🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeff...Relf wrote:
> Hi All,  Einstein believed _True_ theorists are Sober_Minded metaphysicists,
> saying:
>
>   Every _True_ theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist,
>   no matter how pure a positivist he may fancy himself.
>   [ ... He believes in ]
>   a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity.

<snip>

I do not think there is any sense in asking for an answer to certain
sorts of questions.'What is *will*?, for example. Lottery outcomes may
or may not be strictly determined, though they are certainly
constrained! Evolution, for example, is about plausible hypotheses as
to why this or that is so, less often about  implausible hypotheses, a
la Koestler, for example ( and not probablistic hypotheses at all,
because we are not talking about an experimental science, only about a
tautological one, incapable of falsification). However, there is no way
of settling the question as to whether 'evolution is true'. If A is to
B as C is to 'X', then ... . There is a missing term! Above a certain
level of intelligence, lies, as AE well knew, a sense of mystery,
though I believe it is in the scope of everyone to share in this sense
of mystery.

There was a time when neither atheists nor Christians nor evolutionists
existed at all.The mystery was there, though. Kant got my attention by
saying that 'the religious impulse, even were it to prove false, calls
for explanation'. Cantor and Goedel made me think! I think Popper tied
himself in knots trying to solve 'the problem of induction', though he
gave us some wonderful insights and tools in, for example, 'The open
Society and its Enemies'. Russell gave up on all this stuff, ever after
writing witty and instructive books on a wide variety of social issues.

I am not a Christian. I see atheism as reactive, and with Bertrand
Russell, institutional religion as essentially unnecessary, and,
indeed, a sort of exploitation of a deep human impulse. So long as you
don't wish to over extend yourself and be epistemologically silly,
there is such a thing as 'will'. Russell, for example, said, 'Whilst
membership of a State may be in accordance with the will of an
individual, it is by no means clear that it is due to his will.'

'foolsrushin'.

Next, and most important of all,
To metaphysics we must fall,
And see, with deep discernment plain,
What things won't fit the human brain.
But fit or not, you use a sounding phrase instead.
                                 - Goethe
<snip>
> He also believed randomness was _Always_
> a failure to measure some intrinsic causality.  For example, he once said:
>
>   The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.
>   The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past.
>   __ See Albert Einstein's The_World_As_I_See_It
>   StephenJayGould.ORG/ctrl/einstein_religion.html
>
> Consequently, he felt physical processes determined absolutely everything,
> including man's desires.  See  WikiPedia.ORG/wiki/Physicalism
> For example, he once said:
>
>   I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words:
>   " Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills "
>   accompany me in all situations throughout my life
>   and reconcile me with the actions of others
>   even if they are rather painful to me.
>
>   This awareness of the lack of freedom of will
>   preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men
>   as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper."
>   __ From a speech by Albert Einstein to the German League of Human Rights,
>   Berlin, in the autumn of 1932, See:  EinsteinAndReligion.COM/credo.html
>
> Driven by such a faith,
> Eistein became a master at finding once hidden causalities.
>
> For example, his General Relativity explained exactly how
> a clock with  10 ^ -16  second accuracy ticks faster
> with a minute increase in altitude... long before it was empirically proven.
>
> See: Time Too Good to Be True, PhysicsToday.ORG/vol-59/iss-3/p10.html

--
'foolsrushin'.