25th of June – The birthday of Frigyes Karinthy, the pioneer of ’six degrees of separation’

Did you know that the famous ‘six degrees of separation’ theory was originally set out by a Hungarian? This person is Frigyes Karinthy, one of the most popular Hungarian writers, who is still quoted a lot of times up to this day, as he had a remarkable sense of humour and many popular sayings.

He was born into a middle-class family on the 25^th of June, 1887. Despite his talent in humanities, he started learning natural sciences after high school. He didn’t finish his studies but obtained such amount of knowledge, which later made him the most versed in sciences among his writer colleagues, and became one of the few authors who were both educated in humanities and sciences.

He was part of the Hungarian literature life from a young age: firstly, as a journalist (and for ever), and later, as a poet, writer. His literary parody about the style and methods of former poets, writers, ‘That’s how you write’, made him instantly famous. Humour became his fate, as everyone knew him mainly for that specialty. His other famous work is ‘Please, Sir’, the collection of his school memories.

He was a very open-minded philosopher, the most conscious and consistent descendant of the 18^th century Enlightenment, the representative of the century’s humanists seeking sciences. He was probably the most original and most surprising writer, novelist of his era when it comes to the themes of his works, and a perfect example of this is his novel ‘Chain-links’, which set out the ‘six degrees of separation’ idea for the first time.

According to the six degrees of separation theory, we truly live in a small world, as two people can be contacted through a relationship network no matter where they live in the world. In this network, two people are divided by maximum 5 people, meaning that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away from any other person in the world.

As mentioned above, the theory was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929, in his novel ‘Chains-links’. He thought that, with the growth of a chain, the number of acquaintances grows exponentially, meaning that a few relations are enough for the circle of friend to expand to humanity.

“A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth – anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.”

“I took on the harder task, in other words, a hammerer worker from the Ford factory, and I was able to solve the task by 4 chain-links. The worker knows his shop-superintendent, who knows Ford himself and Ford is good friends with the managing director of the Hearts magazine, who met with Árpád Pásztor last year, who is not only my acquaintance, but also my great friend. So I would only have to ask him to telegraph the managing director to ask Ford, to ask his shop-superintendent, to tell his hammerer worker to rivet me a car as I’m in need of one.”

The idea, which influenced early thoughts on social networks, was popularized by John Guare’s play titled ‘Six degrees of separation’, which  ruminates upon the idea that any two individuals are connected by at most five others. Nevertheless, Karinthy is regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation.

Photos: www.huszadikszazad.hu, www.tiszta-kommunikacio.hu

Copy editor: bm

Source: Daily News Hungary