IMG59

Ernst Mach

Lampa and Georg Pick, the two Machists on the commission, strongly favorcd Jaumann, but Philipp Frank, writing some ycars latcr (1917), qucstioncd how closely Jaumann actually followcd Machs philosophy in his scicntific work:

It will perhaps Irc instructive, as a comparativc casc, to rccall a theo-rctical physicist who, as an immediatc student of Mach, really tried to construct a system of physics and chcmistry in which no hypothctical cor-puscles, whether atoms or clectrons, occur, and which cmbraccs all of the phrnomena known at present. It cannot be denied that Gustav Jaumann in numerous works has undertaken this task with great constructivc forcc. I do not believc, ho\vcvcr, that the rcsult has turncd out to l>c really in the spirit of Mach’s tcachings. To be surę it corresponds to the surface rcquirement that all atomistics be omitted, but it hardly corresponds to the requircmcnts of economy.²*

Meanwhile, Lampa rcceivcd letters from Max Planck and Woldemar Voigt, which offered only disappointing, mixcd support for Jaumann. Planck openly praiscd Einstein as the superior candidatc: “If Einstein’$ theory should provc to be correct, as 1 expcct it will, hc will be eon-sidered the Copernicus of the twentieth century.”^2&

A somewhat shaken Anton Lampa was therefore doubly appreciative of Mach’s letter strongly recommending Jaumann, and with this cn-couragcment hc and Pick won ovcr the rest of the commission: “Your cxposition conccrning Jaumann’s mcthodological approach put my mind so much at casc that I was ablc to givc much warmer support for Jaumann bcforc the commission than otherwise would have been possiblc. . . . Thus in this last commission mecting we unanimously decidcd to raise the question with Jaumann whether hc would accept a cali to Praguc.”²⁰

Jaumann, however, surpriscd cveryonc. Philipp Frank, who would soon be tcaching in Prague himself, wrotc the following account of what finally happened:

Since the rcgulations providcd that the names of the proposcd candidates be listed on the basis of their achicvcments, Einstein, whose writings in the ycars from ^05 to 1910 had alrcady madę a strong impression on the scicntific world was placcd first and Jaumann sccond. Ncvcrrhelcss, the Ministry of Education first offered the post to Jaumann. The Austrian gov-ernment did not likc to appoint forcigncrs and preferred Austrians. Hut the Ministry had not taken Jaumann’s vanity and touchincss into account. Hc said: "If Einstein has been proposcd as first choice hreause of che bc-licf that hc has greater achievcmcnts to his credit, then I will havc nothing to do with a university that chascs after modernity and does not appreciatc truć merir." Upon Jaumann’s rcjcction of the ofTer, the govcrnmcnr over-came its aversion to forcigners and offered the position to Einstein.²⁷

In spite of Mach’s activc support of Jaumann, however, it has been widcly imagincd sińce then that Mach, as wcll as Pick and Lampa, had favorcd Einstein and hclpcd him to obtain the post.²⁸ It is possiblc that evcn Einstein bclicvcd this. In fact, all thrcc men initially preferred Jaumann. In addition, Praguc was now thought to be morę of a stronghold of Mach's philosophy than cver. In fact, far from identifying Prague with Machist philosophy, Anton Lampa, Mach’s chief disciple in the Bohemian city, fclt dccply annoyed by the presistent influence of Brentano and cspecially his philosophical followers Anton Marty and Oskar Kraus. Hc wrote to Mach about the situation on Dccem-ber 30, 1913: "Thcre is nothing pleasing in the fact that Praguc has scrvcd as Brcntano*s emporium for a very long l:mc. I am only curious to know who Marty will choosc as his succcssor. Our latest Extraordi-narius, [Oskar] Kraus is a completc Brcntanoid. . . . Hc considers Brcntanoism as religion and even possesses a pricst’s haughtiness.”

Strangcly cnough, howcvcr, Mach shared almost cxactly the same objection that Oskar Kraus, the “Brcntanoid,” had against Einstein’s theory of rclativity. Philipp Frank in his biography of Einstein gave the following somewhat unsympathetic picture of Oskar Kraus and his point of view:

Einstein remained in Prague another evcning to participatc in a discus-sion of his theories that was to takc place in the Urania bcforc a large audicncc. Einstein’$ main opponent was a philosopher of the Praguc Uni-vcrsity, Oskar Kraus, an acutc thinker in the philosophy of law. ... I presided at this discussion and cndcavorcd to dircct it in half-way quict paths. . . .

Profcssor Kraus was a typical proponent of the idea that one can learn various things about the gcomctrical and physical bchavior of bodies through simplc '‘intuition". Anything that contradictcd this intuition he considercd absurd. Among these absurditics he induded Einstcins asser-tion that Euclid’s geometry, which we all learned in school, might not be striedy correct. Since in Krauss opinion the truths of ordinary geometry must be elear to cvcry norrrul person, it was a puzzle to him how a person likc Einstein could bclicve the oppositc.²⁰

Mach ncver informed Frank or Lampa how close his own thinking was to that of Kraus with rcspect to Einsteins theory of relatwity. The result was an cver-widcning gap between Mach and many of the morę

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