liveonearth (liveonearth) wrote,
liveonearth
liveonearth

QotD: Einstein On Scientific (as vs Religious) Truth

(1) It is difficult even to attach a precise meaning to the term "scientific truth." So different is the meaning of the word "truth" according to whether we are dealing with a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition, or a scientific theory. "Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.
(2) Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and survey things in terms of cause and effect. Certainly it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order.
(3) This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
(4) Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically ; they have no other significance for me.
--Albert Einstein in Essays in Science, p11, 1934.
Tags: belief, god, heroes, isms, mathematics, quotes, religion, science, tradition, truth
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