The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time by Jimena Canales (PDF)

Description

The explosive debate that transformed our views about time and scientific truthOn 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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is an academic work, but it is readily accessible to a popular audience, as long as that audience is even a little willing to navigate some fine points of history that have been long smothered by the triumphalist declarations of physicists who’ve built their careers on (among other things) never learning the back-story on their own discipline.This is an exceptionally well-researched work, and it is in that detail that the more casual reader might get lost. But the details are vital, and it is from those tiny nuances that the greater narrative emerges, as well as the evidence for how that narrative has come to be systematically misrepresented in the “just so” stories that now command popular science.I have a few professional cavils with the book. Were Dr. Canales and I to sit down together, I’d argue some minor issues regarding how she reads Cassirer’s role in this fascinating debate. (I would maintain that Cassirer was far more subversive than Dr. Canales gives him credit, but Einstein and others missed this fact.) On the other hand, her treatment of Whitehead, while fairly restrained (she never touches on Whitehead’s metaphysical works, which I have argued emerged as a need to address the philosophical failures of his epistemologically oriented philosophy of science) is nevertheless both accurate, and arguably more accurate than much of the secondary literature that is nominally supposed to be centered on Whitehead’s thought.I am reluctant to give this book only four stars, as I gobbled it up in an unusually fast (for me) and intense reading. I’m not sure my criticisms above really merit “dinging” the book by a star. Call this my, perhaps misguided, attempt to resist rating inflation. Because anyone with a genuine interest in the historical foundations of contemporary gravitational cosmology *MUST* read this book.

⭐Being neither a physicist nor a philosopher, but having a lifelong interest in Einstein’s relativity theories (to the extent I understand them) as well as an admiration for Bergson’s “Creative Evolution”, I was very eager to read Ms. Canales’ book, and after finishing it, I felt the addition of another review, this time from a “lay” reader, might prove helpful to some readers. The author weaves a 400-page book out of a 20 minute debate that Einstein and the Philosopher Henri Bergson had in 1922 where Bergson challenged the implications of relativity theory on our understanding of time. Newtonian absolute time (and space) reigned in science, and in people’s common understanding, before Einstein’s special, and then general, relativity swept it away in the early part of the 20th century. Recognizing the constancy of the speed of light, whether emanating from “stable” objects or “moving” objects, allows other aspects of the universe to vary such as space and time. Hence, we have time dilation and the Twins Paradox where a twin on a rocket ship approaching the speed of light barely ages compared to his earthbound twin. Two clocks can “tick” at different rates based on their relative acceleration. While these notions seem perplexing to our everyday notions of time, they have repeatedly been verified by careful experiments.The author describes the development of relativity theory, and particularly its implications for time, in clear detail, and includes useful biographical insights into Einstein. Parallel to this scientific development, she describes the philosophical reaction to time dilation and relative time that begins with Bergson’s 1922 direct challenge to Einstein, and continues with other philosophers including Whitehead and Heidegger. The author notes, however, that some philosophers like Bertrand Russell were strong supporters of the implications for time of Einstein’s theories. The author also delves into the “arrow of time” which is reversible according to some theories, but has a definite direction according to the second law of thermodynamics. There’s also some discussion about whether time is continuous, as implied by Minkowski “world lines”, or discrete, as discussed at length in the developing motion picture industry where 24 static frames per second provided perceptual continuity. My impression from this book was that Einstein and his physicist friends opted for discrete units of time (like in mass and energy) while most of the philosophers favored the flow of time as in continuous time.The author’s storyline goes something like this: Einstein develops special and then general relativity which is confirmed by the 1919 solar eclipse making him a worldwide sensation, then Bergson challenges his notions of time at a Paris conference in 1922 and in the subsequent debate Einstein is generally declared the winner eroding Bergson’s reputation, but then over the next several decades Bergson’s ideas about time are re-discovered or re-packaged (usually, it seems, by French philosophers) and the challenge to Einstein is reinvigorated and continues, in some (Continental) philosophical circles, to the present day. I commend the author for her balanced treatment; her impressive knowledge of both science and philosophy is striking. The one (major) flaw in the book (which knocks it down a star) is that I was unable to follow the reasons for Bergson’s philosophical objections. The science in the book was clear but the philosophy was less so. Einstein was relying on clock time, which Bergson and his cadres seem to take issue with, and I really couldn’t follow the nature of Bergson’s objections. I can only agree with Einstein that Bergson’s notions of time were more of a “subjective, psychological” nature; or as the philosopher Whitehead once put it: “time measured vs. time lived.” Perhaps the philosophical ideas promoted by Bergson and his like-minded followers are too subtle for me to follow, but perhaps they represent yet another example of philosophers pursuing what their critic Richard Feynman called “exercises in linguistic sophistry.”

⭐I expected more of this book because of the title. However the book is a narration of a story between Einstein and Bergson. But I expected a book involved in the theory of time itself which elaborates the different views of these physicist and philosopher on time. I mean I wished I found a book which deepened in the topic. I believe some sections of the book are unneeded and irrelevant. There are some personalities and manes which are used for dramatizing a story but in this book I think, they could be easily ignorable. For deepening the subject, the author should have been involved in the “simultaneity and duration” a book by Bergson and Einstein ‘s relativity theory and time. Focusing on these would be useful far more than narrating a story. I think in spite of the second title of the book, the book misses Time. The writer’s attention to some contemporary thinker as Benjamin and Badiou is remarkable. Such thinkers could have been concentrated.

⭐It is very repetitive in its arguments It does not get to the point

⭐Libro stupendo quanto faticoso: è un mattone corposo, complicato (anche se molto chiaro, accessibile anche a chi ha giusto le conoscenze base sia di fisica sia di filosofia), scritto in un inglese molto accademico e colto che mi ha messo in difficoltà (dio salvi il word wise di Kindle, che invenzione). Fatta salva la fatica, un libro da leggere con passione: il dibattito tra Einstein e Bergson – si capisce molto chiaramente leggendolo – va molto oltre il giorno in cui si sono incontrati e scontrati. Tale dibattito informa di sé una larga parte del dibattito epistemologico contemporaneo e ancora oggi risulta attuale ed estremamente gustoso. Lettura davvero notevole!

⭐This is a great book for people interested in science having some knowledge of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. It can greatly expand horizons of people who had no prior interest in philosophical and social impact of the theory. This is a journey into the minds of Einstein, Bergson, Lorentz, Poincare and others.Data is gathered from sources which are hard to obtain for average readers and meticulously cross-referenced. But this is not a dull thesis. Jimena Canales makes you feel as if she was there personally witnessing the debates, meetings, and conversations.This book is like a beautiful fractal. You go to a point and branch into a structure with different colours but still connected with the same idea.As a result an interesting image of the 19/20th centuries scientist’s mindset emerges.It is surprising how much effect on scientific reasoning have prejudices, beliefs of all sorts such as religious, political, philosophical, nationalistic and the like.In my own opinion the reason relativity is not reconciled with common sense is not the common sense’s fault but a position that time is something mysterious independently existing and interfering with change, while for any practical purpose it is a synchronized indication of array of clocks, nothing more nothing less. Einstein seems to have been in this mindset initially but evolved to consider time as something real. Two conflicting views but you can pull one meaning at a time when convenient.Another interesting pictures emerges how inefficient all these debates were. No concept of separating concerns. They dump everything they can at once. Philosophy, clock, psychology, religion – all blended together. No wonder nothing conclusive came out. Taking the twin paradox very well documented in the book, all you see is words and words and words and human twins with their psychology. The actual problem is actually very simple to resolve mathematically. One can prove it within Special Relativity framework with a couple of equations disregarding accelerations that stay home twin ages more and the traveling twin less. You can also prove that if the traveler ignores the fact he has moved and switched reference frames attributing this to the stay home twin he will still calculate correctly the age of the partner which will show the stay home twin is indeed older.This book helps me a lot in my work. It would take a century to collect all the facts Jimena Canales gathered in one bookAndrew Wutke

⭐Un extraordinario análisis, una exhaustiva investigación sobre una etapa fundamental de la ciencia moderna, y sobre un debate vibrante y en algunos aspectos aún necesario.

⭐

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