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Lot 55
Sale 759 - Selections from the Library of Gerald and Barbara Weiner
Oct 8, 2020
10:00AM CT
Live / Chicago
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Estimate
$4,000 -
6,000
Price Realized
$11,250
Sold prices are inclusive of Buyer’s Premium
Lot Description
EINSTEIN, Albert. Typed letter signed (“A. Einstein”), to Mr. Lester Murphy. Princeton, New Jersey, 5 November 1953. One page, 4to (279 x 215 mm), on embossed personal stationery. Creased, one tiny rust stain to blank margin.
EINSTEIN ON DARWINISM AND ITS DETRACTORS.
Thanking the recipient for sending his manuscript and book on Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, and offering his own thoughts on a “planning God.”
“I find the man interesting in what he tells about our knowledge in paleontology and his doubts about the opinion that natural selection has given satisfactory explanation of the trend toward increasing organization and differentiation in the organic world.” But Einstein adds at end: “I must confess that his arguments in favor of traditional religion with a planning God appear to me rather childishly anthropomorphic.”
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1883-1947) was a French biophysicist and philosopher who believed that mankind should have confidence in science, but cautioned we know less about the material world than is commonly believed.