I need to to stop investigating the Einstein quotes myself before it literally drives me insane. The problem of fake Einstein quotes is huge. Much too big for me. The breaking point came this evening when I saw a post on Facebook from a FB group claiming to be pro-science, and claiming that Einstein said, "Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them."
None of the sources I've found attributing this to Einstein seem to have heard of attribution. None of the sites I've found with a page which sorts out false Einstein quotes deals with this one. Which doesn't mean that I should accept it as genuine, because of the volume of false Einstein quotes.
By the way, I must apologize, because I've told sold people that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" is from Einstein. I still think it's a fairly good saying, but apparently someone else came up with it.
I repeat: the problem of fake Einstein quotes is much too big for me to tackle. It may be too big for any one person to handle, even the sharpest, most dedicated Einstein biographer. An entire website may not be enough. An entire institute may be needed. I can't solve the problem: all I can do is point at it and scream, "Help!"
No, actually, there's one more thing I can do while I'm here. I can explain a term I used above in this post: attribution. That's simply saying where you got a quote.
Strictly speaking, in the row of words:
"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." -- Albert Einstein,
Albert Einstein is an attribution. If I wanted to give the most exact attribution I could, I would write:
"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." -- Albert Einstein, according to some Internet sources about whose reliability I know nothing.
What I was looking for was something like the title of a book from which the quote was taken, or, even better, the title of a book and a page number. Or the name of a magazine which interviewed Einstein, or a radio station which aired remarks by Einstein, and the date when they did so. This wouldn't completely solve the issue of the authenticity of the quote, but it would be a big help.
Let's take the example of a famous quote which I believe to genuine:
"Without music, life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche.
That's a translation of
"Ohne Musik waere das Leben ein Irrtum" -- Freidrich Nietzsche.
A more detailed attribution would be
"Ohne Musik waere das Leben ein Irrtum" -- Freidrich Nietzsche, Goetzen-Daemmerung.
("Goetzen-Daemmering" is the title of Nietzsche's book which is usually translated into English as Twilight of the Idols.)
Or, if I wanted to be as helpful as I possibly could be to someone who might be wondering whether that really is a genuine quote from Nietzsche, I could give them everything I have, in the same manner in which you may have been taught in school to write footnotes:
"Ohne Musik waere das Leben ein Irrtum" -- Freidrich Nietzsche, Goetzen-Daemmerung, "Sprueche und Pfeile, 33. Frankfurt aM and Leipzig: insel taschenbuch, 2000, p 15.
If the person who wonders whether "Without music, life would be a mistake" is from Nietzsche doesn't trust me, he can get a copy of the book I've cited and look for aphorism 33 on page 15. If he doesn't trust the publisher of the book, Insel Verlag, to have gotten it right (Insel have a fairly good reputation), he can investigate the Nietzsche's publishing history and manuscripts. As the agnostics are constantly and uselessly telling us, nothing can ever be absolutely proven. But
"Ohne Musik waere das Leben ein Irrtum" -- Freidrich Nietzsche, Goetzen-Daemmerung, "Sprueche und Pfeile, 33. Frankfurt aM and Leipzig: insel taschenbuch, 2000, p 15.
is somewhat better in this regard than
"Without music, life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche.
Showing posts with label attribution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attribution. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Am I an Historian?
[PS, 19. March 2016: No, I'm not an historian, I'm an essayist with a strong interest in history who's also written novels, stories and plays.]
Well... yes, I think perhaps I am, I think an historian may be what I am turning into. If an historian is someone who not only studies historical topics a lot, but also often has questions, the answers to which he does not find in other peoples' historical writings, and is seized by the strong desire to search among primary documents and artifacts as well as in secondary sources until he finds those answers, and then writes about what he has found, then, yes, I am very much an historian.
Here's an example of one of those questions which occurred to me recently: I had been aware that Johannes Gutenberg, whether or not he actually invented printing, had begun printing sometime in the 1430's or '40's, and from that I had assumed that the editio princeps of many a work of Classical antiquity dated from before 1450. But this appears not to be the case: I know of only one Classical work printed before 1469: Cicero's De Officiis,
printed in 1465. Then beginning in 1469 a great number of first editions of Classical authors followed in close succession, with editions of Apulius, Livy, Lucan, Vergil, Caesar and Pliny the Elder all appearing in that year alone,
Why did it take so long for printers to get around to printing Classical texts? Was the interest in Classical material really so small? Were students of Classical literature somehow averse to the new technology?
No, and no. Rather, it seems that I had been puzzled because I made a couple of anachronistic assumptions: that the invention of printing, once achieved, became widely-known with a speed analogous to the news of inventions in out time; and that Gutenberg and other printers would seek out any and all customers for their invention. Actually, Gutenberg, and other of the earliest European printers in Gutenberg's corner of Germany, did not seek to publicize his invention. On the contrary, he tried very hard to keep it secret, so that others couldn't imitate what he did and compete with him. This naturally meant, for as long as they successfully maintained this secrecy, that their potential market remained small and local. And the customers they knew wanted primarily Christian things: parts of the Bible, eventually whole Bibles,
and contemporary and medieval theology. The Classical printings came in great quantity as soon as the techniques of printing became less secret, and spread across Europe. This appears not to have happened until about 1469, when it spread very rapidly indeed all over Western Europe.
If I had a little more professionalism as an historian, I could, and would, tell you from exactly whom I learned all this. Unfortunately, I remembered roughly what was said and forgot who said it -- somewhere on the Internet. That was several months ago, though, and I'm getting more conscientious, more into the habit of recording attribution more as a matter of course when I note things. Good historians are good about giving attribution in their footnotes. Not only is this polite and proper, it also answers the question Oh yeah? Who sez? with which we (they? we) are perpetually confronted.
Years ago -- 10 years? 15? 20? I don't know how many years ago, I hadn't gotten into the habit yet of writing such things down -- a question which I much wanted to answer was, What was Charlemagne's native language? I read accounts of Charlemagne in several history books without learning the answer, until I found it here: Karl der Große. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten,
by Wolfgang Braunfels. It turns out that Charlemagne's native langugae was German; in fact, the written German language pretty much begins in his reign, and, more than that, at the very least the process of making German a written language received his strong support. It may have been his idea. (In those days people tended to write in languages which already had a tradition of writing: Latin, Greek, Hebrew and so forth -- mostly Latin in Charlemagne's Empire -- and it seems only rarely to have occurred to anyone to write in one of the various spoken languages of Europe.)
Well... yes, I think perhaps I am, I think an historian may be what I am turning into. If an historian is someone who not only studies historical topics a lot, but also often has questions, the answers to which he does not find in other peoples' historical writings, and is seized by the strong desire to search among primary documents and artifacts as well as in secondary sources until he finds those answers, and then writes about what he has found, then, yes, I am very much an historian.
Here's an example of one of those questions which occurred to me recently: I had been aware that Johannes Gutenberg, whether or not he actually invented printing, had begun printing sometime in the 1430's or '40's, and from that I had assumed that the editio princeps of many a work of Classical antiquity dated from before 1450. But this appears not to be the case: I know of only one Classical work printed before 1469: Cicero's De Officiis,
printed in 1465. Then beginning in 1469 a great number of first editions of Classical authors followed in close succession, with editions of Apulius, Livy, Lucan, Vergil, Caesar and Pliny the Elder all appearing in that year alone, Why did it take so long for printers to get around to printing Classical texts? Was the interest in Classical material really so small? Were students of Classical literature somehow averse to the new technology?
No, and no. Rather, it seems that I had been puzzled because I made a couple of anachronistic assumptions: that the invention of printing, once achieved, became widely-known with a speed analogous to the news of inventions in out time; and that Gutenberg and other printers would seek out any and all customers for their invention. Actually, Gutenberg, and other of the earliest European printers in Gutenberg's corner of Germany, did not seek to publicize his invention. On the contrary, he tried very hard to keep it secret, so that others couldn't imitate what he did and compete with him. This naturally meant, for as long as they successfully maintained this secrecy, that their potential market remained small and local. And the customers they knew wanted primarily Christian things: parts of the Bible, eventually whole Bibles,
and contemporary and medieval theology. The Classical printings came in great quantity as soon as the techniques of printing became less secret, and spread across Europe. This appears not to have happened until about 1469, when it spread very rapidly indeed all over Western Europe.If I had a little more professionalism as an historian, I could, and would, tell you from exactly whom I learned all this. Unfortunately, I remembered roughly what was said and forgot who said it -- somewhere on the Internet. That was several months ago, though, and I'm getting more conscientious, more into the habit of recording attribution more as a matter of course when I note things. Good historians are good about giving attribution in their footnotes. Not only is this polite and proper, it also answers the question Oh yeah? Who sez? with which we (they? we) are perpetually confronted.
Years ago -- 10 years? 15? 20? I don't know how many years ago, I hadn't gotten into the habit yet of writing such things down -- a question which I much wanted to answer was, What was Charlemagne's native language? I read accounts of Charlemagne in several history books without learning the answer, until I found it here: Karl der Große. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten,
by Wolfgang Braunfels. It turns out that Charlemagne's native langugae was German; in fact, the written German language pretty much begins in his reign, and, more than that, at the very least the process of making German a written language received his strong support. It may have been his idea. (In those days people tended to write in languages which already had a tradition of writing: Latin, Greek, Hebrew and so forth -- mostly Latin in Charlemagne's Empire -- and it seems only rarely to have occurred to anyone to write in one of the various spoken languages of Europe.)
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