The Physicist and the Philosopher

The protagonists in this fascinating book are Einstein and Bergson, who engaged in a high-profile debate in Paris on April 6, 1922. The main bone of contention was the nature of time in Einstein's relativity, but the debate goes wider in showing up tensions between science and philosophy. Sir Herbert Dingle was probably correct in lamenting that a scientist 'understands what he is doing about as well as a centipede understands how he walks.' For the philosopher, science always presupposes metaphysical assumptions, of which the scientist himself is rarely aware. In this case, Bergson wanted to insist on distinguishing the psychological experience of time from time as understood by relativity, and he has often been accused of not understanding the science. Einstein insisted that psychological perceptions of time were off the mark and did not correspond to anything concrete. Philosophers were divided: Whitehead was sympathetic - as was Eddington - while Russell was very critical, accusing Bergson of being anti-intellectual with his emphasis on intuition. We can now see, as in the work of Iain McGilchrist, that we should appreciate the differing roles of the left and right hemisphere in our thinking.

Einstein and Bergson were both public figures. It is easy to forget how famous Bergson was before the First World War – when he gave a public lecture in New York it was said that he was responsible for one of the city's largest ever traffic jams. Einstein became a much more substantial media figure later in his career, but it is interesting to note that they both took political stances – Bergson tried to persuade the American president to enter World War I sooner, while Einstein is famous for his antinuclear campaigning, along with Russell. The split described can also be seen in the contrast between continental and analytical philosophy, and between those like Bergson who took psychical research seriously and those who dismissed it out of hand. In this connection, it was interesting that there is no mention of non-locality in relation to the speed of light. The word is not in the index, nor is John Stewart Bell, and yet non-locality has something to contribute to the debate. In the Postface, the author discusses the changing views of Ilya Prigogine to Bergson, who found him sympathetic in his explanation of aspects of temporal development that had been unexplained by Einstein. Prigogine was critical of Einstein's views about the arrow of time as an illusion, since it left no real space for creativity and novelty as explained by Bergson. Reading this book makes one realise how widely the implications of this debate were felt, and that they are still relevant to the relationship between science and philosophy today.