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Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology

Book by Marie-Louise von Franz · 1 quotes · Math, Matter, Modeling

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Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology Quotes

“As you know, there was a famous quarrel between Max Planck and Einstein, in which Einstein claimed that, on paper, the human mind was capable of inventing mathematical models of reality. In this he generalized his own experience because that is what he did. Einstein conceived his theories more or less completely on paper, and experimental developments in physics proved that his models explained phenomena very well. So Einstein says that the fact that a model constructed by the human mind in an introverted situation fits with outer facts is just a miracle and must be taken as such. Planck does not agree, but thinks that we conceive a model which we check by experiment, after which we revise our model, so that there is a kind of dialectic friction between experiment and model by which we slowly arrive at an explanatory fact compounded of the two. Plato-Aristotle in a new form! But both have forgotten something- the unconscious. We know something more than those two men, namely that when Einstein makes a new model of reality he is helped by his unconscious, without which he would not have arrived at his theories...But what role DOES the unconscious play?...either the unconscious knows about other realities, or what we call the unconscious is a part of the same thing as outer reality, for we do not know how the unconscious is linked with matter.”

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Book:Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology
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