DOCS. 463-465 FEBRUARY
1918 475
In
the
hope
that
your
health
is
fully
reinstated
again,[14]
I
am
very respectfully
yours truly,
Dr.
Rud.
Förster.
464. From
Arnold Sommerfeld
Munich,
16 February 1918
Dear
Einstein,
Such
an
amiably
reiterated invitation
calls for
a
resounding
yes![1]
I shall
thus
do
my
best:
Even
though
you
naturally
would have
much
more
to
say
about
quanta
and
radiation than
I,
and
even
though
your eloquence
is
much
superior
to mine.
But
I
assume
that
you
are
supposed
to
spare yourself
and
perhaps will
say
the
closing personal
note.
I
am
faced
with
a
certain
difficulty
in
that
I
have
already
written
a
laudatory
article
on
Planck for
the
Naturwiss. which
will
have
been
printed
by
then;[2] so
I
myself
have
already
drained
some
of
the
water from
my
torrent
of
words.
You write
nothing
about
your
state of
health; your previous
letter
just
said
that
you
deserved
no
sympathy.
I
hope
you
are soon over
the worst
and
then
are
healthier
and
more
cheerfully
industrious
than
before![3]
So
until
we
meet
again,
latest
in
April, yours,
A.
Sommerfeld.
465.
From Gustav Mie
Halle,
47 I
Magdeburger
St.,
17
February 1918
Dear
Colleague,
The statement
that
you
denote
as
the
basis of
the
“relativistic”
stance,
“the
behavior of
every single physical body
is
such
that
it
is
uniquely
determined
by
its
own
state and
by
those
of
all
the
other
bodies,”[1]
still
seems
to
me
to allow various
kinds of
interpretations.
If
I
did
not happen
to
know
that
you
mean something
else
by
it,
I
would believe
that this
statement
only
contains
the
causality principle,
just
as
I interpret
it and
use
it
as a
basis for
my
theory
of
matter.[2]
Thus
the
difference
between
our
views
certainly
cannot be formulated in this
way.
If
you
would
like
to become
acquainted
with
my
standpoint,
please
just
read
through
the last
section: “VIII. Relations to
Philosophy,”
in the
booklet
by
Dr.
Schlick
sometime,
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