Einstein and the universe: A popular exposition of the famous theory

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
A distinguished German authority on mathematical physics, writing recently on the theory of Relativity, declared that if his publishers had been willing to allow him sufficient paper and print he could have explained what he wished to convey without using a single mathematical formula. 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 implications which, when brought to light, yield new knowledge. This is deductively reached, but it is none the less new knowledge. With greater precision than is usual, ordinary language may be made to do some, if not a great deal, of this work for which mathematical methods are alone quite appropriate. If ordinary language can do part of it an advantage may be gained. The difficulty that attends mathematical symbolism is the accompanying tendency to take the symbol as exhaustively descriptive of reality. Now it is not so descriptive. It always embodies an abstraction. It accordingly leads to the use of metaphors which are inadequate and generally untrue. It is only qualification by descriptive language of a wider range that can keep this tendency in check. A new school of mathematical physicists, still, however, small in 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 this direction. Nor has the task as yet been taken in hand completely, so far as I am aware, in France. Still, in France there is a spirit and a gift of expression which makes the approach to it easier than either for us or for the Germans. Lucidity in expression is an endowment which the best French writers possess in a higher degree than we do. Some of us have accordingly awaited with deep interest French renderings of the difficult doctrine of Einstein.