A Popular Exposition of the Famous Theory
By CHARLES NORDMANN
Astronomer to the Paris Observatory.
Translated by JOSEPH McCABE
With a Preface by the Rt. Hon.
THE VISCOUNT HALDANE, O.M.
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
First published in EnglishApril 1922
Second ImpressionJune 1922
All rights reserved
[Pg 5]
A distinguished German authority on mathematical physics, writingrecently on the theory of Relativity, declared that if his publishershad been willing to allow him sufficient paper and print he could haveexplained what he wished to convey without using a single mathematicalformula. Such success is conceivable. Mathematical methods present,however, two advantages. Their terminology is precise and concentrated,in a fashion which ordinary language cannot afford to adopt. Further,the symbols which result from their employment have implicationswhich, when brought to light, yield new knowledge. This is deductivelyreached, but it is none the less new knowledge. With greater precisionthan is usual, ordinary language may be made to do some, if not a greatdeal, of this work for which mathematical methods are alone quiteappropriate. If ordinary language can do part of it an advantage maybe gained. The difficulty that attends mathematical symbolism is theaccompanying tendency to take the symbol as exhaustively descriptiveof reality. Now it is not so descriptive. It always embodies anabstraction. It accordingly leads to the use of metaphors whichare inadequate and generally untrue. It is only qualification bydescriptive language of a wider range that can keep this tendency in[Pg 6]check. A new school of mathematical physicists, still, however, smallin number, is beginning to appreciate this.
But for English and German writers the new task is very difficult.Neither Anglo-Saxon nor Saxon genius lends itself readily in thisdirection. Nor has the task as yet been taken in hand completely, sofar as I am aware, in France. Still, in France there is a spirit and agift of expression which makes the approach to it easier than eitherfor us or for the Germans. Lucidity in expression is an endowment whichthe best French writers possess in a higher degree than we do. Some ofus have accordingly awaited with deep interest French renderings of thedifficult doctrine of Einstein.
M. Nordmann, in addition to being a highly qualified astronomer andmathematical-physicist, possesses the gift of his race. The Latincapacity for eliminating abstractness from the description of facts iseverywhere apparent in his writing. Individual facts take the placesof general conceptions, of Begriffe. The language is that ofthe Vorstellung, in a way that would hardly be practicable inGerman. Nor is our own language equal to that of France in delicacy ofdistinctive description. This book could hardly have been written by anEnglishman. But the difficulty in his way would have been one as muchof spirit as of letter. It is the lucidity of the French author, incombination with his own gift of expression, that has made it possiblefor the translator to succeed so well in overcoming the obstaclesto giving the exposition in our own tongue this book c