Re: "quantization"

["Dewey Dykstra, Jr." <dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu>]

Jerome Epstein writes from autobiographical material by Einstein:

> Einstein agrees that categories of the understanding are indeed
> necessary and are indeed prior to observation, but Einstein, going
> against Kant (and having the benefit of another 100 years of dramatic
> change in science and math), states that the categories are not fixed by
> the nature of human reason but are free creations, therefore choices and
> subject to change. That these categories are freely chosen IN NO WAY
> implies that all scientific knoweldge is purely conventional. Einstein
> would not accept that at all. He states clearly (and the so called
> logical positivists are his followers in this) that a scientific theory,
> contrary to the naive popular view that is espoused in "scientific
> method" classes, can not be somehow extracted from the data of sense
> observation. There is no logically necessary path from observation to
> the underlying theory. The theory gains its "truth value" from the
> extent to which it explains and predicts observation, and of course that
> it is not contradicted by observation, but the theory is not DERIVED
> from observation. Theories are indeed free creations of the human mind,
> but they are not random or arbitrary, and they are testable.
>
> EInstein also makes very clear (in the answer to criticisms) that he is
> in no way a solipsist, ...

If you read "Introduction to Radical Constructivism" by Ernst von
Glasersfeld in _The Invented Reality_ edited by Watzlawick, you will find
these same features (including the rejection of solipsism) used to describe
radical constructivism (except probably for the comment about the logical
positivists).

Jerome provides evidence that Einstein may indeed have meant by his words
what I thought which motivated me to include them in my signature file.

Dewey

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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                   Phone: (208)385-3105
Professor of Physics                    Dept:  (208)385-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418        Fax: (208)385-4330
Boise State University                  dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive                   Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                       novice piper

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe."  --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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