That Einstein quotation...

[ollypenrice]

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

I kind of smell a rat with this one, I have to say. I don't think it is AE at his best. We make models of the universe with our minds and reject anythng that is not logical to those minds because if they are not logical we cannot proceed with the model making. Then we find the models we have made are logical, which is another way of saying comprehensible. Well that's not surprizing then, is it?

How, for instance, would we ever detect any parts of the universe that were not comprehensible? Maybe we already have, in a way, with quantum theory which AE didn't like. Quantum theory is not, in the normal sense, comprehensible even to the experts whose field it is. Outcomes can be predicted but no conceptual model of the quantum world has ever been created, so far as I know.

When Bohr said 'Stop telling God what to do,' was he, in a sense saying this? That the universe does not have to be comprehensible in the usual way (or maybe even in any way?)

Olly

[brianb]

Well there are a lot of Einsteinisms that appear to me to be something akin to soundbites, e.g. "God doesn't play dice with the universe". Probably a strange thing for an atheist to say anyway.

Respect Einstein for the major advances in physics for which he was responsible. That doesn't make him a great philosopher.

To me, the least comprehensible thing about the universe is that there exist beings who even wish to comprehend it.

[ollypenrice]

Indeed. I don't think the God in question is one likely to be recognized by many religions but it did draw from Bohr that sublime response quoted in my post. That is, for me, one of the most profound one-liners in the history of science.

Olly

[JamesF]

As far as I'm aware there's no genuine record of Einstein saying "God doesn't play dice with the universe". He said something with a roughly similar meaning, but in a much more long-winded way so it's quite possible the comprehensibility quote isn't actually one of his either.

For all his undoubted genius, Einstein did get some things wrong and stood against a number of scientific theories that we now accept as correct (plate tectonics may have been one, IIRC). I don't think we should unquestioningly believe that everything attributed to him was a) what he actually said, what he really meant, or even c) correct. Which is not to detract from his achievements. One of the things that differentiates the truly brilliant as far as I can see is not that they never get it wrong, but the use to which they put their errors.

James

[Astro_Baby]

Are you so sure Einstein was an atheist ? He certainly made a lot of qoutes using God in them and to be honest no one whose Jewish is ever really atheist anyway.

For instance "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

hmmm seems strange for an atheiest to feel he wants to know Gods thoughts wouldnt you say ?

How about "God is subtle but he is not malicious." or

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

and the topper

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

Now none of that has a particularly atheistic ring to it to me and it best sums up my own views in many ways.

I'd sort of stand Einseins qoute from Olly on its head though - the universe is not comprehenible to us and when you think about it theres no reason why it should be at this stage in our development (or at any stage come to that). I mean come on we haven't been around long enough to take a deep breath so why should we think it should be comprehensible.

To loosely paraphrase Douglas Adams we have only just realised digital watches are pretty neat so why assume we are going to get answers to more fundamental stuff - I am not sure we are even asking the right questions yet.

[Zakalwe]

How, for instance, would we ever detect any parts of the universe that were not comprehensible? Maybe we already have, in a way, with quantum theory which AE didn't like. Quantum theory is not, in the normal sense, comprehensible even to the experts whose field it is. Outcomes can be predicted but no conceptual model of the quantum world has ever been created, so far as I know.

Olly

Well, IIRC, the singularity at the centre of a black hole is currently fairly incomprehensible to our current understanding of maths.

I believe that it has also been proven (I cannot remember the proof, or even the prover), that everything problem in mathematics cannot be fully known or proved, so therefore it seems to me very possible that there will be lots of incomprehensible things out there.

Are you so sure Einstein was an atheist ? He certainly made a lot of qoutes using God in them and to be honest no one whose Jewish is ever really atheist anyway.

For instance "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

hmmm seems strange for an atheiest to feel he wants to know Gods thoughts wouldnt you say ?

How about "God is subtle but he is not malicious." or

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

and the topper

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

Now none of that has a particularly atheistic ring to it to me and it best sums up my own views in many ways.

I'd sort of stand Einseins qoute from Olly on its head though - the universe is not comprehenible to us and when you think about it theres no reason why it should be at this stage in our development (or at any stage come to that). I mean come on we haven't been around long enough to take a deep breath so why should we think it should be comprehensible.

To loosely paraphrase Douglas Adams we have only just realised digital watches are pretty neat so why assume we are going to get answers to more fundamental stuff - I am not sure we are even asking the right questions yet.

He was most certainly an unbeliever in any form of personal god. in a letter written not long before his death he wrote "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people."

[Demonperformer]

Olly

Are you trying to tell me something?

[ollypenrice]

Olly

Are you trying to tell me something?

Heh heh, no. But seeing your strap line so often set me thinking. Thanks for the stimulation!

I'd be interested in coming back to the idea of how we would detect the incomprehensible. That is not defining incomprehensible as being what we don't yet know but as what might exist out there but be inherently incomprehensible. Could we detect it?

It's a question, not a belief. I don't know the answer.

Olly

[brianb]

the singularity at the centre of a black hole is currently fairly incomprehensible to our current understanding of maths.

That's wrong. Advanced mathematics is quite capable of dealing with singularities. The issue is that the continuum of the universe is actually granular at very small scales, making the modelling of the space in the immediate vicinity of the singularity incredibly complex.

I believe that it has also been proven (I cannot remember the proof, or even the prover), that everything problem in mathematics cannot be fully known or proved

Godel's Theorem?

The interesting thing here is that the class of theorems that can't be proved (a) depends on the axioms of the particular mathematics that you're working with and ( must all be true, because a theorem which is incorrect must have at least one counterexample, which is in principle at any rate findable.

[Astro_Baby]

Godels Theorem of Oncompleteness is what your thinking of. There are two theorems. The first is that no system can explain everything and be consistent (and I sort of paraphrase) and the second states that no system is consistent with itself - sometimes broadly interpreted that no system understands itself.

It was quite a bombshell in its day because it basically implied that you acnt ever know everything - although to be fair to Godel he was talking about numbers.

Godels Theorem is the basis ofr Turings 'On Computable Numbers' where Turing first started off on the idea of a programmable computer.

(I only know this stuff because its history and I used to work in this kind of line - sort of - plus I sat throough a fair few lectures of this at one time trying to get my head round it - but gave up : )

Zak - faith sometimes lets us down and Einstein may well have been feeling a bit cheesed off with his creator - comes to everyone of faith at times you know. Especially near death - we all have doubts and sometimes it spills over into bitterness. None the less for an atheist he spouted a lot about God - come to think of it so does Dorkins - I had to laugh when Stephen Hawking asked him 'why are you so obsessed with God ?'

[JamesF]

I'd be interested in coming back to the idea of how we would detect the incomprehensible. That is not defining incomprehensible as being what we don't yet know but as what might exist out there but be inherently incomprehensible. Could we detect it?

Is it possible, without comprehending something, to prove that it cannot be comprehended?

In scientific terms, "incomprehensible" means "doesn't fit with our model of the universe", which in turn means "our model of the universe is broken". So to demonstrate that there are incomprehensible things in the universe you'd have to then demonstrate that it isn't possible to create model that is consistent with the observed facts. It may be we're getting back to Godel there.

Of course it is possible to conceive of something that is incomprehensible and doesn't fit our scientific model of the universe. An easy example is "God". But for "God" to break the models, you'd first have to demonstrate his/her/its existence scientifically, and that's going to be a tricky one too

James

[Demonperformer]

OK, trying to steer the discussion away from God, and the inevitability of a potentially interesting thread being closed by the mods ...

I keep coming back to number theory and i (the square root of minus 1). It is essential to make number theory work, but it can only be explained in terms of itself. And I wonder if something like this is truly comprehensible?

[brianb]

I keep coming back to number theory and i (the square root of minus 1). It is essential to make number theory work

Well that's not strictly true. You need complex numbers to be a closed system when the square root operator is included. The stuff mathematicians call "number theory" mostly works pretty well without complex numbers.

[JamesF]

Is defining it as the square root of -1 insufficient to comprehend it?

Maths and number theory have plenty of "comprehension barriers". Probably the first is when you move from "counting numbers" to integers, but then you get tangled up in different "sizes" of infinity, the bizarre stuff that happens in calculus and so on. If you accept that number theory only has a passing aquaintance with what we perceive as reality and is really more about manipulation of symbols according to a given set of rules then I can't see that "i" is any more or less comprehensible than "e", "pi" or even "2". Certainly part of the point of maths and number theory is that they contribute in explaining and making predictions about the real world, but I don't personally feel uncomfortable with having to venture into using symbols that don't have a "real world equivalent" to achieve that.

James

[Demonperformer]

I would argue that there is a difference between our understanding of (for example) "pi" (which can be defined as the factor relating the diameter of a circle to its circumference) and "i" which cannot be defined as anything other than itself.

[UTMonkey]

.....have the skies cleared yet ?

[brianb]

"i" which cannot be defined as anything other than itself.

Wrong. There are lots of independent ways of defining i & anyway it can equally well be defined as minus itself since i*i=-1 and (-1*x) * (-1*y) = (+1*x) * (+1*y)

Another way of defining i: well, e^(i.pi) = -1 so i = log(-1)/pi.

[ollypenrice]

duplicate. Sorry.

[ollypenrice]

.....have the skies cleared yet ?

...it's not compulsory.

[Zakalwe]

@brianbb and Astro-Baby. yes, it was Godel's Theorem....I bow to your superior knowledge (and am glad that I hadn't dreamt it up!)

As to the point about AE's belief in god, I think that it is fairly well recorded that he wasn't an atheist, but he certainly had no belief in a personal god (sources: here and here.

To get back to the OP's original point, I guess that there are lots on incomprehensibles out there. They would be incomprehensible only to a species not yet advanced enough (Arthur C. Clarkes third law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" comes to mind).

Does the universe have to be comprehensible? I suppose if you take the anthropomorphism point of view, then the answer is yes? I am a little more nihilistic and think that the universe doesn't care one iota if we find it understandable or not....it is what it is. Maybe we need a Philosophy sub-thread in here??

.....have the skies cleared yet ?

Not flippin' likely!!! I think that I might be in line for the "most perfectly balanced setup on an EQ mount" award , I have played with it so much instead of pointing it at the skyII

[AlexB]

.....have the skies cleared yet ?

This is where this forum is missing a +rep / Like feature!! haha.

On topic:

Maybe, in a little bit of a dumbing down on this thread, Einstein was merely referring to the amazing ability of our primitive minds to year upon year comprehend this extremely complex, mystifying Universe that at the end of the day is incomprehensible as to why it exists at all.

I just wish I knew more about this stuff

[acey]

I'm always suspicious of any quote (especially from Einstein) unless there's a definite source. So I took the trouble to find the source of this one: it is an essay called Physics and Reality (1936), translated by Jean Piccard. Here is what Einstein (via his translator) actually said:

One may say " the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." It is one of the great realisations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility. In speaking here concerning "comprehensibility," the expression is used in its most modest sense. It implies: the production of some sort of order among sense impressions, this order being produced by the creation of general concepts, relations between these concepts, and by relations between the concepts and sense experience, these relations being determined in any possible manner. It is in this sense that the world of our sense experiences is comprehensible. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

(Link to article: Einstein Profile)

The condensing of Einstein's remarks into the well-known quote seems to have been done by his 1954 biographer Antonina Vallentin.

Einstein: “on Comprehending the Incomprehensible” Blog of the Dead Dog Barking

The remark, "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility" is also attributed to Kant, perhaps because of Einstein's essay which appears to quote it.

[ollypenrice]

Good link, thanks. What strikes me as particularly interesting here is the phrase, '...the production of some sort of order among sense impressions' rather than, say, the 'dscovery' thereof. How likely is it that we would produce some sort of nonsense out of these sense impressions?

I'm reminded of a gag in The Avengers, years ago: a sketch writer is tapping away at his Olivetti writing jokes. He begins to chuckle, his laughter increases as he reads what he has read, then his face clouds over and he says, rather blankly, 'I don't get it.'

Should we be surprised that we understand our own explanations? That's really my question.

Olly

[NickK]

With only 100,000,000,000 neurons, the human mind simply cannot understand the universe in it's entirety, simultaneously. Computers have no hope either..

[brianb]

the human mind simply cannot understand the universe in it's entirety, simultaneously.

No, but if you understand one star, you understand most of the rest of them ... you don't actually need to be able to compute the evolution of the wave equation of every particle in the universe to "understand" it, the universe does a pretty good job of revealing itself through practical example through the laws of physics ... which might be comprehensible to a being which forms a subset of the universe ... and, in the opinion of a number of scientists (probably the vast majority), "might" should read "very probably could be" ... we're working on it but there's still a long way to go.