Einstein Critic Assails His New Field Theory

Dr. Charles Lane Poor. professor of celestial mechanics at Columbia University and considered the most active critic of Professor Einstein in America, voiced his disagreement with Einstein’s latest theory and interpretations given it during the last week.

Calling Einstein’s theories “absurdities,” Dr. Poor asserted that nothing can be proved by mathematics except mathematics, and that such statements that the law of gravitation has ceased to exist, and that we may soon be able to travel to the moon are likewise “absurdities.”

“Professor Einstein has hypnotized the world and every one is climbing on the bandwagon,” Dr. Poor said, calling himself “a firm believer in Newton’s law of gravitation.” which is at the base of the whole matter. Dr. Poor, who has a noted reputation in the academic world, is a retired business man and yachting enthusiast. When Einstein’s theory of relativity was announced several years ago he was a severe critic.

Professor Einstein’s theory that the forces of electricity and magnetism are the same as gravitation may find its practical application within ten years, was the statement made by Dr. Reinhold Rudenberg, of Germany, who is here for the annual convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Commenting on Professor Einstein’s “New Field Theory,” the “New York World” in its leading editorial on Sunday, wrote:

“Future generations will probably have little difficulty in distinguishing from all the news of recent weeks the event of most solid and distinctive importance. Above American and European politics, the selection of reparations experts, the discussions of pacts and navies, and other passing occurrences, looms the announcement by Dr. Albert Einstein of what he regards as his second greatest discovery. Few will doubt that the breaking of his five years’ silence, his publication of another thesis rivaling his work on relativity in 1915, his demonstration, as he believes, of a general form of the laws of nature which harmonizes gravitation with electro-dynamics,” is a world event of major importance. It is interesting to see Germany, beaten back from the military dominance to which she mistakenly aspired, score in her darkest years a repetition of her old intellectual triumphs. It is interesting to speculate how far the world at large yet grasps even the general significance of our latest scientific advances.

“One part of their general significance, if we may trust the almost universal verdict of scientists, has now become fairly evident. We are in the presence of a scientific innovator who ranks with the few greatest minds of the four or five centuries since science was reborn; and of a new system of thought which in all probability will take its place with the historic systems given us by Copernicus and Galileo, by Newton and Darwin. It is of course true that Einstein has reared his work on the discoveries of other great scientists, whose contributions were in some instances indirect, like those of Marwell and Hertz, and in some cases direct, like those of the mathematician Poincare with his time-space theory, and the physicist Planck with his quantum theory. Of course it is also true that in at least some details and points of application the Einstein theories remain to be tested-perhaps revised. But we may be fairly sure that to future generations these years will be the era of the first burst of relativity upon the world, as the mid-Victorian years were the era of the first burst of evolution. In the quiet scientist of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut we have a counterpart of the astronomer of Pisa and Florence, the modest mathematician of Trinity College at Cambridge, and the naturalist of the Beagle, all men who changed the whole current of human thought.

“For what Einstein has already done meets the same test which the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and Newton satisfied-it gives us an altered universe. Copernicus and Galileo showed mankind that the earth was not the centre and sum of creation, but a small part of a solar system which was itself an insignificant item in the heavens. Darwin showed that human life was not a sudden dazzling creation, but the result of a painful evolution from dark. remote and tiny beginnings. Newton presented in the laws of gravitation, mass and motion a fixed and stabilized universe. On these principles his successors built other laws-laws of rest, of acceleration, of action and reaction and of the conservation of energy, giving us a neatly mechanized world. Now Einstein, his forerunners and his coworkers have stepped in to upset these fundamental hypotheses. They have given us new concepts of mass and matter; have offered evidence that the flow of time is linked with the extension of space and represents part of a four-dimensioned universe; have tried to show that matter under certain conditions loses its mass and that gravity and electricity submit to a single formula; and have even seemed to reveal a closed and finite instead of an infinite and endless universe. They have banished one world and given us another.”

JEWISH PAPER ASCRIBES THEORY TO MONOTHEISTIC INFLUENCE

Prof. Einstein’s reduction to a single formula of the laws governing gravitation and electro-magnetism may be ascribed to the influence of the Jewish religious monotheistic conception of God, is the hypothesis expressed in an editorial in the New York Yiddish “Day.”

“Unity and variety, simplicity and many-sidedness this is the greatness of Albert Einstein’s accomplishment. It is a great accomplishment for it leads on a scientific road, to the same cardinal (Continued on Page 4)

principle as was proclaimed by religion but could never be proved,” writes the “Day.”

“One may see in this accomplishment a spark of the Jewish spirit which is the form for Einstein’s genius. Just as the Jewish spirit, thousands of years ago, formulated the monotheistic doctrine, the belief in one divine power, in a world which saw itself surrounded with numberless gods, so does Albert Einstein now, bring into science the principle of unity in a world which sees everywhere divergence and a variety of laws and principles.

“That one definite, all-penetrating power works in all phenomena of nature, is the feeling of many people, even those who are no philosophers and certainly no scientists. Feeling, however, is not sufficient. It has to be conceived consciously, it has to be proved. The Jew, Albert Einstein, with his wonderful mind of a genius, it seems, has found the key and also the form for such proof,” the paper states.

A Young Men’s Hebrew Association building will be erected soon in the Oranges if present plans materialize.

Four years ago a campaign was conducted for building funds and $3,500 were raised. This amount was inadequate and the plan was temporarily dropped.

Present plans sponsored by Rabbi Samuel Kaplan of Temple Sharey Tefila calls for a building to be erected at a cost of $100,000.