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The subject -- and EInstein's views -- are rather more deep than is
being implied here. In addition to the EInstein and Infeld reference,
there is a somewhat longer discussion of this by EInstein in the 70th
Birthday tribute volume: "Albert EInstein - Philosopher Scientist"
edited by P.A. Schilpp (1949). I believe the discussion is in the
autobiography at the beginning but may be in the reply to criticisms at
the end.
The essence of the matter is as follows: Einstein was really discussing
Kant here. He believes (as do I) that Kant is correct in asserting
("Critique of Pure Reason")that there is no knoweldge of an outside
world without the mind imposing some "categories" on the way we make
sense of our observations and sense data. Among the categories Kant
cited were rigorous causality, the postulates of Euclidean geometry, the
rules of logical inference. These he believed were mandated by the
nature of the mind itself and were therefore necessary to lay down PRIOR
to any concept formation and physical law. In simplest terms: the human
mind is unable to make sense of sensory data without first imposing
these categories.
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, and this is the foundation of his objection to
the quantum theory (at least as interpreted by Bohr) in that it can say
nothing about "what is" in the microphysical world, but can only talk
about the statistics of macroscopic observations.