DOCS.
101,
102 MAY 1908 73
As
for
Harms,
it
seems
that
he has not
yet
made
much
progress.[8]
I drew his
attention
to
the
objection
raised
in
Berlin, to
which
the
answer was:
It
is
nonsense.
Of
course,
I
did not react to
that
any
further. For there
are no answers
to such
dogmatic
assertions,
and Harms's assertion
can
also
just
as
well be
nonsense.
I must confess to
you,
and
this
will
remain
strictly
between
us,
of course,
that
as long as
the various
objections are
not
settled
experimentally,
I also will not
consider Harms's
measurements
as
definitive.
The
good
old tune
"my
method
is
the
best,
the
most
exact,
vacuum
very
good,"
etc.,
has
already
been heard
by
all
of
us
before.
I
am now occupied
with the
preparations
for
the
polarization experiment;
in
addition,
I
am
still
doing
work
on
the earlier
paper.-[9]
Prof.
Cantor
still
seems
to be
peeved.[10]
He doesn't think
much
of
Minkowski's
paper.[11]
nor
of
ours
either,
because
everything
still rests
on
the old
foundations.
But
only
the
gods
know
why
the
old
foundations
are
not
right;
I
stopped asking him,
and do
not
worry
about
it. It
is quite
remarkable what Cantor
likes in Minkowski's work.
He
only
values the
treatment
of
time and
coordinates
as
equivalent quantities
(x1, x2, x3,
x4),
that
this
can
be
treated
as a
rotation. He
values it for
epistemological reasons.
When
I
asked him
what
in fact it
means
physically
to
treat time
as a
fourth
spatial
coordinate
(or
it),
he left
my question
unanswered.
I
think
he has
been
enormously impressed by
non-
Euclidean
geometry.[12]
Cantor
and the
Mathematicus
v.
Weber[13]
will
deliver
a
lecture
about the work
at
the
physics colloquium,
and
I
will
probably
follow with
a
comment.
For
now
I
feel
even more skeptical
toward
Minkowski's
paper;
if it
were
not
for
your
paper,
we
would
now
at
best
have
the
same
attitude
toward Minkowski's
transformation
equation
for
time
(as
regards
a physical
interpretation)
as
toward Lorentz's
"local
time."[14]
How
are
you
otherwise?
How
is
the
course?[15]
How does it feel to be
a
"newly
hatched"
Privatdozent?[16]
Here Dr. Füchtbauer
gives
a
one-hour lecture
on
the
second
law
of thermod.
from the
point
of
view
of
the kin.
theory[17]
Don't
laugh!
With
cordial
greetings,
I
remain
your
J.
Laub
Give
my
best
to
Mrs. Einstein and
to the Besso
family!
102.
From
Jakob
Laub
[Würzburg]
19
May [1908]
Dear
Friend,
Following up
on
my letter,[1]
I would also like
to
tell
you
the
following.- Today
I
conferred
with
Wien[2]
about the
"Wilson
experiment."[3]
He
has
read the
thing
and
thinks
that
I
should
think the
matter
over
and
check
the
literature;
for he
does
not
think