Is there a Philosopher in the House?

Hi Julie!

Wow, that's an interesting quote.... :)

> Without any further procrastination, here
> are the words of that wonderfully
> philosophical physicist:
> Albert Einstein.

> As the circle of light grows, so does the
> circumference of darkness around it.
> - Albert Einstein

Well.... Here's my guess.... :)

Possibly what he means is that, the more we know (the circle of light), the more we realize we DON'T know (the circumference of darkness)!

I guess this is essentially what James Dupree said in a message earlier than mine, I'll just elaborate.... :)

It seems to be a fact that the more you learn about anything, the more you realize how much there is that you don't know!

There are realms and realms of knowledge which you begin to realize you are ignorant about, the more you learn and understand....

For example, someone who goes into finance at first might think that there really isn't much to know about stocks. Then, the more they know, the more they find out that they never even heard of bonds, options, warrants.... They don't realize all the "stock picking" techniques there are around which people use (successfully or not), such as fundamental analysis, technical analysis, value investing, contrarian strategies, Elliot wave theory, Gann theory, and so on....

I could go into physics (my specialty).... In quantum theory, the guts of it is that the world is essentially (at the atomic scale and smaller) probabilistic, that is, there is an element of randomness.... But as you delve deeper into quantum theory, you realize there is a degree of order to this randomness. Then delve deeper and you realize that there can be very weird effects, like using quantum effects to detect things without "interacting" with them (something called the "interaction-free measurement"), or choosing whether something behaves like a wave or particle *after* the experiment is essentially done (something called the "delayed choice experiment").... And so on....

This is one of the things which keeps me fascinated about learning.... It will never, ever end. There are always new and fascinating things to learn in any area.... No matter what area of knowledge, you can delve into it forever and keep learning more and more.... Curiosity can become like an addiction! :)

Anyway, that's my guess about what Einstein may have meant, but I don't really know for sure.... If we could find out the context in which he said this, we could probably find out more.... :)

Thanks Julie for sharing this very interesting quote!

- Dien