In one of the letters written to the Infeld group in Warsaw Einstein wrote:
"A new manner of thinking is essential if humankind is to survive."

  

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KANT AND EINSTEIN (Question)
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Einstein wrote:

"Concepts and Conceptual Systems get justified exclusively by 
their capacity to coordinate events. They cannot be justified 
in any other way. Therefore, it is, in my opinion, one of the 
most pernicious acts of Philosophers to have transfered some 
conceptual bases of Natural Science from the controllable domain 
of empiric adequacy into inaccessible hight of the Necessary 
Apriori. This applies particularly to our concepts of time and 
space, which the Physicists - forced by the facts - had to 
descend from the Olympus of Apriori in order to repair them 
and make them usable." (1)

He rather clearly meant Kant, for whom our "common sense" space 
and time are independent, aprioristic, necessary and universal(2) 
categories.
 
Having learnt for the first time this Einstein's opinion I 
discussed it with Tatarkiewicz, the best historian of Philosophy 
I ever met or read.

In his opinion Einstein was too radical. Even if Kant's time and 
space proved useless for Physics, they preserve their value for 
Philosophy, where they contributed to the creation of modern 
Theory of Cognition.
And they were not completely useless for Physics.  After all, 
Newton had used, implicitly and by anticipation, Kant's time 
and space as the base of his Model.
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Who is right, Kant or Einstein? 

It's one of the most interesting questions I ever came across and 
IMO essential for grasping the problems implied by contemporary 
way of thinking.

I have my little idea, but am far from sure about it and would 
appreciate some creative discussion before storing the answer. 

If you want to participate, and are not member of the workshop, 
please join it. (Click on the workshop information button at 
the bottom of the page).
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(1) Subsequently I shall use "#space" to designate this repaired 
and usable "time and space". Indeed they are both encompassed by
the mathematical concept of #space which Einstein certainly implied.
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(2) By "universal" I mean "invariant for all observers and 
referentials". I prefer it to "absolute" which is multivalued 
and charged with transcendental and theological implications.
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