Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

Chapter 21
Einstein: I Did It!
What does a fish know about the waters in which he swims all life?
(Einstein)
For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do.
It is embarrasing to earn so much respect and love for it. (Einstein)
The super-national character of scientific concepts and scientific language
is due to the fact tha they have been set up by the best brains
of all countries and all times. (Einstein)
21.1 Analytic and Synthetic Statements
If Born sacrificed causality, it was Einstein who gave up the reality of space
and time. Einstein did this using a special technique which he developed to
mastery, namely to mix up the fundamental distinction between synthetic
and analytic statements as identified in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
An analytic statement is a statement about language and not about reality,
in mathematical physics usually a definition where one word or concept
is specified in terms of already specified concepts of words. One cannot ask
if a definition is true, since by construction it cannot be false. A synthetic
statement is a statement about some reality, which may be true or false depending
on the reality, and thus (in principle) can be checked by observation
of reality.
The statement “one meter is 100 centimeters”, is analytic, while the statement
“this stick is 1 meter”, is synthetic. If you know what a meter is the
93