Scientists Today Will Never Accept These Einstein Quotes

I’m constantly running into people who act like science can explain everything and all the stuff that makes us inspired and brings wonder has been replaced with experiments and “the facts”.

How far this generation has gotten from earlier generations of scientists.

Let’s take a look at some quotes from Albert Einstein and ask ourselves if he would seem out of place among scientists today.

Perhaps we have gone backwards not forwards over time.

Someone who dwells on the power of the beautiful experience of the mysterious is hardly presenting us with an explanation for all things, like others such as Hegel.

He also thought that science was limited in what it could address.

… saying we should BE ON OUR GUARD not to overestimate science !

And that some things were just beyond science’s reach :

Wait ? The interpretations themselves don’t come from science ?

Albert Einstein didn’t think science was able to prop up or debunk the claims about a personal God existing.

I can’t picture the people cheering science on in social media ever agreeing with this :

Moral strength ? Sounds like some kind of subjective, judgy thing to people today.

Yes, it seems Einstein not only seemed to think science was not the end all be all, but he seemed to think Dostoyevsky (an existential, spiritual, religious writer) had a higher and better perspective than science ever did.

If a scientist said that today, he would probably lose his funding. Or his job.

And again :

And he seemed to agree that science can’t talk about meaning at all :

It is true that Einstein took a fatalistic view of the universe, but this is hardly a surprise since scientists that today commonly do as well.

But to hear a scientist as revered as Einstein say this is a huge rebuke on the fantasy thinking the science people try to insulate themselves into.

Here are some claims that on their own sound very boldly existential on their own :

There you have it : values remain beyond science’s reach.

This is a man who was not desperate for grant money and the click bait research titles that go along with them.

This is, of course, a far cry from the peer review process as the indisputable establishment of truth.

Scientists frequently uphold reproducibility of an experiment as a critical aspect of its claim to truth.

But you can’t reproduce the same individual.

Part of me thinks Einstein wouldn’t have let out some of these views if he wasn’t aware of the renown he had developed in his own day.

But whatever the motivation for him to speak up about these things, we should note Albert Einstein’s ability to speak for science and the limitations of it.

Perhaps some day soon, future scientists will be able to speak as boldly as this man was about the spiritual, existential truths that science cannot begin to wrap its arms around.