Posted on 09/28/2009 9:40:25 AM PDT by betty boop
Mathematics is, after all, unreasonably effective. (Wigner, Vafa, et al)
Barrow, Pi in the Sky, pg. 296-297
Albert Einstein, “My Credo,” presented to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, in Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, ed., London: Simon & Schuster, 1993, page 262.
Thanks for the ping! bflr
Placemark...
No problem, you did all the work.
If you believe in a God, if you know what it is..
You have probably invented it yourself..
How can "the portrait" fully know the artist..
snip: We also know that Einstein was a “classical” causal determinist and scientific realist. He was prepared to defend Newton’s strict causality to the dying breath.
As the emminent historian of science Stanley Jaki wryly noted, though Newton was a Christian, he was not Christian enough to avoid falling into a worshipful view of the laws he had discovered. Hence Newton unwittingly set the stage for mechanism, a sort of deterministic ‘quiet pantheism.’
Determinism is modernity’s word for the ‘Fates.” In the time of Aristotle, men believed that long before one’s birth, the Fates had already ‘determined’ whether one would be freeman or slave, king or baseborn. In short, the lives, actions-—and even the thoughts-—of all men were fully caused and determined by the gods, fates, planets.
Essentially, man was born ‘good’ but ‘caused’ by unseen forces of nature to do ‘bad things.’ In this view, free will is absent and man’s conscience a sadistic trick played by the gods.
In ‘Confessions,’ St. Augustine observes that when men were ‘caused’ to sin they sought absolution from the astrologers—the scientists of their day—who would tell them, “it was Venus here, or Saturn there.” Evil-doing was thus transferred onto the planets, gods, etc.
In this view of things, the vast majority of people were fated to be subhumans while a small number of ‘lucky’ ones were fated to be kings, philosophers, and so on.
Determinism is always elitist. It panders to pride. No less does Einstein’s determinism pander to his pride. How ‘lucky’ for Einstein to be ‘fated’ with freedom and brilliant thinking. Oh but how ‘unlucky’ for murderers, and the ‘not’ brilliant.
An accusation of malice is not being leveled against Einstein. Rather it is most likely that Einstein is guilty of not thinking through to the logical consequences of the ideas he adhered to.
That's an understatement, dear spirited irish! LOLOL! I've been puzzling over that, too.
What's really puzzling is Einstein didn't always "adhere" to his ideas. The way he thought on the question of determinism vs. free will, and the way he actually "acted it out" in his life, were mutually exclusive. Intellectually, he was a determinist. But existentially, he was a free man. Perhaps he had a huge blind spot regarding this seemingly irreconcilable situation; or maybe felt he couldn't "see far enough" to know how to resolve it. So he just lived with the paradox, evidently entirely untroubled by it.
In short, he insisted on strict, deterministic causation in his physics. But he did not apply this rule to himself.
You wrote: "Newton unwittingly set the stage for mechanism, a sort of deterministic ‘quiet pantheism.’
That's a fascinating association, spirited irish! I hadn't thought of mechanism in those terms before. A mechanistic, deterministic reduction of man pretty much gets you to the same place as the pantheist doctrine of the illusion of personality. No one can help what they do, so somebody or something else must be to blame when things go awry.
I don't agree with Professor Jaki's characterization of Newton as a Christian, however. But if he was one, then definitely he was a heretic — for he utterly rejected the Holy Trinity, it is said on Occam's Razor grounds: He thought the Trinity represented an "unnecessary multiplication of causes."
In sum, Newton was a rock-ribbed Monotheist. He believed in God Pantocrator, the absolute Ruler of the Universe, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He also called God "the Lord of Life, with His creatures." This latter point shows that Newton was not a Deist, as some have claimed. For Newton evidently believed that the operation of the mechanical laws over time would inevitably generate so much disorder in the natural system, that God would have to step in from time to time to set things right again.
Thank you oh, so very much, spirited irish, for your deeply perceptive and thought-provoking essay/post!
Marvelously well put, dearest sister in Christ! An axiom indeed. How fitting.
Thank you ever so much for this fascinating insight!
snip: What’s really puzzling is Einstein didn’t always “adhere” to his ideas. The way he thought on the question of determinism vs. free will, and the way he actually “acted it out” in his life, were mutually exclusive.
In “Demonic Nothingness, Liberalism’s Eternal ‘Equality’ in Hell,” the internal contradiction you have pointed to is addressed under the subheading: What is Wrong with Liberals?
Einstein held two antithetical truth-claims in his mind simultaneouly. One was really true while the other was really false. As pride is offended by true truth, it selectively rejects it and postulates the false truth-claim as truth. That is what Einstein did. In fact, all positivist materialists and idealist pantheists find themselves in this untenable position.
Such is the case with Steven Pinker. As a scientist he teaches, “The mechanistic stance allows us to understand what makes us tick and how we fit into the physical universe.” This is his false truth-claim proclaimed publicly.
Privately however, he confesses true truth: “When those discussions wind down for the day, we go back to talking about each other as free and dignified human beings.”
(quotes on p. 108, Total Truth, Nancy Pearcy)
I'm not convinced that Einstein did this. For one thing, it appears from all accounts that he was a man of deep personal humility — which accords with his constant reference to the awesome, not-humanly-fathomable mystery that lies at the root of the Universe. It doesn't square that he, by all reports a scrupulously honest man, would be inclined to make judgments on the basis of personal pride.
Whatever the case, I don't think Einstein was either a positivist materialist, or an idealist pantheist. I have no handy label for him.
I don't have a label for Einstein either.
And I strongly agree that his humility comes through his many quotes - and when he acted pridefully concerning the cosmological constant, he confessed it and repented openly. If he were not humble at the root, he couldn't have.
I do find it particularly illuminating that the two most influential physicists of all time - Newton and Einstein - both clearly recognized that God IS even though their profession of Who He IS was woefully uninformed.
One of the notable things about humans is our ability to hold contradictory ideas simultaneously. We resolve the contradiction over time, or blend the two over time into some third answer. Sometimes we never resolve the contradiction, but our behavior provides a practical means of blending the two that intellectually we were never able to resolve.
We are designed in such a way that we can bridge apparent flaws in the design, tears in the fabric, and we can continue operating with incomplete data.
Indeed. It seems to be a fundamental fact of human existence that we must always act on the basis of "incomplete data."
Indeed, the very idea of "quantum indeterminacy" seems to bear out this finding.
People who think there's anything "certain" about this world are just kidding themselves.
Still, we have to get along in it, to make decisions daily.
And I gather that is why knowledge without wisdom is so lame....
Indeed. And AMEN! dearest sister in Christ!
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