Einstein, the searcher

HIS WORK EXPLAINED FROM DIALOGUES WITH EINSTEIN
BY
ALEXANDER MOSZKOWSKI
TRANSLATED BY HENRY L. BROSE
METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON
THE book which is herewith presented to the public has few contemporaries of a like nature; it deserves special attention inasmuch as it is illuminated by the name Albert Einstein , and deals with a personality whose achievements mark a turning-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 the array of those who have defined the stages of the long avenue of research. One might endeavour, then, to decide to whom mankind owes the greater debt, to Euclid or to Archimedes, to Plato or to Aristotle, to Descartes or to Pascal, to Lagrange or to Gauss, to Kepler or to Copernicus. One would have to investigate—as far as this is possible—in how far each outstanding personality was in advance of his time, whether some contemporary might not have had the equal good fortune to stumble on the same discovery, and whether, indeed, the time had not come when it must inevitably have been revealed. If we then further selected only those who saw far beyond their own age into the inimitable future of knowledge, this great number of celebrities would be considerably diminished. We should glance away from the milestones, and fix our gaze on the larger signs that denote the lines of demarcation of the sciences, and among them we should find the name of Albert Einstein. We may find it necessary to proceed to a still more rigorous classification; Science, herself, may rearrange her chronological table later, and reckon the time at which Einstein's doctrine first appeared as the beginning of an important era.
This would in itself justify—nay, render imperative—the writing of a book about Einstein. But this need has already been satisfied on several occasions, and there is even now a considerable amount of literature about him. At the end of this generation we shall possess a voluminous library composed entirely of books about Einstein. The present book will differ from most of these, in that Einstein here occurs not only objectively but also subjectively. We shall, of course, speak of him here too, but we shall also hear him speak himself, and there can be no doubt that all who are devoted to the world thought can but gain by listening to him.