SECRET REPUDIATION OF EINSTEIN IN FRANCE

On Sep 2, 6:21*am, Pentcho Valev wrote:
Bruno Latour and Elie During are going to exculpate Bergson and topple
Einstein but in a way that will leave Einstein's 1905 false constant-
speed-of-light postulate (the linchpin that holds Einsteiniana's money-
spinner together) intact:

http://footnotes2plato.com/2011/06/2...een-bergson-an...
"Bruno Latour speaks above about how contemporary philosophy should re-
interpret the verdict of the 1922 exchange between the metaphysician
Henri Bergson and the physicist Albert Einstein. He finds a re-
interpretation of this debate important especially in light of the new
ecological constraints upon 21st century thinking. Traditionally, it
is reported that Einstein won out over Bergson, dealing a swift
scientific blow to the authority of philosophical intuition in
cosmological discussions. Most came away from the exchange between
these early 20th century thinkers of "time" believing that Bergson had
been unveiled as a psychologist or an artist pretending to understand
science. For Einstein, there is no such thing as "philosopher's time"
- the living duration in which subject and object co-emerge, as
Bergson might say; instead, Einstein marks two kinds of time:
psychological time, which is a subjective illusion generated by
relative motion, and physical time, which is objective reality
existing eternally in the mind of God. He does exactly what Latour
urges us not to: that is, he opposes theory to lived experience, the
universal to the local. The asymmetrical time of conscious existence,
where egg shells only shatter and never reassemble, is deemed by
Einstein to be illusory. The flow of physical time is deemed
reversible, no matter what the psyche seems to suggest about the
steady aging of the body and the inevitable approach of death. From
Einstein's geometer God's perspective, the regret of living bodies in
response to their past, and the anxiety in the face of their future,
is for naught: the truth is, the future has already taken place, and
at no moment along the way did a "hesitation" or a "decision" ever
occur. (...) A relevant paperhttp://stephenerobbins.com/talks/Relativity-philsci.pdf
on Bergson's argument with Einstein concerning special relativity and
perception."

Pentcho Valev


I looked at Bergson's paper. The problem with it is that he misses
some of the predictions of Einstein's STR. If you understand STR
properly, it is easy to resolve the barn door paradox.

Also, if you understand that STR is not GTR, then you can resolve the
twins paradox - either one of the twins is not in an inertial frame,
and so STR doesn't apply to that twin's frame of reference, or gravity
is involved, and that is beyond STR.

But more than that, these paradoxes are so obvious that (a) either
physicists the world over are utterly stupid, embracing non-reality,
or pulling a deliberate hoax on the world, or (b) physicists really
are smart, and they have thought about these apparent paradoxes, and
have figured out the answer.

I'll tell you this. When I started studying STR, at first I was
convinced of (a). But after a few years of thinking about it - I mean
really thinking about it, I realized that the answer was (b).

Another thing - going to the source is not the best way to understand
Einstein. Several times I have tried to understand him. Then I go
away, and after much thinking I have a realization. And I think "why
didn't Einstein say XXX?" Then I reread Einstein, and yes, he says
"XXX" in the first paragraph. And I simply missed it. The guy really
was smart. Very, very smart. And I don't say it out of any sense of
hero worship. Rather it is because when I finally understand him, I
realize how much faster he got it than I did.