Internet references suggest that Einstein once suggested that only a divine actor could ever have designed a structure as complex as the human eye.