The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time, by Jimena Canales
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The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time, by Jimena Canales
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On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson's theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable with the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein’s theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one that ignored the intuitive aspects of time. The Physicist and the Philosopher tells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today.
Jimena Canales introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism, phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new technologies of the period—such as wristwatches, radio, and film—helped to shape people’s conceptions of time and further polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his rival’s legacy—Bergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion.
The Physicist and the Philosopher is a magisterial and revealing account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a divided century marked by a new sense of time.
The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time, by Jimena Canales- Amazon Sales Rank: #380194 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2015, chosen by Maria PopovaOne of The Independent.ie Irish Writers' Top Reads 2015One of Brainpickings' The Best Science Books of 2015"In illuminating a historic 1922 debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson about the nature of time, Canales marks a turning point in the power of philosophy to influence science."--Publishers Weekly"Sparks--both incendiary and illuminating--fly from the collision of two giants!"--Booklist, starred review"This fascinating, scholarly, readable look at physics and epistemology will interest readers of science, history, philosophy, and biography."--Library Journal, starred review"Whether or not you agree, this humane and melancholy account of how two talents misunderstood each other will linger in the mind."--New Scientist"[Canales] weaves a tale around Europe and to America. . . . [Her] subject raises important core philosophical issues, like the scope of philosophy itself."--Michael Ruse, The Chronicle of Higher Education"This fascinating book traces a debate about the nature of time. . . . Canales has done a masterful job of research and explication. Her account of the debate is lively, the background of it is interesting, and the debate's ramifications as filtered through other minds are downright exciting. Anyone interested in physics or philosophy will have a field day with this book."--Kelly Cherry, The Smart Set"Canales does sterling work investigating these engagements . . . [A] stimulating book."--Graham Farmelo, Nature"In The Physicist and the Philosopher, Canales recounts how Bergson challenged Einstein's theories, arguing that time is not a fourth dimension definable by scientists but a 'vital impulse,' the source of creativity. It was an incendiary topic at the time, and it shaped a split between science and humanities that persisted for decades--though Einstein was generally seen as the winner and Bergson is all but forgotten."--Nancy Szokan, Washington Post"A book remarkable both for its profound research and for its elegance in presentation. Intellectual history should always be so accessible."--Benjamin Franklin Martin, Key Reporter"[General and professional readers] will learn much from a study that is accessible and edifying to a great diversity of readers."--Choice"The Physicist and the Philosopher . . . is at least three things: a monument to precise scholarship, an exemplar of logical clarity, and a fine example of excellent writing. I have rarely learned more from a book."Peter A.Y. Gunter, Physics in Perspective"Brilliant."--James Gleick, Bits in the Ether"A masterwork of cultural forensics."--Maria Popova, Brainpickings
From the Back Cover
"The Physicist and the Philosopher explores the nature of time, the meaning of relativity, and the place of philosophical thought in a scientific age. Canales aims to reposition Einstein's work in a field of disputation and give Bergson back the significance he had in his contemporaries' minds."--Cathryn Carson, University of California, Berkeley
"Like a stone cast on still waters, the Einstein-Bergson debate on the nature of time set off ever-widening ripples in physics and philosophy, but also in art, politics, and religion. In this fascinating book, Canales has written a kind of alternative intellectual history of the interwar decades of the twentieth century, one full of color and improbable conjunctions of people and ideas."--Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
"Is time too important to be left to the physicists and their measuring devices? That was the issue at stake in a 1922 debate between Albert Einstein and philosopher Henri Bergson, celebrated at the time and wonderfully recovered in Jimena Canales's new book. A fascinating look at a pivotal moment in how we think about one of the most fundamental features of the universe."--Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
"Sometimes past battles have repercussions that resonate long after memories have faded. In dramatic fashion, Jimena Canales demonstrates how a seemingly forgotten debate between Einstein and Bergson about the enigma of time changed the course of intellectual history."--Palle Yourgrau, Brandeis University
"Whether readers side with Einstein's physics or Bergson's philosophy isn't the most important thing: this book opens up new ways of thinking about the relationship between science and the humanities that unsettle both."--Gerald Holton, Harvard University
"This exciting, hugely interesting book opens out from a short but critical encounter between the philosopher Henri Bergson and the physicist Albert Einstein to consider their philosophies and the effects of their argument on the modern idea of time. Canales turns what is at first sight a limited debate into a major transatlantic encounter of profound implications. Well-researched, well-argued, and elegant, The Physicist and the Philosopher is a first-rate work of scholarship."--Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University
"The Physicist and the Philosopher is a lively and engaging account of the meaning of time in the twentieth century. Canales uses the 1922 debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson as a starting point from which to discuss an astonishing array of thinkers, technologies, and cultural developments. The book is an innovative, rich, and almost encyclopedic exploration of a crucially important question."--Edward Baring, author of The Young Derrida and French Philosophy, 1945-1968
About the Author Jimena Canales holds the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in the History of Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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43 of 50 people found the following review helpful. A Great Effort, A Critical Miss, By Stephen E. Robbins This book is an exhaustive, detailed, admirable effort, covering an aspect of scientific debate that originated with the twin paradox and the meaning of relativity, and covering a philosopher involved that should indeed be far more widely known. Dr. Canales seemingly hits every aspect of the relationship between Einstein and Bergson – their apartments, dress, allies and enemies in the philosophical and scientific world, technological developments, emerging commentaries and actors, the seminal effect of the debate in the academic world, all the way to the present. Even for a student of Bergson, new aspects and facts about this debate are continually being opened. The problem here is that it is a detailed history, but a history with little conceptual penetration of the debate. A one-star reviewer here (“Why was this book written?”) notes that after 100 pages, he still has no clue as to the significance of the debate. As far along as page 84, we find the phrase, “Bergson’s objections to the theory were disquieting…”, yet I doubt if any reader could summon any coherence as to what these objections were. It gets no clearer further on. Bergson’s statements sprinkle in throughout; nowhere is there a coherent presentation of his arguments. In other debates – Bergson versus the physicist Andre Metz, Bergson’s treatment of the physicist Becquerel’s arguments – Bergson’s actual arguments are somehow completely obscured – the inessential, strangely, is what is reported. I think it safe to say that the book leaves the general impression that, a) Bergson did not believe the time-retardations of relativity were possible, and b) there is a general conflict between the “lived” time described by Bergson and the abstract, scientific time of Einstein. And aside from the rich details of the history with its players and events, this is about it. This is a tragedy, both for a work of this scholarly an extent and depth, and particularly for the fact that it is not Einstein and the current interpretation of STR that needs explanation; this is ubiquitous, books appear on it constantly. It is Bergson that needs the explicating. The need to explicate Bergson exists because the twin paradox debate has never been settled, though Canales conveys the impression, generally, that it is. The issue is a rot at the core of physics, our theory of time, and therefore, our theory of consciousness, to include whether an AI can achieve consciousness. If one thinks this debate settled, witness respected philosopher of science, Tim Maudlin’s recent effort (Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time, 2015); witness his quadruple somersaults to resolve the issues. When Langevin announced the paradox in 1911, Bergson’s antenna went up, for Langevin was now claiming that special relativity (STR) can explain real, ontological effects – should the rocket-twin return looking like a young Brad Pitt, the earth twin with a grey beard in a wheel chair, this is a very physical, very real (ontological) effect. But the structure of STR precludes such an explanatory use. Einstein, as Bergson made explicit, had embedded the Lorentz transformations within a reciprocal system, wherein each observer can declare himself at rest, the other in motion, and vice versa. In STR, the rocket-twin is equally able to declare himself at rest, the earth-twin in motion. It is now the earth-twin that looks like Brad Pitt. For this reason, as MIT physicist A.P. French also took pains to explain in his textbook (Special Relativity, 1968), STR cannot be used to explain real, ontological effects, i.e., STR does not explain, and cannot be used to explain changes (either of length or of time-intervals) as "a property of matter" (p. 114); it only describes measurement effects - "something inherent in the measurement process" (p.114) – effects with no ontological status. This measurement effects (or “apparent” effects only) characteristic was exactly why STR was considered an explanation for the Michelson-Morley experiment. Lorentz, trying to save the Maxwell-Lorentz equations for electromagnetism and their requirement for an absolute motion in the ether, had a bit earlier offered a physical model of the contraction of the apparatus arm parallel to the motion of the ether (or of any body in motion, to include a reduction of frequency) based on electro-dynamic forces. It was a rejection of the relativity inherent in Newton’s first law. Physics rejected Lorentz’s offer; Einstein’s new version of relativity, with its measurement effects-only solution, was accepted. Physics nowadays uses the “pole-barn paradox” as a parable to reinforce this: A telephone pole, too long to fit into the barn when the pole is at rest, shrinks and fits inside when set in motion at high velocity. But, we are solemnly warned, the opposite is also true, there is that reciprocity – the barn can equally be set into motion, now the pole does not fit. Thus length (space) changes are considered not ontological; they are measurement effects only. Physics must hold this to stay consistent with its acceptance of Einstein and the supposed explanation of Michelson-Morley. But when we come to time, this is different. Not only is the twins’ differential aging considered very real, but STR is used to explain the also very real, longer life span of muons travelling at high velocity or the retardation of a clock carried on a jet relative to its twin left at the airport in the Hafele-Keating experiment. Yet not only its inherent reciprocity structure precludes using STR to explain these effects (French, like Bergson earlier, noted that one could put a tiny physicist on the muon, who now declares that HE is stationary, the earth physicist moving towards the muon), the fact is that in the Lorentz-Einstein equations, space changes compensate for time changes (lengths contract, time units expand). Space and time changes then cannot be of two different orders - one measurement only (space), one ontological (time). Again, to be consistent with its structure, all effects, whether of time or space, must indeed be taken as measurement effects, that is, non-ontological. What has happened is that roughly ever since Langevin, two incompatible solutions - that of Lorentz, that of Einstein - have been fused into an unholy mess. To explain these very real, very ontological effects - the muons, the jet-carried clocks - some other theory, yes, some other theory is necessary. This was the essence of Bergson’s argument. It is a far cry from Bergson simply not accepting the reality of time-retardations (which is roughly what we glean from the book), or per Einstein, that he "had not understood the physics" (p. 125). The above statement – some other theory is required to explain the longer living muons (or retarded clocks, or ageless twin), STR is invalidly used in doing so – is what Bergson could not get through to Andre Metz. You cannot see this – any of this – in Canales’ treatment, it is just obscured. Yes, the arguments shifted to invoking acceleration (since the rocket of the rocket-twin must accelerate) as the cause of the aging retardation, and thus we move into the General Theory. Bergson dealt little with GTR, but in what he did do, he had powerful arguments. For just one: How, he asked, can acceleration have such a privileged position in Einstein’s framework? Velocity is the first derivative - the rate of change of position with respect to time. Acceleration is simply the second derivative – the rate of change of the rate of change of position. How can the 2nd derivative be so privileged over the 1st? If one cannot derive the Lorentz equation for t’ in the context of acceleration, he argued, one has undercut all of the calculus and physics itself (search “Wang, Clock Paradox” for exactly this derivation). Acceleration being involved then changes nothing in the reciprocity structure between the twins. But none of this - to include the still unsettled and continued oscillation between STR and GTR as the source of explanation for these effects (there are plenty of attempts to keep STR as the source) and the diagnostic of illness this represents - makes it to the book. It is this very misuse – the supposed explanation of these time-related ontological effects by STR (note, not GTR!) – that gives STR its aura of validity or, per Canales, "unambiguous proof, " or "stunning confirmation” (p. 31). And, note, it is the belief that these real effects are explained by STR that is used to confirm the notion that the relativity of simultaneity is also real. This then cements in the supposed reality of STR’s space-time block with the entire past/present/future laid out in a frozen structure. It is a structure in which the experience of time’s flow becomes an illusion, an illusion yet to be explained. It is a structure that undermines any possibility of a theory of consciousness. This is what Bergson was battling. He had a theory of consciousness, a theory that speaks directly to Chalmers’ currently heavily debated “hard problem” of consciousness, a theory that presciently used the essentials of holography in a holographic view of the universe, and a model made coherent by his concept of time as an indivisible flow. His model of time, moreover, could easily be seen as that towards which physics has to move to relieve its current impasse (e.g., Unger and Smolin, “The Singular Universe,” and my review). But all this too is just neglected or obscured. There is much to be learned from the book. It is interesting to see that Einstein’s responses to critiques often consisted of nothing more than simple deflections, to the effect (and not using precise quotes): “Interesting, but it is a fantasy,” “XXXX does not understand the theory.” If one understands the actual issues, it seems Einstein got away with something. So unfortunate. At issue was the actual physical (not just the metaphysical) interpretation of a critical theory in physics, the validity and therefore usefulness of its “generalization” as a theory of gravity, the future question of just what theory (the consistent STR or the inconsistent) we are attempting to reconcile with quantum theory, and the nature of the theory of time to be used as a framework for a theory of consciousness. But the issues are obscured; they still are, and this too is unfortunate, for the subject is a great one.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful. Nice intersection between Science and Philosophty By Gary Einstein's block universe takes Time out of the universe. Time after Einstein can be said to be an illusion, time is that which exist so that everything doesn't happen at once. Henri Bergson, probably the most famous 20th century philosopher that most people have never heard of, but almost everyone has heard of his arguments ('elan vital', 'creative evolution', 'intuitive time'), wanted to put man and his intuitive understanding of time back into the center stage of the universe.If I were to write a movie where the protagonist was going to time travel, I would have her reading a copy of this book. Time is not what most of us think it is and by seeing if from the perspective of these two great minds adds to my appreciation for the nuances involved.I have a hard time finding new books in science or philosophy which are not just a rehash of other recent books that I have already read. This author manages to talk about her subject matter in a surprisingly refreshing manner. She gives the reader the connections and the nuances involved in the story. Einstein did make the 'original sin' (his words) of entwining the absolute speed of light with a physical clock. That is the ultimate problem that Bergson has with Einstein, the physical understanding of time with the universe's understanding of Time. Einstein (and as science always does) will mix the concrete (empirical) with the abstract (intellectual) and develops a theory about reality.The author draws the connection with Bergson's view point to Husserl's Phenomenology, to Heidegger's Being (Daisen), and to the start of the Existentialists. I did not realize, for example, that Heidegger's 'Being and Time' was such a strong reaction against Einstein. That Heidegger wanted to put the 'becoming' back into the world from the being of being (Daisen) because Time (that's 'time' with a capital 'T") was being taken out of the world.The book not only equally considers the science and the philosophy at the period under consideration it also gives a subtle discussion about the nature of science. Copernicus makes the sun the center of the solar system, but does that mean it's only that because it makes the mathematics easier to play with or is it really that way. Einstein takes out a universal time by taking out simultaneity and replacing it with the speed of light as a constant and a physical clock (and the equivalence principle, where inertia mass is equivalent to heavy mass, but the author seldom talks about gravity).Einstein never accepted quantum physics even though he is one of its principal creators because of his discovery of the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. His General Theory is based on continuity. Bergson's approach is more discrete thus more attuned with quantum physics. The author points out how in some ways the science of quantum physics started going towards Bergson.I really appreciate an accessible book that takes me way beyond the current popular science and philosophy books and not just a rehash of things I already know, and therefore I would recommend this book for those who love the intersection between science and philosophy and like to be challenged with a story that has not already been told in such depth.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful. A worthwhile and entertaining read! By robert A scholarly, elegantly written history, so well researched that it could serve as a text for a college level course .The author details the history of a debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson in Paris on April 1922, in which they discussed the meaning of time. The narrative uses the Hero concept, the Great idea concept ,the Great event concept and Tolstoy,s idea that he who talks the loudest makes history, to present the history and impact of the debate. I found the book to be an interesting and thorough discussion of the relationship between Art ( Philosophy) and Science as we consider our understanding and perception of Time.It would make a nice companion to Werner Lowenstein's Physics in Mind .
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