From: Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 13:40:48 MDT
Simon Gordon <sim_dizzy@yahoo.com> writes:
> > > Einstein and Goedel would agree with me.
> >
> > I would say that they would both most certainly
> > disagree with you.
>
> Did you know that both Einstein and Goedel were good
> friends at one point and they were known to share a
> philosophy which included simple mysticism? Goedel
> himself claimed to have mystical insights into such
> things as absolute negation. "mystical insights" -
> otherwise known as intuition.
Einstein and Goedel were both at IAS in Princeton. By that time, of
course, Goedel was nearly completely insane -- I believe he starved
himself to death fearing food contamination -- and I'm unaware of
their having been good friends though I'm sure it is possible at some
point. Neither of them, however, was "mystical" in a conventional
sense -- at least not that I'm aware of. I've read a number of
biographies of Einstein and although he did have a vague belief in a
Spinozan style of God it would be unreasonable to attribute actual
faith in the supernatural to his comments such as "God does not roll
dice with the universe." BTW, Einstein's intuition about Quantum
Mechanics turns out to have been completely wrong -- which resulted in
his wasting a lot of the last years of his life.
-- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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