Einstein and Dostoevski

Why did Einstein say of Dostoevski: "He gives me more than any other thinker, more even than Gauss?" What could Dostoevski give to the originator of the theory of relativity?It is certain that it is not a question of the philosophical, moral or social ideas with which he filled the thoughts and utterances of his heroes. Einstein drew from artistic literature the driving force for his research and not the elements of a scientific concept of the world. The influence of artistic creation on scientific creation was the result not of any positive answers but of the common aesthetic ground in the problems and contradictions of the earlier representation of the world and in the intensity of the artistic conception of the infinite contradictions and complexities of the origin of the world

Einstein · Physics · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Mathematical Physics