Dear readers,

I apologize for the forced and lengthy quoting of myself, but the topic of “the relationship of our way of thinking with our biology” has been occupying me for a long time and to this day. This is an excerpt from my article “Einstein goes to Japan,” published around February 4, 2011.

Perhaps this passage will better clarify the essence of my recent note “Ideas are ideological, matter is material!”

Yours Esprit

The Fundamental Principle Of Science.

The fundamental principle of science should be a clear understanding of a trivial fact:
We are biological beings and our thinking is subordinated to this biology, its tasks and priorities.
(It is this “clear understanding” that is completely absent from most “scientists”, not to mention “ordinary people”)
Therefore, when we construct any theory or hypothesis, it is necessary to take into account our limitations and the bias suggested by our biology.
Francis Bacon wrote about these types of self-deception, speaking about the “idols” of the Genus, Cave, Market and Theater.
Albert Einstein was one of the first to notice this.
He was the first in the history of mankind to point out the fact that we unwittingly, thoughtlessly, instinctively proceed from certain a priori positions that are close and understandable to us as biological beings, but which do not stand up to rigorous scientific and logical analysis.

Here are two quotes from his works:
§5. On two arbitrary hypotheses implicitly contained in the familiar concepts of time and space.
(From the work of A. Einstein:  The principle of relativity and its consequences in modern physics. 1910, Page 138, 1st volume  Collections Of Scientific Papers)
Page 146)
“No matter how well-founded this rule (Galilean addition of velocities) may seem at first glance, nevertheless, it contains at least two arbitrary hypotheses, which, as we will see, govern all kinematics.
These hypotheses led us to believe that with the help of the laws of transformations (Galileo) it is possible to show the incompatibility of the Lorentz theory with the principle of relativity (Galileo).
The first hypothesis concerns the physical concept of measuring time….
Page 147.
“… Until now, this addition has been made unconsciously.”
(We are talking about the concept of simultaneity for points spatially separated)
Page 151.
“So, the second unconscious hypothesis in kinematics can be expressed like this:
the kinematic configuration and the geometric configuration are identical”
(We are talking about the configuration of a body moving uniformly and rectilinearly and the configuration of a body at rest).

My comment:
What are these passages about? About physics (in the strict sense of the word) or about “philosophy” or even about psychology?
Should Einstein’s keywords in this work be “implicit,” “unconscious,” and “unconscious”???
If physicists were looking for a solution to the problem of incompatibility of mechanics and electrodynamics only in physics (as they did  Laurentz and Poincare), that is, on a certain “mental plane”, then the Theory of Relativity would never have appeared, but there would have been dozens of artificial explanations ad hoc, which masked the inability to resolve this incompatibility!
Einstein’s genius lies in the fact that he again REACHED another level of thinking, into the “third dimension”, into another conceptual space, and there, in the “other space”  I found the reason for the inconsistency of the PHYSICAL in NON–PHYSICS – in PSYCHOLOGY, in our million-year-old instincts, even from reptiles and fish!
I am saying this because in order to solve basic, conceptual problems, it is sometimes necessary to go beyond the subject of physical or technical consideration of the problem, to look for the source of our misconceptions not in physics, but in a completely different field. It doesn’t matter what to call this approach, philosophical, psychological, philological or physiological. The main thing is to find a solution, and “the winner is not judged!”

We all have a genetic tendency towards the Absolute!
Why?
Because life on Earth originated and developed in the presence of an important condition – the relative stability of the environment. I emphasize the word “relative”. For life, it is necessary that the environment in which it arises and develops be stable (pseudo) or change at a pace that the biological variability of living beings keeps pace with.. If it, the environment, changes faster than living beings have time to adapt, life, or its individual fragments, perishes. For example, dinosaurs. Our whole life is a desire to keep something (the internal environment) CONSTANT, therefore, our limited variability “goes out of its way” to preserve this inner stability. And we project this desire onto the “external environment”.
This quality is the desire for consistency, and it is reflected in our thinking and in all our behavior.
The great Dutch physicist Henrik Anton Laurentz, who did a lot to recognize and strengthen Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, admitted that with the advent of this theory, he “lost the ground under his feet.”
“What, contemporaries, have we lived to see:
It’s about Time – rope dancer!”
Such a zoological cry of despair for the lost Absolute was heard in V. Bryusov’s verse (“The Principle of Relativity”, 1922)
Again, the same desire to have something solid and stable, some kind of absolute.

4 II 2011