THE EINSTEIN BRAIN
Josef Nesvadba

“The situation is extremely serious,”Professor Kozhevkin said as he brought his report to a close.“During the life of the last few generations our progress in various technical fields has liberated mankind,freed hu- manity from drudgery,hunger and war,and opened the way to the Universe.I can still remember the time when the Engineering Faculties of our Universities had the pick of the finest students,and when it was the heart’s desire of every young man to study a branch of technical science. Look at things today!Our young people have lost interest in what we are doing.Physics,chemistry and mathematics suddenly seem to have lost all interest for them.Every year fewer and fewer students apply for admission to our Engineering Faculty in Alma-Ata.There is a danger that in a few years we shall find ourselves obliged to restrict our research work and set limits to the number of staff employed.This state of affairs cannot be allowed to go on.Our machines cannot work without people in control, they cannot take care of the needs of mankind unless someone is running them.Energetic measures must be taken.”
       We all clapped and Dr.Kozhevkin sat down.
       “At our University in Toronto,”Professor Clark Smith-Jones said as he took the floor,“things are almost worse.We have already had to shut down several specialized departments for certain aspects of space research and the Department for Research into the Nature of Elementary Particles. While students flock to hear lectures on Goethe or Herder’s views on art, we have been forced to give up the gymnasium to the aesthetics lecturer, although when the University was founded his department was so insig- nificant it was almost forgotten.And what is so shocking about it all is that we cannot imagine how this state of affairs was brought about.Is it the natural desire of the younger generation to rebel against their parents and do something different?Or is it some kind of unconscious protest”(here Professor Kozhevkin permitted himself a smile)“against figures who are the symbol of order and therefore the symbol of paternal authority?Our psychologists have been studying the matter for a long time without coming to any conclusion,alas.”
       We clapped again and Professor Smith-Jones sat down.For a while there was an uncomfortable silence.Nobody felt like going on with the dis- cussion.They were afraid to speak up.And yet the reasons for this changing trend had been known long enough.I decided to speak myself.
       “There is no point in refusing to face the truth,”I said to get down to brass tacks at once.“We’ve come to the end of our resources.We’ve reached a dead-end.It is true that since the end of the nineteenth century the technical sciences have transformed the world and thrown all other branches of knowledge into the shade;they have made it possible for humanity to devote itself to more important tasks and so on and so forth. We are all aware of these things.But technical progress has not solved the fundamental problems of the human mind.People are still asking how and why we should live,we still know nothing of how the universe came into being,and we still cannot understand the fourth dimension Einstein worked out.Whenever we set this question to our cybernetic machines they refuse it as unscientific,wrongly set out,too personal,private, human.But this does not make the question any less important for every one of us.Professor Smith-Jones and Professor Kozhevkin both have the most ingeniously equipped laboratories that can be imagined;their brain machines solve in three seconds mathematical problems that would take even a clever mathematician a lifetime to work out —but these machines cannot answer our fundamental questions.And so we find ourselves in a vicious circle.Physics has become a practical branch of science,and the extent to which it is dependent on philosophy is becoming clearer day by day;it’s about the same as the way lacemaking is dependent on the artist’s design.That is why we are losing the interest of the younger generation. We are not concerned with the fundamental things of life.We have ended where we began.We can make machines which do the washing or the cooking most efficiently,perform surgical operations and fly through space,just as our forefathers hundreds of years ago made mechanical pianoplayers and dancing bears.They used to display their inventions at circuses.Thoughtful people considered these inventors no more than toy- makers,charlatans.The same fate menaces us.”
       Nobody clapped.Perhaps I had laid it on a bit thick.Smith-Jones was frowning and the others were muttering to each other.
       “What have you got against my machines,madam?”Professor Smith- Jones said as he leaped to his feet.“With the exception of the brain machines constructed by Professor Kozhevkin”(here he bowed)“they are the most efficient brain machines in the world.Nobody present here today can claim to have such a fine brain.Not even you,madam…”
     “I do not think as fast,or as faultlessly,you are right.But I can think up new problems,I can keep all your machines occupied dealing with my doubts and ignorance,and I like watching the sunset…”Smith-Jones was smiling ironically,as if he regretted having bothered to reply to a woman colleague of so little importance.He,one of the greatest brains in the scientific world.
       “It is of course true that our brain machines cannot understand the..........

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