{"id":700,"date":"2011-08-11T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T19:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bogvaerker.dk\/wordpress\/?p=700"},"modified":"2011-08-11T21:01:07","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T19:01:07","slug":"the-einstein-case-determinism%e2%80%99s-rearguard-action-%e2%80%93-abdassamad-clarke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bogvaerker.dk\/wordpress\/?p=700","title":{"rendered":"The Einstein Case: determinism\u2019s rearguard action \u2013 Abdassamad Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

If we regard Thales as the man who was so enamoured of the heavens that
\nhe fell down a well which he hadn’t noticed, then we might depict Einstein
\nas the man who so enthralled others with the picture he painted of the
\ncosmos that they didn’t even notice they themselves had already fallen
\ndown the well.<\/p>\n

Einstein’s most famous contributions to science fall squarely in the
\nrealm of cosmology. In talking about the cosmos as a whole, the cosmologist
\ntakes upon himself something previously the domain of revelation or
\nphilosophy. It is sometimes quite hard for the aspirant to this knowledge,
\nwho learns the maths and physics necessary to approach it, to reconcile
\nits dry nature with that original mystique which drew him or her to
\nits study. In special relativity, the cosmos evoked is inhabited by
\nspacemen travelling in spaceships accompanied by speeding up and slowing
\ndown clocks and expanding and contracting rulers which they endlessly
\nmeasure and compare with others. It is somewhat like an everlasting
\nschool laboratory. Nevertheless, this subject has the mystique of being
\n‘cosmic’.<\/p>\n

Dealing with the cosmos as an entirety and in particular with its beginning
\nand its end is a result of an originally mistaken Christian theology,
\nwhich regards God as somehow dealing with the beginning of the creation
\n\u2013 of being the ‘First Cause’ \u2013 and of now being far above the Creation
\nand remote from the affairs of mankind. In this mistaken thinking there
\nis no sense of the immediacy of Allah, exalted is He, and of His direct
\nrelationship with each of His slaves as their Lord.<\/p>\n

It is well to remember that Einstein’s entire oeuvre has no practical
\napplications or uses; everything lies beyond the edges of attainable
\nspeeds and on the scale of the super-galactic, nothing is in the realm
\nof, on the scale of, or in the time of the simply human, whereas, amusingly
\nenough, the extremely arcane and philosophically perplexing area of
\nquantum mechanics is brimming with applications.<\/p>\n

Einstein’s work remains with us today in the form of the huge amount
\nof research that goes into finding the famous unified field theory \u2013
\nthe theory of everything that has now transmogrified into superstrings
\nin hyperspaces of eleven dimensions and the cosmologies of parallel
\ncosmoses, endlessly big-banging, big-crunching and bouncing universes
\nthat daily fill magazines such as The Scientific American, Nature, etc.
\nIt is certainly geared towards the heavens and is abstract to a very
\nhigh degree.<\/p>\n

In this connection, Einstein was very well known for talking about the
\n‘Lord’ and ‘God’, for example the quote for which he is most famous,
\n“God does not play at dice.” What is less well known is Bohr’s riposte,
\n“But still, it cannot be for us to tell God, how He is to run the world.”
\nEqually, there is Einstein’s remark that he was curious to know if God
\nhad any choice in creating the universe. This deeply blasphemous thought
\nis of course the natural extension of rigorous mechanical causality,
\nthat causality of the party who espouse the machine-like nature of the
\nuniverse. This remark exposes the real nature of determinism, which
\nseems outwardly to conform to our understanding of the Divine Decree
\nbut is in fact its exact opposite. The exchange with Bohr is a neat
\nencapsulation of Einstein’s almost single-handed, last-ditch defence
\nof the materialist Cartesian vision of the cosmos as a single mighty
\nmachine grinding inexorably on to its final ‘big crunch’, its Creator
\na powerless witness, glorious is Allah beyond everything they ascribe
\nto Him.<\/p>\n

As to his belief, he wrote to Max Born, with whom he had an ongoing
\ndisagreement about quantum theory, “You believe in the God who
\nplays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively
\nexists.” Here is, in Goethe’s words, “an instant worth a thousand,
\nbearing all within itself.” Here, Einstein admits that what he does
\nis based on a ‘belief’, since quantum physics shook that belief to its
\ncore. What had been axiomatic and seemed in no need of being stated
\nlet alone proved, was now everywhere in doubt. Einstein had nothing
\nmore substantial to deal with it than to state his belief. In the face
\nof the quantum discoveries, Einstein insisted on this belief, in what
\nis tantamount to a shahadah, but look clearly at what is involved in
\nhis act of witnessing: he believes not only “in complete law and
\norder” but also “in a world which objectively exists”.
\nHe could only make such a statement in the face of discoveries undermining
\nthe belief in a world which objectively exists, otherwise there is no
\nneed to state it here as a part of a belief. This is reinforced by many
\nsimilar quotes, but in particular this one from Werner Heisenberg: “In
\nhis earlier physics, Einstein could always set out from the idea of
\nan objective world subsisting in space and time, which we, as physicists,
\nobserve only from the outside, as it were.” Until this moment in
\nhistory, scientists were quite happy that they had relegated the Unseen,
\nalong with religion, superstition and mysticism, to the domain of belief,
\nand that they alone were dealing with the real world. However, in dealing
\nwith the apparently solid substantial world they were in a very short
\ntime to reduce it to an enigma such that Einstein would need to state
\nhis materialist belief in such a fashion.<\/p>\n

Heisenberg wrote of Einstein’s, “conviction that the world could be
\ncompletely divided into an objective and a subjective sphere.” Apart
\nfrom merely noting that conviction is simply an intense form of belief,
\nwe would observe that this division of the world is the basic schizoid
\ncondition necessary until now for science. It is the condition that
\nallows scientists annually to torture countless animals for the requirements
\nof the cosmetics industry, and indeed allows great numbers of scientists
\nto work on pieces of military hardware, torture equipment, surveillance
\napparatus, psychological and not so psychological techniques of interrogation
\nand other bestialities. This of course cannot be laid at Einstein’s
\ndoor, and it is a timely reminder for us in this article that our subject
\nis somehow emblematic of the whole condition of science, or shall we
\nsay, of scientists, as is as much of interest to us in that respect
\nas he is in his own biography.<\/p>\n

Einstein’s constant evocation of ‘the Lord’ or ‘God’, without in any
\nacceptable sense being a believer and yet contributing to the invisible
\nhalo that he always sported in the eyes of the populace, is deeply problematic.
\nThe adulation of Einstein himself is encapsulated best by the story
\nof the journalist and photographer who followed Einstein for some time,
\nhoping to get a story. When Einstein’s car stopped on a bridge in the
\ncountry and his party dismounted to see the view, the reporter seized
\nhis chance. He rushed up to Einstein and, with microphone outstretched,
\nasked, “Professor Einstein: is there a god?” Einstein, understandably,
\njust looked at him, got back into the car and was driven away. This
\nsums up the popular misapprehension that someone like Einstein whose
\nequations tried to deal with the cosmos as a whole must be better placed
\nto answer this question of 20th century technical man, “Is there a god?”<\/p>\n

However, it is more serious than this. By the workings of the opposites,
\nand as a manifestation of intention, this agnostic had become in turn
\na god to others, first to the adoring uncomprehending masses but even
\nto academics and other scientists. This idolisation of the atheist is
\nno accident, as Einstein knew very well. Thomas Bucky, a close friend,
\nwrote about Einstein’s unhappy relationship with his wife, “Einstein
\nhad a shell around him that was not easy to penetrate. He was a god
\nand he knew it. He was not pompous about it.” It certainly could not
\nhave been easy to have been married to a god, especially one who knew
\nit, whether he was a pompous one or not. This quote on the deification
\nof Einstein is not an isolated one, for his biography is replete with
\nidolaters.<\/p>\n

Along with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, he can be counted among
\nthe three most known iconic faces of the twentieth century. Einstein
\nwas feted by people at every level of society. His thoughts were sought
\non every matter, and in that, he along with other scientists-turned-pundits
\nis a fulfilment of Imam al-Ghazali’s almost prophetic words on mathematics
\nin the Book of Knowledge of Ihya ‘ulum ad-din. He said, in paraphrase,
\nthat mathematics has a terrible danger in it, that since it is such
\nan exact science people imagine that the mathematician is just as exact
\nwhen he speaks on other matters, whereas when he speaks outside of mathematics
\nhe is just like everyone else: advancing his own opinion.<\/p>\n

It is rather germane to the above that Einstein’s advice to a young
\ncolleague who was considering an offer “to head up the world federalist
\nmovement nationally,” was, “\u2026if you’re a paid head of an organization
\nnobody will pay any attention to what you say. If you want to influence
\nthe world, make a name for yourself in your own field, and then people
\nwill listen to you on other matters as well.” Here is yet another “instant
\nworth a thousand, bearing all within itself.”<\/p>\n

This quote is pivotal for understanding Einstein and what he was doing,
\nwhich is not unimportant since an understanding of that is very necessary
\nfor understanding our current world and much of contemporary science.<\/p>\n

It would be very easy to pick on the fact that Einstein, who was in
\nno sense a believing or practising Jew, was a committed Zionist and
\nworked very hard for the establishment of the state of Israel, so much
\nso that he was offered the post as its first president. However, given
\nthat Einstein not only refused the post but declined to live in Israel,
\nlet us pass over that, and concentrate on his espousal of ‘world government’
\nas one of the matters in which having made a name for himself in his
\nown field, then people listened to him on other matters as well<\/p>\n

Writing about Einstein’s views on the use of atomic power after the
\nwar, his biographer Denis Brian writes that “Einstein took an almost
\nupbeat attitude to the potential effect of an atomic war,” and
\nthat chillingly enough Einstein told Raymond Swing, a reporter, that
\nan atomic war, in Brian’s words, “would probably destroy only two-thirds
\nof of the world and would leave enough survivors and books to restore
\ncivilization”, remembering that this terrible weapon was one to
\nwhose creation Einstein had given significant help at a crucial moment.
\nFurthermore, “he believed that the secret of the bomb should be
\nshared not with the United Nations or the Soviet Union, but with a world
\ngovernment founded by the world’s three great military powers \u2013 the
\nUnited States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. He said he was more
\nfearful of future wars than of the possible tyranny of a world government.”
\n(Here, we note in aside that Einstein’s fears of future wars, future
\natomic wars, stemmed from something which he had actively and quite
\npolitically worked to bring into existence, in spite of his famous but
\nrepeatedly ruptured Gandhian pacifism: the atomic bomb.)<\/p>\n

First, any consideration of ‘government’ must be located within the
\ntime of transition in which Einstein lived. He saw the last of the German
\nKaisers, whom he loathed with an intensity which he extended to the
\nGerman people, and he saw the ancien regime of Europe. Einstein emigrated
\nto America whose government is based on a constitution supposedly promoting
\nthe highest values of egalitarianism, liberty and brotherhood, yet which
\nis founded on the slaughter of the indigenous population and the enslavement
\nof unthinkable numbers of people from another continent, people whom
\nthe author Michael Moore quite convincingly demonstrates have not achieved
\nany significant amelioration of their condition since the end of slavery
\nto this day. He was active in moving the head of that government to
\ndevelop the atomic bomb, which that government proceeded to drop on
\ntwo utterly defenceless cities in the pretext that by it they were bringing
\na speedy end to the war, whereas they were simply demonstrating to Joseph
\nStalin and whoever else cared to look the devastating power of their
\nnew weapon; the Japanese had been negotiating to surrender, partly because
\neven more devastating ‘conventional’ bombing had already destroyed Tokyo.
\n(Einstein, over and above his espousal of the atomic bomb, worked as
\na consultant on conventional weapons for the American armed forces throughout
\nthe war, yet managing always to maintain the image of himself as a pacifist.)<\/p>\n

So this government under which Einstein chose to live in preference
\nto all others and in preference to Israel must somehow represent some
\nelement of governance that he thought to be of benefit to mankind. We
\ncould say that out of the Americanisation and Disneyfication of the
\nplanet this world government is visibly emerging before our eyes today,
\nand it may be that the last step towards it will be that the world’s
\npeoples will call out for a world state in order to limit the imperial
\nambitions of the US administration But what is it? A global database,
\npersonal taxation of the poor on an unprecedented scale along with exemption
\nof the super-rich, and a level of policing and surveillance which Stalin
\nand Hitler could not have imagined possible in their most delirious
\nfantasies. Are we to be grateful to Einstein because he worked towards
\nthis, and used his public standing to work towards this? Certainly not.<\/p>\n

However, it would be all too easy to attribute too much to Einstein’s
\nwork in this area. The World State, if it is to happen, will come about
\nthrough the logical illogicalities and needs of usury finance and the
\ninevitable developments of the technical society, rather than through
\nthe politicking of various individuals. Indeed, the overwhelming impression
\none has of Einstein’s last years is of a man who lived them out being
\nfamous; being Einstein. In sum, what did he use the leverage which his
\nscientific work gained him; to what use did he put his having made a
\nname for himself, and the consequent attention which the world gave
\nhim? If we were to limit ourselves to those things which actually did
\nhave political effect, i.e. changing large numbers of people’s lives
\nin very major ways, then we would come up with three things, none of
\nthem being scientific discoveries: the American decision to make the
\natomic bomb to which process Einstein lent his very considerable prestige,
\nand the creation of the state of Israel. Remember that his other very
\npublic renunciation of his pacifism was by having a letter he had written
\ncalling on the Jews of Israel to fight the Arabs for Palestine auctioned
\nto raise money to support the Israeli Haganah terrorist group. This
\nis over and above his very extensive public relations work in all his
\nlater years for the zionist cause.<\/p>\n

There is a third contribution, which is ordinarily pooh-poohed as being
\nan unscientific extension of a scientific theory: the attitude that
\n“it is all relative”, yet there is no doubt that Einstein
\nhimself was an absolute embodiment as an agnostic and ‘freethinker’
\nof that very relativism in values to which he most famously gave expression
\nas a dry mathematical theory of what happens at tremendously high speeds
\nremote from our own experience.<\/p>\n

Einstein is a perfect illustration of the fact that nothing in this
\nage is what it seems to be. Far be it from us to criticise him simply
\nbecause he is widely regarded as a great man. We write the above because
\nit seems to us that none of Einstein’s biographers have grasped what
\nhe was up to, simply because so few people grasp what this age is about.
\nNot grasping that they also do not see what science is about. Einstein’s
\nscientific work represents the last gasps of determinism as Bohr and
\nHeisenberg knew well, and it is therefore no accident that he worked
\ntowards \u2013 however ineffectually \u2013 the establishment of a single massive
\nmachine-like state in governance of the planet, for after all, his work
\nwas worship of the machine he thought he could detect in nature.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it is of the utmost significance to us that Einstein and his
\nheirs have achieved absolutely nothing of import, for it is the most
\nperspicuous sign that an epoch has passed, the age of the machine metaphor
\nof existence and its accompanying tyrannical state. Determinism is bankrupt,
\nit is only left with the spinning of empty fantasies for the credulous
\nand has come to an end as a project. The new age of knowledge having
\nbeen rejected by the kuffar belongs to the Muslims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we regard Thales as the man who was so enamoured of the heavens that he fell down a well which he hadn’t noticed, then we might depict Einstein as the man who so enthralled others with the picture he painted of the cosmos that they didn’t even notice they themselves had already fallen down … <\/p>\n

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