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

30.2. CONFESSION 139
to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations
among sensory experience. He may even be viewed as Platonist or
Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity
as an indispensable and effective tool of his research.
• It seems to me to be in the nature of the subject, that what is to follow
might already have been partially clarified by other authors. However, in
view of the fact that the questions under consideration are treated here
from a new point of view, I believed I could dispense with a literature
search which would be very troublesome for me, especially since it is to
be hoped that other authors will fill this gap, as was commendably done
by Herr Planck and Herr Kaufmann on the occasion of my first paper
on relativity. 1906.
• Time and space are modes in which we think and not conditions in
which we live.
• I feel like a prima-donna.... It is like a Circus Barnum, although I
believe it would be more fun (for the people) to watch an elephant or a
giraffe than an old scientist... I have become rather like King Midas,
except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus 1921 NY.
• All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to
the answer to the question, “What are light quanta?”. Nowadays every
Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.
• Surprisingly, however, it turned out that a sufficiently sharpened conception
of time was all that was needed to overcome the difficulty discussed.
One had only to realize that an auxiliary quantity introduced
by H. A. Lorentz, and named by him “local time”, could be defined as
“time” in general. If one adheres to this definition of time, the basic
equations of Lorentz’s, theory correspond to the principle of relativity.
1907
• The question whether the Lorentz contraction does or does not exist
is confusing. It does not really exist in so far as it does not exist for
an observer who moves (with the rod); it really exists, however, in the
sense that it can as a matter of principle be demonstrated by a resting
observer.