“As the players left the Miramar Hotel to go home to their respective countries or states, Bobby simply refused to check out. Other players have been known to do the same thing. It’s like an actor remaining in character and refusing to leave his dressing room, or a writer refusing to leave his garret after finishing a book. The challenge is tearing oneself away from a venue that has been one’s creative home for so many hours, days, weeks, or months. Three weeks after everyone else had left, Bobby was still at the Miramar, just steps from the ocean, surrounded by gardens and palm trees, breathing in the pungent smell of eucalyptus. He swam and walked, and then often spent the rest of the day—and a good portion of the night—playing over all the games of the tournament, torturing himself over the mistakes he’d made. Someone finally pointed out to him that the Piatigorskys would no longer continue to pick up his hotel costs, so, reluctantly, he flew back home to Brooklyn.”
― Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
― Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
“Worry about Fischer led the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sports, which studied the psychology of sports, to appoint a Soviet grandmaster and theoretician, Vladimir Alatortsev, to create a secret laboratory (located near the Moscow Central Chess Club). Its mission was to analyze Fischer’s games. Alatortsev and a small group of other masters and psychologists worked tirelessly for ten years attempting to “solve” the mystery of Fischer’s prowess, in addition to analyzing his personality and behavior. They rigorously studied his opening, middle game, and endings—and filtered classified analyses of their findings to the top Soviet players.”
― Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
― Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
“If the law of gravitation be regarded as universal, the point may be stated as follows. The laws of motion require to be stated by reference to what have been called kinetic axes: these are in reality axes having no absolute acceleration and no absolute rotation. It is asserted, for example, when the third law is combined with the notion of mass, that, if m, m' be the masses of two particles between which there is a force, the component accelerations of the two particles due to this force are in the ratio m2 : m1. But this will only be true if the accelerations are measured relative to axes which themselves have no acceleration. We cannot here introduce the centre of mass, for, according to the principle that dynamical facts must be, or be derived from, observable data, the masses, and therefore the centre of mass, must be obtained from the acceleration, and not vice versâ. Hence any dynamical motion, if it is to obey the laws of motion, must be referred to axes which are not subject to any forces. But, if the law of gravitation be accepted, no material axes will satisfy this condition. Hence we shall have to take spatial axes, and motions relative to these are of course absolute motions. 465. In order to avoid this conclusion, C. Neumann* assumes as an essential part of the laws of motion the existence, somewhere, of an absolutely rigid “Body Alpha”, by reference to which all motions are to be estimated. This suggestion misses the essence of the discussion, which is (or should be) as to the logical meaning of dynamical propositions, not as to the way in which they are discovered. It seems sufficiently evident that, if it is necessary to invent a fixed body, purely hypothetical and serving no purpose except to be fixed, the reason is that what is really relevant is a fixed place, and that the body occupying it is irrelevant. It is true that Neumann does not incur the vicious circle which would be involved in saying that the Body Alpha is fixed, while all motions are relative to it; he asserts that it is rigid, but rightly avoids any statement as to its rest or motion, which, in his theory, would be wholly unmeaning. Nevertheless, it seems evident that the question whether one body is at rest or in motion must have as good a meaning as the same question concerning any other body; and this seems sufficient to condemn Neumann’s suggested escape from absolute motion.”
― Principles of Mathematics
― Principles of Mathematics
“The notion that a term can be modified arises from neglect to observe the eternal self-identity of all terms and all logical concepts, which alone form the constituents of propositions.* What is called modification consists merely in having at one time, but not at another, some specific relation to some other specific term; but the term which sometimes has and sometimes has not the relation in question must be unchanged, otherwise it would not be that term which had ceased to have the relation.”
― Principles of Mathematics
― Principles of Mathematics
“Every proposition, true or false—so the present theory contends—ascribes a predicate to a subject, and—what is a corollary from the above—there is only one subject. The consequences of this doctrine are so strange, that I cannot believe they have been realized by those who maintain it. The theory is in fact self-contradictory.”
― Principles of Mathematics
― Principles of Mathematics
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