Good Scientists Study the Problems They Think They Can Solve

No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie beyond his competence. The most he can hope for is the kindly contempt earned by the Utopian politician. If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are inmiensely practicalminded affairs. Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve problems, not merely to grapple with them.

 Einstein on Prayer

January 24, 1936 Dear Phyllis, I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer: Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish. However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the e...

 Covering Your Tracks Online is Suspicious

The drawback to covering your tracks like this on a daily basis is that it sometimes makes you look like, well, like you’re covering your tracks. People who engage all of their privacy functions sometimes stand out in a transparent society. It may make people suspicious, thinking that you’re up to something. If you’re only encrypting your communications with certain people, it sometimes makes it look even worse, like you’re collaborating—and it also pinpoints who you’re in cahoots...

 Rapid Growth of Physics

As a result of the phenomenally rapid change and growth of physics, the men and women who did their great work one or two generations ago may be our distant predecessors in terms of the state of the field, but they are our close neighbors in terms of time and tastes. This may be an unprecedented state of affairs among professionals; one can perhaps be forgiven if one characterizes it epigrammatically with a disastrously mixed metaphor; in the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit si...

 Atheistic in Experimentation; Therefore, Atheist in Daily...

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

 If Nurture, Why Not More Variation in Human Culture?

Humanity is, of course, morally free to make and remake itself infinitely, but we do not do so. We stick to the same monotonously human pattern of organizing our affairs. If we were more adventurous, there would be societies without love, without ambition, without sexual desire, without marriage, without art. without grammar, without music, without st smiles—and with as many unimaginable novelties as are in that list. There would be societies in which women killed each other more often than...