" Yet, Einstein was driven by the materialist conception that the laws of physics of the universe must be the same, and therefore should be shown to have the same mathematical form, regardless of the reference frame of the observer in which they were expressed. "
What might have puzzled any popular science reader curious about Einstein's revolution in physics is that not a few science writers imagined that relativity had undermined traditional philosophical materialism -the foundation of Marxist thought. Somehow the mathematical equivalence of matter and energy -expressed in the famous Einstein equation E=mc( squared) - meant that " solid " matter had disappeared . I recall Lenin pointing out in a book that should be annotated and rescued from obscurity- " Materialism and Empirio Criticism " ( circa 1909 )- that the ONLY property of matter that mattered, in this debate, was its independence from MIND, divine or human.
Sadly, the bright young quantum physics geniuses soon made Einstein look like a stubborn old reactionary. But today materialism is as clear as those individually manipulated single atoms spelling I-B-M.
And clearly the Big Bang happened -and was what it was independently of any MIND to observe it ( a real quantum mystery ? )
In his political views Einstein makes most of those oh-so-scientific New Atheists today look like 19th century reactionaries.
Read his 1945 essay " Why Socialism? " A class war on capitalism in the 21st century is far more rational than a petty-bourgeois war on religion.
CONFUSION IN PHILOSOPHY- an excerpt
[ Materialism it seems to me is perhaps THE best refuted idea in philosophy. It has been refuted so often and from so many different angles it's bordering on a joke. But I'm not even going to go into the philsophical arguments now, because they've been done so many times, and because such people will almost always find some way of ignoring such arguments.
However in the last century materialism was actually refuted by science itself, with einstein and special relativity (I think it was special). Before this, physics took the newtonian view that a physical event just happens regardless of the frame of reference, however einstein showed that that simply wasn't the case, everything that happens can only be stated to happen in relation to a point of reference, and and that for a different point of reference the event might actually be entirely diffrerent. There is no such thing as 'it just is', it only is, in relation to something else. In fact taken to its logicaql conclusion, if i made the statement, 'my keyboard exists', I would actually be saying something false, because I would be saying that my keyboard has an absolute existence, whereas, my keyboard only exists IN RELATION TO something else.
ALL 'matter' only exists in relation to something else. Something which only exists in relation to something else, obviously doesn't have any absolute existence. Therefore if all that exists is matter, then nothing actually exists, which is absurd. Therefore the only answer must be that there must be something that exists which transcends the material world.]
What might have puzzled any popular science reader curious about Einstein's revolution in physics is that not a few science writers imagined that relativity had undermined traditional philosophical materialism -the foundation of Marxist thought. Somehow the mathematical equivalence of matter and energy -expressed in the famous Einstein equation E=mc( squared) - meant that " solid " matter had disappeared . I recall Lenin pointing out in a book that should be annotated and rescued from obscurity- " Materialism and Empirio Criticism " ( circa 1909 )- that the ONLY property of matter that mattered, in this debate, was its independence from MIND, divine or human.
Sadly, the bright young quantum physics geniuses soon made Einstein look like a stubborn old reactionary. But today materialism is as clear as those individually manipulated single atoms spelling I-B-M.
And clearly the Big Bang happened -and was what it was independently of any MIND to observe it ( a real quantum mystery ? )
In his political views Einstein makes most of those oh-so-scientific New Atheists today look like 19th century reactionaries.
Read his 1945 essay " Why Socialism? " A class war on capitalism in the 21st century is far more rational than a petty-bourgeois war on religion.
CONFUSION IN PHILOSOPHY- an excerpt
[ Materialism it seems to me is perhaps THE best refuted idea in philosophy. It has been refuted so often and from so many different angles it's bordering on a joke. But I'm not even going to go into the philsophical arguments now, because they've been done so many times, and because such people will almost always find some way of ignoring such arguments.
However in the last century materialism was actually refuted by science itself, with einstein and special relativity (I think it was special). Before this, physics took the newtonian view that a physical event just happens regardless of the frame of reference, however einstein showed that that simply wasn't the case, everything that happens can only be stated to happen in relation to a point of reference, and and that for a different point of reference the event might actually be entirely diffrerent. There is no such thing as 'it just is', it only is, in relation to something else. In fact taken to its logicaql conclusion, if i made the statement, 'my keyboard exists', I would actually be saying something false, because I would be saying that my keyboard has an absolute existence, whereas, my keyboard only exists IN RELATION TO something else.
ALL 'matter' only exists in relation to something else. Something which only exists in relation to something else, obviously doesn't have any absolute existence. Therefore if all that exists is matter, then nothing actually exists, which is absurd. Therefore the only answer must be that there must be something that exists which transcends the material world.]
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