"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have driven them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who offer the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of The Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still remain some men of both present and past times, left inside. Our [Max] Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him....
"What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it....
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it....
"What place does the theoretical physicist's picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standard of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only mathematical language can give. In regard to his subject matter, on the other hand, the physicist has to limit himself very severely; he must content himself with describing the most simple events which can be brought within the domain of our experience; all events of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human intellect to reconstruct with the subtle accuracy and logical perfection which the theoretical physicist demands...
"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them... Nobody who has really gone deeply into this matter will deny that in practice the world of phenomena uniquely determines the theoretical system, in spite of the fact there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; this is what Leibnitz described so happily as a 'pre-established harmony.'...
"The longing to behold this 'pre-established harmony' is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude to his extraordinary will-power and discipline--wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind that enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate attention or program but straight from the heart. There he sits, our beloved Planck, and smiles inside himself at my childish playing-about with the lantern of Diogenes..."
P.224-226, "Contributions to Science," IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein (1954, 1982)
Friday, October 10, 2014
EINSTEIN'S TEMPLE OF SCIENCE
"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have driven them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who offer the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of The Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still remain some men of both present and past times, left inside. Our [Max] Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him....
"What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it....
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it....
"What place does the theoretical physicist's picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standard of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only mathematical language can give. In regard to his subject matter, on the other hand, the physicist has to limit himself very severely; he must content himself with describing the most simple events which can be brought within the domain of our experience; all events of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human intellect to reconstruct with the subtle accuracy and logical perfection which the theoretical physicist demands...
"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them... Nobody who has really gone deeply into this matter will deny that in practice the world of phenomena uniquely determines the theoretical system, in spite of the fact there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; this is what Leibnitz described so happily as a 'pre-established harmony.'...
"The longing to behold this 'pre-established harmony' is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude to his extraordinary will-power and discipline--wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind that enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate attention or program but straight from the heart. There he sits, our beloved Planck, and smiles inside himself at my childish playing-about with the lantern of Diogenes..."
P.224-226, "Contributions to Science," IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein (1954, 1982)