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

2 CONTENTS
Figure 1: Einstein in front of a critical skeptical jury at Oxford University
in May 1931, defending his equations of general relativity.
scientists involved.
The reader will find that the Faust legend describes the dilemma which
confronted the fathers when they took on the role of saving science from
collapse: To succeed they had to pay the price of selling out their (classical)
scientific souls. The price was to give up of the basic classical concepts of
space and time and determinism, and the basic classical principle of causeeffect,
a very high price and accordingly the fathers came to suffer much like
Dr Faustus did...
But the responsibility is not only carried by the fathers but all of us who
who confess to the religion of science in the postmodern world coming out
from the trauma of the modern world. In fact, the modernity of physics
came together with modernity in the arts (cubism, atonal music,...) and in
politics as the classical world of Enlightenment collapsed into the 1st World
War and never really recovered from the 2nd...
We shall see that the political ambitions of the emerging strong Germany
required German science to take the lead and open the door to modernity, and
there were young ambitious German scientists ready to take on the duty...at
any price by any means...