183

Albert Einstein

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 40,000.00 USD
Albert Einstein

Bidding Over

The auction is over for this lot.
The auctioneer wasn't accepting online bids for this lot.

Contact the auctioneer for information on the auction results.

Search for other lots to bid on...
Auction Date:2018 Aug 08 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS in German, signed “A. Einstein,” two pages, 8.5 x 11, blindstamped Princeton letterhead, December 17, 1953. Remarkable letter to Max Fishler, in part (translated): “The question regarding Time and Space in connection with Kant’s philosophy is not an easy one to answer insofar as Kant’s view regarding Time and Space is interpreted differently by different people. It seems to me, however, that essentially Kant subscribes to the following view:

Spatial thinking is not bound to sensible experience in the same sense as thinking with respect to corporeal objects. The spatial concepts are for him a priori, that is, given before any experience and to a certain degree inborn tools of perception and of thought. (Intuition a priori). To this fact does he refer back the indisputability of geometric propositions.

Today, however, hardly anyone doubts that the indisputability consists only in the sense that we are dealing with logical consequents from given axioms which even from the logical standpoint are intentionally postulated.

Naturally, this insight has now become trivial since mathematicians have erected other geometries which depart from Euclidean geometry and are, logically, equally as consistent as the Euclidean geometry. We know further that the Euclidean axioms are due to our experiences of solid bodies, through which they are aroused, and that therefore a psychological dependence on that which is empirically given is hardly to be doubted.

We may say then,—as I see it, with justice—that all concepts, not only the mathematical ones, are a priori insofar as they are not logically deducible from naked experience. But this holds for all concepts, for the concepts of the empirical sciences not less than for the concepts of pure mathematics.

The general theory of relativity has in my opinion convincingly shown that the spatial character belongs to the objects of the physical world as a mere characteristic of it (i.e. four-dimensionality of space-time).

The contrast to Kant can be illustrated briefly through the short sentence: the inner space of a box is ‘real’ in the same sense as the box itself.” In fine condition, with intersecting folds and light handling wear. With Einstein's introduction of the special and general theories of relativity, Immanuel Kant's long-respected notions of a priori space and time were suddenly cast into doubt. This represented a major intellectual shift in the 20th century, and its implications reverberated throughout the arts and sciences alike. Overall, this is a complex, amazing Einstein letter discussing the impact of his most important discoveries on the philosophy of science.