He preferred to accept the content of a scientific theory realistically, as a contingently ‘true’ representation of an objective physical reality. And, although he wanted no part of religion, the belief in God that he had carried with him from his brief flirtation with Judaism became the foundation on which he constructed his philosophy.
Einstein’s was a God of philosophy, not religion. When asked many years later whether he believed in God, he replied: ‘I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.’
Einstein’s God is infinitely superior but impersonal and intangible, subtle but not malicious. He is also firmly determinist. As far as Einstein was concerned, God’s ‘lawful harmony’ is established throughout the cosmos by strict adherence to the physical principles of cause and effect. Thus, there is no room in Einstein’s philosophy for free will.
In February 1954, just 14 months before he died, he wrote in a letter to the American physicist David Bohm: ‘If God created the world, his primary concern was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us.’
https://aeon.co/ideas/what-einstein-meant-by-god-does-not-play-dice
Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Upgrades
Today, a few more thoughts on AI, per some recent upgrades to ChatGPT's image generator. I generally stand by my previous assertions , b...

-
Where Americans think Ukraine is These are the guesses of 2066 Americans as to where Ukraine is. Only 1 in 6 were correct. Presumably the...
-
Hmmm. [The comments below include a prime example of someone claiming they're interested in truth but just want higher standard, where...
-
"The price quoted by Tesla does not include installation of the unit. To this needs to be added the cost of installing solar panels to ...
I thought it was because he wanted a deterministic clock work universe
ReplyDeletePossibly. The last quote is somewhat at odds with his claim that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that is is comprehensible, though.
ReplyDelete