708 DOC.
669
DECEMBER
1918
669. From
Hermann
Weyl
Zurich,
10
December
1918
Dear
Colleague,
I
am a
little
disappointed
that
you
cannot
present
my paper
to
the
Academy,
but
much
more so
that
you
do not want to have
anything
to do with
the
matter.[1]
This
worries
me
very much,
of
course,
because
experience
has shown
that
your
intuition
can
be relied
upon;[2]
although
I
must
admit,
your
counterarguments
so
far have not been
very illuminating
for
me.
Thus
I
am caught
between
faith
in
your
authority
and
my
view. I
am now
in
a
really
difficult
position; through
my
upbringing
so
conciliatory by
nature
that
I
am
almost
incapable
of
discussion,
I
must
now fight
on
all
fronts;
my
attack
on
analysis
and
attempt
at
a new
foundation
of
it[3]
is
encountering
much fiercer
rejection among
mathematicians
engaged
in these
logical things
than
yours
is
in
my
efforts in
theoretical
physics.
What
should
I
do
now
with
the
revision of
Space,
Time,
Matter?[4]
Certainly:
I
shall construct
the
infinitesimal
geometry
as
in
the
Math.
Zeitschrift[5]
so
that
Riemann’s
appears as a special
case
of
geometry
with
[action
at
a]
distance
[fern-
geometrisch];
I
simply
cannot do
otherwise
if
I
do
not want to
trample
on
my
mathematical
conscience
(I
can
present
one
or
two details
there
more
clearly).
[Incidentally,
you
must not
believe
that
I
came
via
physics
to
introducing
the
linear
differential form
dQ
in
the
geometry alongside
the
quadratic
form;
rather,
I
really
wanted
finally
to
remove
this
“inconsequence,”[6]
which had
always
been
a
thorn in
my
side,
and then noticed
to
my
own
astonishment: it looks
as
if
this
explains electricity.
You
are
throwing your
hands
up
in
the
air
and
are exclaiming:
But
physics
is not
done
that
way!
And
I
do,
in
fact, very
well
understand
your
anger,
which
I
had
probably only aggravated
with
the
triumphant
ring
in
my
last
note,[7]
when
you
see
dreamers and
speculators beginning
to
go
their
own
way
along
paths
that
you,
who
had
always
regarded reality so seriously,
had
pointed
out.[8]
I just
have to
say
in
my defense,
I
believed in all
earnestness
that
you
would
now
abandon
your
resistance and take
my
side.][9]
To
your
counterarguments
I
can reply
this
much,
in brief:
1)
If
you
set
the
measuring
units
in
your
theory
rationally:
unit
of
length
=
world
radius; velocity
of
light
and
gravitational
constant
=
1,
then
you
obtain
an
immensely
large
unit
of
charge,[10]
that
charge
whose
“gravitational
radius”
=
the
world
radius,
and
just
the
one
for which
you
are
rebuking me.[11]
Its
“meaning-
lessness”
is
based
on
the
fact
that the
world radius
is
a
“physically meaningless”
quantity
in
the
sense
that,
up
to
now,
it
has
not been
possible
to
draw
any upper
limit
for
it
from
observation. The fact
that
the
electron’s
charge
is
a
tiny
fraction