Getting Inside Einstein's Head

su-geek writes "'The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible,' Albert Einstein once remarked. Today many scientific documents and personal papers detailing the thoughts and emotions of our favorite physicist will be available at 3PM EST you can access the Einstein Archives Online. Also, Wired is running an article"

Comments

Inevitable Theist Onslaught

[limekiller4]

The first creationist who takes this opportunity to reply and infer that Einstein's "god does not play dice" comment is tacit proof of god is going to get beat with a dusty 1200 baud modem.

Re:Inevitable Theist Onslaught

[Anonymous Coward]

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -- Albert Einstein, 24 March 1954

You know, sometimes you people are your own worst enemies.

special relativity...wow

[selderrr]

You gotta give it to the man for taking up challenges : as if this relativity stuff isn't complicated enough, he even wrote it in german !

On Physics

[Mtn_Dewd]

As I continue to inflict masochistic physics damage against myself in my conquest of knowledge, I can't help but pull myself away from my studies and wonder: If this is this difficult for me to even comprehend/grasp (and I'm certain that I'm probably only learning it at a base level), how the hell does one create and come up with this stuff? I'm truly amazed by men like Einstein, and I have such a humbled respect for physicists, who though I can't understand why they do it to themselves, live and think in a different plane than so many people even realize exists.

Re:On Physics

[johnjay]

If you like that type of stuff you might consider reading David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (Book 1 is all I've read). Hume methodically, scientifically, and ruthlessly tears down the relation between cause and effect that we human beings are almost hard-wired to believe in. It's a great read for scientists, since they are constantly trying to infer causes from effects.

Also, after nearly creating a cold, disjointed world of skepticism, he ends by saying he's going to pop of to the pub, have a smoke and play some backgammon to reassure himself of the importance of real life. It's a nice human touch after such rigorous brilliance.

And, if you want to feel humble, he wrote this revolutionary book in his early 20s. He made much better use of his 20s than I've made of mine.

Re:I disagree.

[Gortbusters.org]

Our condition is our reality, and on the subjective level, the physicality of our world is taken for granted. Consciousness means experiencing duality. Everything we know must be processed one way or the other. The philosophers who focused on this duality set limits to what we can know, pointing out that we can in no way know "the world" as it actually is, that we can only know our perceptions of "the world". We take these perceptions to be the material world. The psyche mirrors an image, and the image can only be an abstraction being processed by the organism's nervous system. Without psyche, we do not experience matter. Consciousness may require we experience the duality of psyche and matter; but, theoretically uniting matter and psyche brings together the "physical" and "mental". This objective is consistent with Eastern Mysticism, which does not separate the observer from the observed, the subject from the object, etc.

(Source)

Re:Handwriting

[jdh-22]

Funny you mention that, but his handwriting does tell something about him, and you. My grandmother has been an handwriting anyalist for almost 40 years now, and I have been learning for a couple.

Einstien's handwriting is very interesting. Notice how he dots his i's and how small his writing is. This means that he has an exceptional eye for detail, and he has an unreal imgination. A quailty many scientists poses.

So your scribble can mean many different things. Might wanna check out The Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis which is a very good book to get started with.

The Einstein File

[zaneIO]

From 1933 until 1955, the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiled a 2,000-page file on Albert Einstein, hoping to "destroy" his immense stature by linking him to Soviet espionage activities. At one point, not long before the scientist's death, a attempt was made to have him deported. This campaign is responsible in large part for Einstein's exclusion from the Manhattan Project, and is docemented in the book Fred Jerome's The Einstein File. Einstein's .