05/09/2025
How Einstein saw the Universe...
"From the age of twelve I began to suspect authority and distrust teachers. I learned mostly at home, first from my uncle and then from a student who came to eat with us once a week. He would give me books on physics and astronomy.
The more I read, the more puzzled I was by the order of the universe and the disorder of the human mind, by the scientists who didn’t agree on the how, the when, or the why of creation.
Then one day this student brought me Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Reading Kant, I began to suspect everything I was taught. I no longer believed in the known God of the Bible, but rather in the mysterious God expressed in nature.
The basic laws of the Universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.
If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.
I like to experience the Universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life, a statue is dead. The whole of Nature is life, and life, as I observe it, rejects a God resembling man.
Man has infinite dimensions and finds God in his conscience. [A cosmic religion] has no dogma other than teaching man that the Universe is rational and that his highest destiny is to ponder it and co-create with its laws.
The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation!
If we want to improve the world we cannot do it with scientific knowledge but with ideals. Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi have done more for humanity than science has done. We must begin with the heart of man—with his conscience—and the values of conscience can only be manifested by selfless service to mankind.
Religion and science go together. As I’ve said before, science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind. They are interdependent and have a common goal—the search for truth."
~Albert Einstein
Text Source: Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983). From a series of meetings William Hermanns had with Einstein in 1930, 1943, 1948, and 1954
How Einstein Saw the World http://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/how-einstein-saw-the-world/
Systems Thinking: Seeing How Everything is Connected https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/systems-thinking-seeing-how-everything-is-connected/
Paradigms are Made for Shifting
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/paradigms-are-made-for-shifting/
