KindredSpirit’s Kaleidoscope: Einstein Testimonial Fixture on Lasker

Emanuel Lasker was one of the most interesting persons whom I met in my later years.  We must be thankful to those who have penned the story of his life for this and succeeding generations.  For there are few who have had a warm interest in all the great human problems and at the same time kept their personality so uniquely independent.

I am not a chess player and therefore not in a position to marvel at the force of mind revealed in his greatest intellectual achievement in the field of chess. I must even confess that the struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the form of an ingenious game has always been repugnant to me.

We met at the house of my old friend, Alexander Moszkowski, and came to know him well in the course of many walks in which we exchanged opinions about the most varied questions.  It was a somewhat one-sided exchange, in which I received more than I gave.  It was usually more natural for this eminently productive man to shape his own thoughts than to busy himself with those of another.

To my mind, there was a tragic note in his personality, despite his fundamentally affirmative attitude toward life.  The enormous psychological tension, without which nobody can be a chess master, was so deeply interwoven with chess that he could never entirely rid himself of the spirit of the game, even when he was occupied with philosophic and human problems.  At the same time, it seemed to me that chess was more a profession for him than the real goal of his life.  His real yearning seems to be directed towards scientific understanding and the beauty inherent only in logical creation, a beauty so enchanting that nobody who has once caught a glimpse of it can ever escape it… The chess playing of a master ties him to the game, fetters his mind and shapes it to a certain extent so that his internal freedom and ease , no matter how strong he is, must inevitably be affected.  In our conversations and in the reading of his philosophical books, I always had  that feeling.  Of these books The Philosophy of the Unattainable interested me most; the book was not only  very original, but it also affords a deep insight into Lasker’s entire personality.

Now I must justify myself because I never considered in detail, either in writing or in our conversations.  Emanuel Lasker’s critical essay on the special  theory of relativity.  It is indeed necessary for me to say something about it here because even in this biography, which is focused on the purely human aspects, the passage which discusses the essay contains something resembling  a slight reproach.  Lasker’s keen analytical mind had immediately clearly recognized that the central point of the whole question is that  the velocity of light (in a vacuum) is a constant. It was evident to him that, if this constancy were admitted, the relativity of time (which was not to his liking at all) could not be avoided. So what was there to do?  He tried to do what Alexander, whom historians have dubbed “the Great,” did when he cut the Gordian knot.  Lasker’s attempted solution was based on the following idea: “Nobody has any immediate knowledge of how quickly light is transmitted in a complete vacuum is even more applicable to the most complete vacuum, for even in interstellar space there is always a minimal quantity of matter present under all circumstances and what holds there is even more applicable to the most complete vacuum created by man to the best of his ability.  Therefore, who has the right to deny that its velocity in a really complete vacuum is infinite?”

To answer this argument can be expressed somewhat as follows: “It is, to be sure, true that nobody has experimental knowledge of how light is transmitted in a complete vacuum.  But it is as good as impossible to formulate a reasonable theory of light according to which the velocity of light is affected by minimal traces of matter which is very significant but at the same time virtually independent of their density.”  Before such a theory, which moreover, must harmonize with the known phenomena of optics in an almost complete vacuum, can be set up, it seems that every physicist must wait for the solution of the above Gordian knot–if he is not satisfied with the present solution.  Moral: a strong mind cannot take the place of delicate fingers.

But I liked Lasker’s immovable independence, a rare human attribute, in which respect almost all, including intelligent people, are mediocrities.  And so I let matters stand that way.

I am glad that the reader will be able to get to know this strong and, at same time, fine and lovable personality from this sympathetic biography, but am thankful for the hours of conversation which this ever striving, independent, simple man granted me.

My readers have here seen the translation by Barnie F. Winkelman of the writing in German by Einstein, as a forward for the biography of Lasker. The biography is worth reading and study. Dr. J. Hannak’s,  EMANUEL LASKER- The Life of a Chess Master.