Einstein on contradiction in physics

[Peter Vickers]

Dear all,

I seem to remember once reading that Einstein said something like the
following:

"If one follows any of our physics far enough, one will always find
contradiction"

I now can't find the source of this quote anywhere, and am beginning
to wonder whether I'm somewhat misremembering it.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Peter Vickers

--
Peter Vickers
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT
UK
email: phl...@leeds.ac.uk
web page: http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/%7Ephl4pv/
"So much the better for those who prefer to live without being enslaved to
idols heavily coated with scientific veneer." (Jaki, 1969)

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
Prolonged discussions should be moved to chora: enrol via
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html.
Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal.

[Peter Vickers]

Dear all,

I've now found the source of the "Einstein quote" I asked about some
time ago. It's actually not a very reliable quote in the end, but here
it is for those who voiced an interest:

"I talked for quite a while to Albert Einstein at a banker's jubilee
banquet where we both felt rather out of place. In reply to my
question what problem he was working on now, he said he was engaged in
thinking. Giving thought to any scientific proposition almost
invariably brought progress with it. For, without exception, every
scientific proposition was wrong. That was due to human inadequacy of
thought and inability to comprehend nature, so that every abstract
formulation about it was always inconsistent somewhere. Therefore
every time he checked a scientific proposition his previous acceptance
of it broke down and led to a new, more precise formulation. This was
again inconsistent in some respects and consequently resulted in fresh
formulations, and so on indefinitely."

From the diaries of Count Kessler, quoted in Stachel, J. (1983),
"Comments on 'Some Logical Problems Suggested by Empirical Theories'
by Professor Dalla Chiara", in R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky (eds.),
*Language, Logic and Method*, D. Reidel: 91-102.