Einstein v. Bergson on time

Who was the most influential modern thinker on the subject of time? For most of the 20th Century and even now, in the opinion of many, it was Albert Einstein. He published his first work on relativity with implications for the concept in 1905. But his greatness was not acknowledged for the first third of that century largely because Henri Bergson, a philosopher, disagreed with him on the implications of relativity for human concerns. In fact, Einstein did not get the Nobel Prize for his work on relativity because of Bergson’s qualms. Instead, Einstein got the prize 1921 for work he considered less important.

On 6 April 1922, Bergson and Einstein met and publicly confronted each other… Einstein won out in the ensuing public relations war between the sciences and the humanities which continues to this day. Many people, even philosophers, know very little about Bergson and what they have heard has been filtered by famous critics such as Bertrand Russell. But Bergson’s ideas remained subversively pervasive and threaten a comeback. During his lifetime and since, Bergson has appealed to women and feminist thinkers as well as existentialists, pragmatists, and “creatives” everywhere.

It is difficult to exaggerate the intellectual rock star Bergson was during this period. How many philosophers today can fill a venue of almost 2,000 seats with an audience? Or had ever done so before him? None, that I know of. There were riots outside his lectures. Famous contemporary philosophers, John Dewey and William James sung his praises. Mathematicians and physicists, Henri Poincaré and Hendrik Lorentz aligned with Bergson against Einstein. Bergson was cited among the greatest thinkers of all time, along with Plato, Descartes, Hume and Kant. His understanding of time as duration, at the heart of his thought, was considered revolutionary. Duration is what it feels like to experience time.

But Einstein’s equations were not about feelings. They were presented as describing reality as it is apart from any experience we have – or even could have. Where is the relevance in that?

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Last time we looked at theories of time, devised mostly by analytic philosophers, and how they relate – or don’t – to ordinary experience. Experimental philosophers have recently remarked that the ordinary person’s experience of time does not make much of the metaphysical implications of these theories – the more physics-based, the less so. Again, behind the scenes, we can discern notions traceable to Bergson.

This time we will look at the other story of time. Misunderstanding still pervades the debate. How much innocent, how much motivated? How much stemming from genuine alternative understandings of the medium of experience1 and how much motivated by egotistic and political partialities. It is tempting to resolve the conflict now by saying they were not talking about the same thing – Einstein and Bergson. But at the time there was enough passion and emotion behind the debate between their two camps to assure us that they, at least, thought they were.

See full writeup in progress for much more: https://einstein-bergson-time.henid.com/

1. Is it space or time or a contrived “space-time”?

Resources

“This Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel for Relativity: Henri Bergson’s debate with Albert Einstein reached and swayed the 1921 Nobel committee,” Jimena Canales, Nautilus, April 21, 2016. https://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher-helped-ensure-there-was-no-nobel-for-relativity

Or watch historian of science Canales’ video presentation of the story. https://youtu.be/ztruZVkMoek

“Henri Bergson, celebrity: Women loved Bergson’s philosophy of creativity, change and freedom, but their enthusiasm fuelled a backlash against him,” Emily Herring, Aeon, May 2019. https://aeon.co/essays/henri-bergson-the-philosopher-damned-for-his-female-fans