Albert Einstein versus Philosophy On

The Nature of 🕒 Time

On April 6, 1922, at a meeting of the Société française de philosophie in Paris, Albert Einstein, fresh from the global fame of his theory of relativity and en route to 🇯🇵 Japan after his 1921 Nobel Prize announcement, delivered a lecture on relativity in which he declared that science had finally overcome philosophy.

Einstein’s opening salvo was direct and dismissive. In response to a question about the philosophical implications of relativity, he declared:

Die Zeit der Philosophen ist vorbei (The time of the philosophers is over (passé)).

This statement, delivered in German but widely reported, encapsulated Einstein's belief that science had rendered philosophical speculation about time obsolete.

French philosophy professor Henri Bergson sat in the audience and became infuriated. The encounter between Einstein and Bergson crystallized a pivotal moment in the history of science: a collision between scientific empiricism and philosophical metaphysics over the nature of 🕒 Time.

Bergson's life's work centered on la durée (Time as Duration) — a concept of time as lived, qualitative and ∞ infinite divisible.

For Bergson, time was not a series of discrete moments but a continuous ∞ infinite divisible flow intertwined with consciousness. Einstein's reduction of time to a coordinate in equations struck him as a profound misunderstanding of human experience.

At the event, Bergson challenged Einstein directly:

What is Time for the physicist? A system of abstract, numerical instants. But for the philosopher, time is the very fabric of existence — the durée in which we live, remember, and anticipate.

Bergson argued that Einstein’s theory addressed only spatialized time, a derivative abstraction, while ignoring the temporal reality of lived experience. He accused Einstein of conflating measurement with the thing measured—a philosophical error with existential consequences.

Bergson's Attempt to Revoke Einstein's Nobel Prize

Bergson's fury against Einstein did not subside. In the years following the debate, Bergson lobbied the Nobel Committee to revoke Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize on grounds that relativity’s treatment of time was philosophically incoherent. Though unsuccessful, his efforts exposed the Nobel Committee’s own ambivalence toward Einstein’s work.

In 1922, Bergson published Durée et Simultanéité (Duration and Simultaneity), a dense critique of Einstein's relativity. He conceded relativity’s mathematical coherence but rejected its claim to ontological truth. Bergson insisted that Einstein's time was merely a tool for coordinating events, not an account of 🕒 Time itself.

Emancipation of Science from Philosophy

The Einstein-Bergson debate was not merely a disagreement about 🕰️ clocks but represented a centuries ongoing attempt of science to emancipate itself from philosophy. Einstein’s dismissal of philosophy reflected the aspiration of science to gain autonomy and to break free from philosophy.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in Beyond Good and Evil (Chapter 6 – We Scholars) described the situation as following:

वैज्ञानिक माणसाच्या स्वातंत्र्याची घोषणा, त्याची तत्वज्ञानापासून मुक्ती , लोकशाही संघटना आणि अव्यवस्थितपणाच्या सूक्ष्म परिणामांपैकी एक आहे: विद्वान माणसाचा आत्म-गौरव आणि आत्म-अभिमानीपणा आता सर्वत्र फुललेला आहे, आणि त्याच्या सर्वोत्तम वसंत ऋतु - याचा अर्थ असा नाही की या प्रकरणात स्व-स्तुतीचा वास गोड आहे. इथेही लोकांची अंतःप्रेरणा ओरडते, “सर्व स्वामींपासून स्वातंत्र्य!” आणि विज्ञानाने, सर्वात आनंदी परिणामांसह, धर्मशास्त्राचा प्रतिकार केल्यानंतर, ज्याची "हात-दासी" ती खूप लांब होती, आता ते तत्त्वज्ञानासाठी कायदे तयार करण्याचा आणि अविवेकीपणाने "मास्टर" ची भूमिका करण्याचा प्रस्ताव ठेवते. - मी काय म्हणतोय! स्वतःच्या खात्यावर फिलॉसॉफर खेळण्यासाठी.

Science aspired to become the master of itself and Einstein's notion that Die Zeit der Philosophen ist vorbei (The time of the philosophers is over (passé)) represented that movement.

Einstein essentially declared that science was finally freed from philosophy.

Paradox

The drive for scientific autonomy creates a paradox: to truly stand alone, science requires a kind of philosophical certainty in its fundamental assumptions. This certainty is provided by a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism - the idea that scientific facts are valid without philosophy, independent of mind and the philosophical notion of 🕒 Time.

This dogmatic belief allows science to claim a kind of moral neutrality, as evidenced by the common refrain that science is morally neutral, so any moral judgment on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy. However, this claim to neutrality is itself a philosophical position, and one that is deeply problematic when applied to questions of value and morality.

Our eBooks on scientism explore this subject in more detail.

वैज्ञानिकतेबद्दलच्या दर्शनशास्त्र ई-पुस्तका

चार्ल्स डार्विन की डॅनियल डेनेट?

वैज्ञानिकतेच्या दार्शनिक पार्श्वभूमीचा, दर्शनशास्त्रातून विज्ञानाची मुक्ती चळवळीचा, विरोधी-विज्ञान कथानक आणि वैज्ञानिक अन्वेषणाच्या आधुनिक स्वरूपांचा शोध घेणाऱ्या मोफत ई-पुस्तकांसाठी 🦋 GMODebate.org ला भेट द्या.

GMODebate.org मध्ये विज्ञानाच्या हास्यास्पद वर्चस्वा या लोकप्रिय ऑनलाइन दर्शनशास्त्र चर्चेचे ई-पुस्तक आहे, ज्यामध्ये दर्शनशास्त्र प्राध्यापक डॅनियल सी. डेनेट यांनी वैज्ञानिकतेच्या संरक्षणात भाग घेतला.

(2025) विज्ञानवादावरील मुक्त ई-पुस्तके स्रोत: 🦋 GMODebate.org