In 1917 Max Weber gave a lecture in Munich called Wissenschaft als Beruf, Science as a Vocation. An idea, he said, comes when it pleases, not when we please. But normally it prepares itself only auf dem Boden ganz harter Arbeit, on the ground of very hard work. A dilettante can also have ideas of great consequence. What the dilettante lacks is die feste Sicherheit der Arbeitsmethode, the firm certainty of a working method. For this reason he is usually unable to check the idea, to assess its consequences or to carry it out.
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Something Learned Every Day
The Göttingen physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote in one of his notebooks: Man sollte sich nicht schlafen legen, ohne sagen zu können, daß man an dem Tage etwas gelernt hätte. (One should not go to sleep without being able to say that one has learned something that day.) He did not mean a new word. He meant, among other things, the Verbesserung eines Irrtums, in dem wir uns lange befunden haben, the correction of an error we have long held. This could not be done quickly before blowing out the candle. The occupations of the whole day had to aim at it.
In the same notebook stands his much-quoted line about change: Ich kann freilich nicht sagen, ob es besser werden wird wenn es anders wird; aber so viel kann ich sagen, es muß anders werden, wenn es gut werden soll. (I certainly cannot say whether it will get better if it gets different. But this much I can say: it must get different if it is to get good.)
New Paths
In October 1853 Robert Schumann published an article called Neue Bahnen, New Paths, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the journal he had co-founded in 1834. The article introduced a young composer: Er heißt Johannes Brahms, kam von Hamburg, dort in dunkler Stille schaffend. (His name is Johannes Brahms. He came from Hamburg, where he had been working in dark silence.) Schumann told his readers that Brahms had been trained by an excellent teacher and recommended to him by einem verehrten bekannten Meister, a respected and well-known master. Das ist ein Berufener, Schumann wrote. This is one who has been called. Brahms wrote to Schumann that he feared he could not meet the standards the public would now expect.
He Does Not Play Dice
On 4 December 1926 Albert Einstein wrote to Max Born about the new quantum mechanics. He began with respect: Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtunggebietend. (Quantum mechanics commands great respect.) Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das noch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. (But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing.) The theory delivered a lot, he wrote, but it hardly brought us closer to the secret of the Old One. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt. (In any case I am convinced that He does not play dice.) Until his death in 1955 Einstein tried in vain to find a deterministic theory behind it. Experiments later disproved his conclusions. But the observations behind his objections proved correct and fundamental. German Wikipedia says he was the first to put his finger in an open wound.
Kant’s Touchstone
In December 1784 Immanuel Kant published his essay Was ist Aufklärung?, What Is Enlightenment? In it he asks whether a church assembly could bind itself and all later generations to fixed doctrines. He says it has no such right, and he gives a test for every law: Der Probierstein alles dessen, was über ein Volk als Gesetz beschlossen werden kann, liegt in der Frage: ob ein Volk sich selbst wohl ein solches Gesetz auferlegen könnte? (The touchstone of everything that can be decided as law for a people lies in the question: could a people impose such a law on itself?)
In Praise of Doubt
Around 1939 Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem called Lob des Zweifels, In Praise of Doubt. It begins: Gelobt sei der Zweifel! Ich rate euch, begrüßt mir / Heiter und mit Achtung den / Der euer Wort wie einen schlechten Pfennig prüft! (Praised be doubt! I advise you, greet cheerfully and with respect the one who tests your word like a bad coin.) He goes on: Ich wollte, ihr wäret weise und gäbt / Euer Wort nicht allzu zuversichtlich. (I wish you were wise and did not give your word too confidently.)
I Hear the Message
In the first scene of Goethe’s Faust, the scholar Faust sits alone at night and raises a cup to his lips. Easter bells ring, and a choir announces the resurrection. Faust answers: Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube (I hear the message well, but I lack the faith). The line became a familiar quotation in German, a skeptical answer to good news.
Doubt Everything at Least Once
The physicist and writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg kept notebooks that he called Sudelbücher, waste books. In one of them he wrote: Zweifle an allem wenigstens einmal, und wäre es auch der Satz: zweimal 2 ist 4. (Doubt everything at least once, even if it is the sentence: two times two is four.)
The Age of Criticism
In 1781 Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason. In a footnote to its preface he wrote: Unser Zeitalter ist das eigentliche Zeitalter der Kritik, der sich alles unterwerfen muß. (Our age is the true age of criticism, and everything must submit to it.) Religion, through its holiness, and lawmaking, through its majesty, usually try to escape it. But then, Kant wrote, they arouse justified suspicion. They cannot claim the sincere respect die die Vernunft nur demjenigen bewilligt, was ihre freie und öffentliche Prüfung hat aushalten können, which reason grants only to what has been able to withstand its free and public examination.
No Plan B
On 28 February 2016, Chancellor Angela Merkel was interviewed on the talk show Anne Will about her refugee policy. The question was Wann steuern Sie um, Frau Merkel?, when will you change course, Mrs. Merkel? She replied that she was deeply convinced that the path she had taken was right. An English-language report quoted her as saying: “I have no plan B.” German reports give the remark only in indirect speech: Einen Plan B habe sie nicht, she had no plan B.