EINSTEIN
THE SEARCHER
HIS WORK EXPLAINED FROMDIALOGUES WITH EINSTEIN
BY
TRANSLATED BY
HENRY L. BROSE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
EXTRACT FROM THE AUTHOR'SPREFACE
THE book which is herewith presented to thepublic has few contemporaries of a like nature; it deserves specialattention inasmuch as it is illuminated by the name AlbertEinstein, and deals with a personality whose achievements mark aturning-point in the development of science.
Every investigator, who enlarges our vision by some permanent discovery,becomes a milestone on the road to knowledge, and great would be thearray of those who have defined the stages of the long avenue ofresearch. One might endeavour, then, to decide to whom mankind owes thegreater debt, to Euclid or to Archimedes, to Plato or to Aristotle, toDescartes or to Pascal, to Lagrange or to Gauss, to Kepler or toCopernicus. One would have to investigate—as far as this ispossible—in how far each outstanding personality was in advance ofhis time, whether some contemporary might not have had the equal goodfortune to stumble on the same discovery, and whether, indeed, the timehad not come when it must inevitably have been revealed. If we thenfurther selected only those who saw far beyond their own age into theinimitable future of knowledge, this great number of celebrities wouldbe considerably diminished. We should glance away from the milestones,and fix our gaze on the larger signs that denote the lines ofdemarcation of the sciences, and among them we should find the name ofAlbert Einstein. We may find it necessary to proceed to a still morerigorous classification; Science, herself, may rearrange her[Pg v]chronological table later, and reckon the time at which Einstein'sdoctrine first appeared as the beginning of an important era.
This would in itself justify—nay, render imperative—thewriting of a book about Einstein. But this need has already beensatisfied on several occasions, and there is even now a considerableamount of literature about him. At the end of this generation we shallpossess a voluminous library composed entirely of books about Einstein.The present book will differ from most of these, in that Einstein hereoccurs not only objectively but also subjectively. We shall, of course,speak of him here too, but we shall also hear him speak himself, andthere can be no doubt that all who are devoted to the world thought canbut gain by listening to him.
The title agrees with the circumstance to which this book owes itsbirth. And in undertaking to address itself to the circle of readers asto an audience, it promises much eloquence that came from Einstein's ownlips, during hours of social intercourse, far removed from academicpurposes and not based on any definite scheme intended for instruction.It will, therefore, be neither a course of lectures nor anything similaraiming at a systematic order and development. Nor is it a merephonographic record, for this is made impossible if for no other reasonthan that whoever has the good fortune to converse with this man, findsevery minute far too precious to waste it in snatching moments to takeshorthand notes. What he has heard and