Max Weinstein: Physics, Philosophy, Pandeism

This is a brief introduction to the life and ideas of the Lithuanian-German physicist, philosopher and religious thinker Max B. Weinstein, who is today best known for his thoughts concerning so-called pandeism. An accomplished theoretical physicist and characteristic figure in the fin-de-siecle transition of the physical world view, Weinstein contributed to a wide range of physics. He was an early if not unsympathetic critic of Einstein's theory of relativity and Minkowski's formulation of it. In this respect he was unoriginal, but in the broader context of science and humanist culture he was an original thinker. He argued in favour of what he called pandeism, a religious-philosophical view according to which the physical world and the cosmic deity are one and the same.