Feb 16, 2020 10:30 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 17, 2020 08:53 PM by C C.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/0...tein-wrong
EXCERPT: . . . To be exact, is there a philosophy — a "metaphysics" — that goes beyond what the math and the data support? And, if such background metaphysics exist, could it be wrong even if the theory itself is right in terms of experiments and data? This question is at the heart of a fascinating book I've been reading called The Physicist and the Philosopher by Jimena Canales. It's a story about Albert Einstein (who needs no introduction) and Henri Bergson (who probably does).
The French philosopher Bergson was far more famous than Einstein in the first two decades of the 20th century. The reason most folks these days know Einstein's name but not Bergson's is, for Canales, an important story in itself. It's the story of how science seemed to become the last word on everything, even on a topic as subtle, slippery and difficult to pin down as time. It all began in 1922, when Einstein and Bergson met in an unplanned but fateful debate. Einstein had been invited to give a presentation in Paris on his theory of relativity. Time was central to Einstein's work. It was, however, also the central issue in Bergson's philosophy. Their conflicting views on the meaning of time set the scholars on collision course.
In the debate, Bergson made it clear he had no problem with the mathematical logic of Einstein's theory or the data that supported it. But for Bergson, relativity was not a theory that addressed time on its most fundamental, philosophical level. [...] In Bergson's philosophy, there was something greater to time than just measurements. Time was so central to human experience that fully unpacking it meant going beyond mere accounts of clocks or of even "psychological" perceptions. Instead, time was intimately connected to the bedrock of what it means to experience the world. It was, in some sense, the essence of human being and hence of being itself. For Bergson, that meant purely scientific accounts could not exhaust time's meaning or importance.
So, on that day in Paris, Bergson was not criticizing Einstein's theory. He was attacking a philosophy that had grown up around the theory — and that was being passed off as part of the science. It was the theory's hidden metaphysics that Bergson challenged. Bergson told Einstein that the only proper way to unpack the full meaning of time, in all its lived richness, was through explicit philosophical investigations. Einstein, however, was not moved. In response to Bergson's challenges, the physicist lobbed his now famous grenade: "The time of the philosophers does not exist," he told the audience. [Time as experienced.]
The remarkable thing about space-time is that it contains all the events that ever happened. [...] everything that will ever happen to you — including your death — is strung across space-time as a linked string of already existing events. Physicists call this your world line. So, is this really how time works? Do all events already exist in this "block universe" of Einstein's relativity? Is everything that will ever happen already trapped in the 4-D chamber of space-time?
This view is [...] one example of a philosophical theory about the nature of reality that grows out of a related, and validated, scientific theory. It is literally meta-physics and it's exactly the kind of thing Bergson was arguing against. For Bergson, and others at the time, there was a difference between the mathematical physics/data and the higher-order interpretation — the philosophy — you glued on it. It's in this way that Einstein could be right and wrong at the same time. He is clearly right about the science, but he could be wrong about the interpretation of time attached to that science.
Now, what are we to make of Bergson's claims? I don't know enough about Bergson's explicit philosophy of time to take a stand one way or another, but I do think his separation between valid scientific theories and the metaphysics that grows around them is worth considering. The physicist David Mermin once pointed out that we physicists have a way of turning our mathematical equations into "things" existing in the world. We take their success at describing aspects of the world (like the behavior of read-outs in an experiment) to mean the equations are fully interchangeable for real things (often unseen) existing out there independently in the real world. But for Mermin, the equations are always abstractions. They are immensely powerful and immensely useful stories we tell about the world that capture some essential truth but not all truth... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . To be exact, is there a philosophy — a "metaphysics" — that goes beyond what the math and the data support? And, if such background metaphysics exist, could it be wrong even if the theory itself is right in terms of experiments and data? This question is at the heart of a fascinating book I've been reading called The Physicist and the Philosopher by Jimena Canales. It's a story about Albert Einstein (who needs no introduction) and Henri Bergson (who probably does).
The French philosopher Bergson was far more famous than Einstein in the first two decades of the 20th century. The reason most folks these days know Einstein's name but not Bergson's is, for Canales, an important story in itself. It's the story of how science seemed to become the last word on everything, even on a topic as subtle, slippery and difficult to pin down as time. It all began in 1922, when Einstein and Bergson met in an unplanned but fateful debate. Einstein had been invited to give a presentation in Paris on his theory of relativity. Time was central to Einstein's work. It was, however, also the central issue in Bergson's philosophy. Their conflicting views on the meaning of time set the scholars on collision course.
In the debate, Bergson made it clear he had no problem with the mathematical logic of Einstein's theory or the data that supported it. But for Bergson, relativity was not a theory that addressed time on its most fundamental, philosophical level. [...] In Bergson's philosophy, there was something greater to time than just measurements. Time was so central to human experience that fully unpacking it meant going beyond mere accounts of clocks or of even "psychological" perceptions. Instead, time was intimately connected to the bedrock of what it means to experience the world. It was, in some sense, the essence of human being and hence of being itself. For Bergson, that meant purely scientific accounts could not exhaust time's meaning or importance.
So, on that day in Paris, Bergson was not criticizing Einstein's theory. He was attacking a philosophy that had grown up around the theory — and that was being passed off as part of the science. It was the theory's hidden metaphysics that Bergson challenged. Bergson told Einstein that the only proper way to unpack the full meaning of time, in all its lived richness, was through explicit philosophical investigations. Einstein, however, was not moved. In response to Bergson's challenges, the physicist lobbed his now famous grenade: "The time of the philosophers does not exist," he told the audience. [Time as experienced.]
The remarkable thing about space-time is that it contains all the events that ever happened. [...] everything that will ever happen to you — including your death — is strung across space-time as a linked string of already existing events. Physicists call this your world line. So, is this really how time works? Do all events already exist in this "block universe" of Einstein's relativity? Is everything that will ever happen already trapped in the 4-D chamber of space-time?
This view is [...] one example of a philosophical theory about the nature of reality that grows out of a related, and validated, scientific theory. It is literally meta-physics and it's exactly the kind of thing Bergson was arguing against. For Bergson, and others at the time, there was a difference between the mathematical physics/data and the higher-order interpretation — the philosophy — you glued on it. It's in this way that Einstein could be right and wrong at the same time. He is clearly right about the science, but he could be wrong about the interpretation of time attached to that science.
Now, what are we to make of Bergson's claims? I don't know enough about Bergson's explicit philosophy of time to take a stand one way or another, but I do think his separation between valid scientific theories and the metaphysics that grows around them is worth considering. The physicist David Mermin once pointed out that we physicists have a way of turning our mathematical equations into "things" existing in the world. We take their success at describing aspects of the world (like the behavior of read-outs in an experiment) to mean the equations are fully interchangeable for real things (often unseen) existing out there independently in the real world. But for Mermin, the equations are always abstractions. They are immensely powerful and immensely useful stories we tell about the world that capture some essential truth but not all truth... (MORE - details)
