@Chrisleon27 Yes he said it in an interview in "The twelve powers of man" page 52 - 53
"Every man knows that in his work he does best and accomplishes most when he has attained a proficiency that enables him to work intuitively. That is, there are things which we come to know so well that we do not know how we know them. So it seems to me in matters of principle. Perhaps we live best and do things best when we are not too conscious of how and why we do them." -- Einstein
As many of you know I have a love for all the logical razors that exist (did a post a while back). Einstein's razor is one of my favorites. It is usually paraphrased as:
"everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler"
The original quote is a bit more complex as:
"It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience"
As a free speech instance this is all to relevant. Science can not exist without it.
"A dictatorship means muzzles all round and consequently stultification. Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech." - Einstein
"I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I do not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations." -- Einstein
"I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player." -- Einstein
"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious." -- Einstein
Now thats a religion I can support.
Einsteins true genius was in seeing past the accepted truths to a more fundamental nature of the universe than our preconceived notions would allow:
"Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. Thus they might come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason." -- Einstein
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Original:
Begriffe, welche sich bei der Ordnung der Dinge als nützlich erwiesen haben, erlangen über uns leicht eine solche Autorität, dass wir ihres irdischen Ursprungs vergessen und sie als unabänderliche Gegebenheiten hinnehmen. Der Weg des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts wird durch solche Irrtümer oft für längere Zeit ungangbar gemacht. -- Einstein
@freemo From *Letters on Infidelity*, 1786:
> Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.
Contempt prior to examination....
"The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination."
Pretty much sums up every conspiracy theorist I ever met, particularly the COVID conspiracy theorists.
Still true. Sadly it seems 6 year olds are much smarter than most adults, they actually try to understand things they dont already accept as true.
BTW the actual quote is "all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' "
@sergeantcat had to redraft the post, sorry this left your comment dangling. Feel free to recomment if you wish.
@sergeantcat agreed. It amazes me that adults have become dumber than 6 year olds.
Jeffrey Phillips Freeman
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