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!