In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, dated April 1787, Immanuel Kant names the philosopher Christian Wolff as the originator of der Geist der Gründlichkeit in Deutschland, the spirit of thoroughness in Germany. Wolff showed, Kant writes, how a science should proceed. It needs principles established by rule, clear definitions of concepts, rigorous proofs, and no bold leaps in its conclusions. Kant adds that this spirit had not died in Germany. It had only been shouted down for a short time by a fashion for genius-style freedom of thought.
The Will to a System
Ich mißtraue allen Systematikern und gehe ihnen aus dem Weg. Der Wille zum System ist ein Mangel an Rechtschaffenheit. I distrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote this in Götzen-Dämmerung, Twilight of the Idols.
What Must Not Be Cannot Be
In Christian Morgenstern’s poem Die unmögliche Tatsache, the impossible fact, Palmström reasons his way out of something that happened to him. The poem ends: Und er kommt zu dem Ergebnis: / Nur ein Traum war das Erlebnis. / Weil, so schließt er messerscharf, / nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf. He comes to the result that the experience was only a dream, because, as he concludes with razor-sharp logic, what must not be cannot be. The poem appeared in the collection Palmström in 1910. Its last lines became a common saying.
The Town Hall Without Windows
The Lalebuch, printed anonymously in 1597, became known through its second edition of 1598 as Die Schiltbürger. It tells of the citizens of Schilda. They build a triangular town hall with a large gate but no windows. To bring light inside, they try to catch sunlight in buckets and sacks and carry it in. Duden defines a Schildbürgerstreich as an action that misses its actual purpose in a foolish way. Today the word is used for absurd rules and the excesses of bureaucracy.
The Stone Louse in the Medical Dictionary
On 18 October 1976 Loriot presented the Steinlaus, the stone louse, on television, in a parody of the zoologist and television presenter Bernhard Grzimek. The adult male, he explained, needs about 28 kilograms of concrete and bricks a day. In 1983 the Pschyrembel, the standard German clinical dictionary, added an entry on the stone louse in its 255th edition. The entry was removed in the 257th edition in 1994. After unexpectedly strong protests from readers, it returned in the next edition in 1997.
The Purchasing Director Comes Home
In Loriot’s film Pappa ante portas, which premiered in 1991, Heinrich Lohse is purchasing director of the Deutsche Röhren AG. To get a volume discount, he buys typewriter paper and erasers for about the next 40 years. Facing early retirement, he resigns and carries his methods home. There, again for a volume discount, he orders dozens of jars of mustard.
The Curve Discussion
The Kurvendiskussion, the discussion of a curve, is a standard topic of school mathematics. It is the investigation of the graph of a function by working through a standard set of properties. They include the domain, symmetry, the points where the graph crosses the axes, high and low points, inflection points, asymptotes and the behavior at infinity. It is relatively popular with weaker pupils and students as an exam topic that can be prepared for with relative certainty. It is also criticized as a purely computational routine that conveys little understanding. In central Abitur exams, such schematic tasks are now set only rarely.
Through All the Keys
Johann Sebastian Bach finished the first part of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier in 1722 and the second in 1740/42. The title page promises preludes and fugues durch alle Tone und Semitonia, through all tones and semitones, zum Nutzen und Gebrauch der Lehrbegierigen Musicalischen Jugend, for the use of young musicians eager to learn. Each part has 24 preludes and fugues, one pair for every major and minor key. In notes from his studies with the conductor Hans von Bülow, Theodor Pfeiffer records the sentence Das wohltemperirte Clavier ist das alte Testament, die Beethoven’schen Sonaten das neue, an beide müssen wir glauben. The Well-Tempered Clavier is the Old Testament, Beethoven’s sonatas the New, and we must believe in both.
We Must Know, We Will Know
In the early 1920s, in talks in Hamburg in 1921 and in lectures at Göttingen, David Hilbert set out his Beweistheorie, proof theory. Its aim was to make the proofs of mathematics themselves the object of investigation, and to show that no contradiction could ever be derived within the system.
On 8 September 1930 Hilbert spoke at a congress of German scientists and physicians in Königsberg. In mathematics, he said, there is no Ignorabimus, no “we shall not know.” He ended with the words Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know. We will know. The words are on his gravestone in Göttingen. On the day before, at a conference in the same city, Kurt Gödel had announced the result that dealt Hilbert’s program a severe blow.
Words for Clean Work
gründlich — thorough. The word comes from Grund, the ground. To be gründlich is to go down to the bottom of a thing.
saubere Arbeit — clean work, the common praise for a job done well.
handwerklich sauber — clean in its craft. It is said of a law, an article or a piece of engineering when the work was done properly. A law can be handwerklich sauber and still be politically wrong.
schlampig gearbeitet — sloppily done. The verdict is about the method. It can apply even when the result turned out fine.
Pi mal Daumen — pi times thumb, a rough estimate. The speaker uses it to mark a number that was not properly worked out.