Three Thousand Words

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Three Thousand Words

Three Thousand Words

Of the conditions, the one which evoked most comment was that stating the word limit. This limit was decided upon after the most careful discussion of the possibilities of the situation. It was not imagined for a moment that any contestant would succeed in getting within 3,000 words a complete discussion of all aspects of the Special and the General Theories of Relativity. It was however felt that for popular reading a single essay should not be much if any longer than this. Moreover, I will say quite frankly that we should never have encouraged Mr. Higgins to offer such a prize if we had supposed that the winning essay was the only thing of value that would come from the contest, or if we had not expected to find in many of the other essays material which would be altogether deserving of the light. From the beginning we had in view the present volume, and the severe restriction in length was deliberately imposed for the purpose of forcing every contestant to stick to what he considered the most significant viewpoints, and to give his best skill to displaying the theories of Einstein to the utmost advantage from these viewpoints. We felt that divergent viewpoints would [8]be more advantageously treated in this manner than if we gave each contestant enough space to discuss the subject from all sides; and that the award of the prize to the essay which, among other requirements, seemed to the Judges to embody the best choice of material, would greatly simplify the working of the contest without effecting any injustice against those contestants who displayed with equal skill less happily chosen material. Perhaps on this point I may again quote with profit the editorial page of the Scientific American:

“An essay of three thousand words is not long enough to lose a reader more than once; if it does lose him it is a failure, and if it doesn’t it is a competitor that will go into the final elimination trials for the prize. If we can present, as a result of the contest, six or a dozen essays of this length that will not lose the lay reader at all, we shall have produced something amply worth the expenditure of Mr. Higgins’ money and our time. For such a number of essays of such character will of necessity present many different aspects of the Einstein theories, and in many different ways, and in doing so will contribute greatly to the popular enlightenment.

“Really the significant part of what has already appeared is not the part that is intelligible, but rather the part that, being unintelligible, casts the shadow of doubt and suspicion on the whole. The successful competitor for the prize and his close contestants will have written essays that, without any claim to completeness, will emphasize what seems to each author the big outstanding feature; and every one of them will be intelligible. Together they will [9]in all probability be reasonably complete, and will retain the individual characteristic of intelligibility. They will approach the various parts of the field from various directions—we could fill this page with suggestions as to how the one item of the four-dimensional character of Einstein’s time-space might be set forth for the general reader. And when a man must say in three thousand words as much as he can of what eminent scientists have said in whole volumes—well, the result in some cases will be sheer failure, and in others a product of the first water. The best of the essays will shine through intelligent selection of what is to be said, and brilliant success in saying it. It is to get a group of essays of this character, not to get the single essay which will earn the palm, that the prize is offered.”

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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