Einstein and Bergson on Time

[ applause ]

[Dr. Jimena Canales:] Thank you everyone,
thank you for being here.

It's a real pleasure to be able
to talk about my work

and say a little bit about myself.

I'm a historian of science,
I'm a writer and a professor,

and one of the things that
I like to do as a historian of science

is to analyze the history of facts -
scientific facts.

So, one of my colleagues,
the sociologist, Harry Collins,

describes facts as "ships in a bottle,"

arguing that they're carefully constructed

to pretend, to seem as if,
no one was there to build them.

And another wonderful philosopher
and sociologist of science, Bruno Latour,

describes facts as "frozen vegetables,"
and he argues that

facts need a bevy of support networks
in order to thrive and to be around us.

So, with that, let me move on to
the topic of my talk today.

This is the book that
I will be talking about -

this debate - and it's a debate
between Einstein and Bergson

that took place on April 6th 1922.

And, I came to this story
after finishing my first book,

"A Tenth of a Second: A History,"

and this book analyzes
why we became obsessed

in the second half of the 19th century
with measuring speeds of the order

of a tenth of a second
and much shorter than that.

So, I joke that
I've written the longest book about

the shortest time period in history.

And, when I was concluding that book,
towards the end of the chapter,

I encountered an amazing document,
and I think of myself as

a historian of the 19th century,
and I knew that one of the most prominent

intellectuals of the 19th century
was Henri Bergson,

and I encountered
this document right here.

This is a transcript of a meeting
between philosophers that took place at

the Société française de philosophie
on that fateful day, 6th of April 1922.

And, I was studying Bergson
as I mentioned,

and what I found in this transcript is
that this man, this philosopher,

was in the same room with Albert Einstein,

and they were discussing
the nature of time,

and we actually have
a record of what he said

and what the other person said,
and what people in the audience said.

So, the more that
I looked into this moment,

the more that I understood that
it was a huge story,

and one of the reasons why it became
so important and frequently cited

in primary sources
of the early 20th century

was that the debate was listed as
one of the reasons why

Einstein never got the Prize,

the Nobel Prize for
the theory of relativity.

So, the presenter of the Prize
during his presentation speech

said something, he said:
"It will be no secret that

"the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris
has challenged [this] theory."

And then, he went on to explain that
the theory of relativity pertained--

that Bergson had argued that the theory
of relativity pertained to epistemology

and, therefore, it did not merit
the Prize for physics,

which Einstein ended up getting
for the photoelectric effect

and for his work on Brownian motion,
which were two areas that he had worked on

which are incredibly important for physics

but that did not juggle the imagination
as much as relativity

and hadn't brought Einstein fame
as relativity had.

So, Einstein was kind of stubborn,
and in the presentation speech,

he decided to talk anyway
about relativity.

So, I knew that Bergson was an extremely
important and influential philosopher,

and he was even more famous
than Einstein at the time,

which is very surprising, given the fact
that few of us have heard of him.

These are some quotes:
he was frequently compared to Socrates

and Copernicus, Kant, Simón Bolívar,
and, my favourite, Don Juan.

John Dewey, somebody that
you've heard about, admired him.

He said that there was no problem

that would exhibit
the same face before Bergson.

William James, also somebody that
you may have heard of,

admired Bergson profoundly.

He said that his work was
"a true miracle,"

"the beginning of a new era,"
"a sort of Copernican revolution,"

and I like that because obviously
Einstein himself was credited with

making a Copernican revolution
with respect to time.

Jean Wahl - he would grade
the philosophers:

"one could say ...
Descartes, Kant and Bergson."

Étienne Gilson called the 20th century
"the age of Bergson" -

"the greatest thinker in the world,"
"the most dangerous man in the world,"

"an enchanter."

He was credited for saving people
from committing suicide -

after they went to his lectures
they decided not to do it.

There were mystical pilgrimages to
his house in Switzerland in Saint-Cergue,

and people even went to the barber shop
to look at the locks of his hair,

which is a very interesting contrast with

the obsession that we have
around Einstein's brain.

So, they're both sort of
objects of fascination.

Lord Balfour, Prime Minister of England,
talking about Bergson.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote
an entire article on him.

He was accused - it wasn't all good,
it wasn't all praise - he was accused of

mounting an insurgency against reason.

He was placed on
the Catholic Church's "Index."

His relation to the Catholic Church
is very interesting because,

although he was placed on the "Index,"
then he got rehabilitated

and became seen as
a Catholic-friendly philosopher

although he was Jewish, like Einstein.

The book that really
turned things for Bergson

was the 1907 book "Creative Evolution".

That book is about Darwin,

and particularly it's about
certain interpretations of Darwinism

that do not allow for
the creation of the new,

as seeing evolution as a mixing up
the same pieces that are already there

with something that he didn't like.

You had 2000 students
in City College in New York,

it was rumored that the Paris Opera
was not big enough for him,

And, on one occasion,
he was heard uttering -

they would give him applause and flowers,
and he would say:

"But I'm not a ballerina...
Please. I'm not not a ballerina."

Socialites would send their servants
ahead of time to reserve seats

at the Collège de France where
he was known as being a wonderful orator.

So, with all this evidence about this,
you know, great philosopher,

why is it that we hadn't heard about
the debate with the other person

who is considered to be one of the most
important thinkers of the 20th century?

So, as I continued with my research,

I realized that from 1922
we needed to go back to 1911,

and that's really when some of
these issues first started appearing.

And, from Paris, we had to go to Bologna,

and when Einstein arrived in Paris,
his visit was very sensitive politically

because France and Germany were
still recoiling from the First World War

and Einstein was already a star

and he didn't tell people
where he was staying in Paris.

There were journalists waiting for him
at the Gare du Nord -

he decided to descend
at the other side of the tracks

so that no one would see him,
and there's a document that he laughed

like a child because he was able to
evade the film and the journalists.

The situation in Bologna
was less exciting -

it was a meeting of philosophers,
a scientific congress of philosophers.

But, Bergson attended the conference
and he... went to some of the lectures.

But, by far, the was a lecture
that stole the show,

and that one was
a lecture by Paul Langevin.

Paul Langevin.

And, Paul Langevin, Einstein one said that

if he hadn't invented
the theory of relativity,

Paul Langevin would have done it himself.

He was extremely--
they were extremely close -

they liked each other, they were friends,

and Paul Langevin developed
what is known as the "twin paradox,"

which is the story you may remember
from high school

in which you have two twins on Earth
and one of them takes off on a spaceship,

travels at speeds closer to
the speed of light

and, therefore, time slows down for him
and he ages less rapidly

than the twin at home,

so, when he comes back, he sees--
he's basically in a time travel machine.

And, Paul Langevin was the first one
to come up with the story.

It wasn't called
the "twin paradox" in 1911,

it took a while for it to get that name.

And, here's a photograph of
Langevin with Einstein.

Both men were also
very involved politically - leftist.

Langevin: communist,

part of a scientific family -
his daughter, everybody was important.

They had problems obviously
during the Vichy regime in France

because of being Jewish
and also their political convictions.

So, Langevin gave a stunning talk,
and, as I mentioned,

this is a conference of philosophers,
and Langevin is a scientist, a physicist,

and he went up to the audience
and he said, he asked:

"Who amongst you here
would like to travel in time -

"given a time machine."

He actually referenced
the Projectile of Jules Verne.

He said: "Who would take
two years of your life

"to travel in this Projectile
close to the speed of light

"and come back and see the world
200 years later."

And, this obviously caused a huge stir.

He went through the science of relativity
that permitted that,

and he said - very confidently -

he said: "The most definitely established
facts of science permit us to ascertain

"that that would happen,"

that if you got on this Projectile,
you would age less rapidly

than the person who remained on Earth.

So, therefore, you would come back
and see Earth 200 years later

in the future.

And, as if that wasn't exciting enough,
he also said, you know:

"What about the fountain of youth?"

In order to not age,
all you have to do,

in the words he used,
was "to become agitated,"

you know, which was a reference to
moving really, really quickly.

The problem was that
in the audience was Bergson,

and he was listening to these stories
and he got very irritated by

how scientists tended to
mix fact and fiction.

And, from that moment on,
it took him ten years to write a response

to these kinds of stories and to Einstein.

He would publish a book
shortly after meeting the physicist

in April 6th 1922 called
"Duration and Simultaneity,"

"Durée et Simultanéité,"
which was a very controversial book,

and which we now remember
as having made obvious mistakes

in the interpretation of relativity.

But, one of the things
that I do in my research is

I trace the history and note how--

two very interesting exceptions
to that general story,

and one of them is
that Bergson himself never contested

any of the facts of relativity.

And, he also did not think of himself
as making an intervention in physics.

His intervention was a philosophical one

in which he wanted readers
to follow Einstein's theory

with pen and paper -
it was a difficult book with equations -

to go through the equations
and to figure out

what was really ascertained
and what could really be seen

from the experiments
and which was more fantastical.

But, the book is a fascinating book
if you want to go through it,

but the book describes one of the twins -
the traveling twins - as a phantom,

and that is one of the reasons why
many read the book as

having been mistaken
and being an irrational book.

But, it is important to remember that
Bergson's point was philosophical

and he wanted to distinguish
what he called the "really real"

from the science.

Einstein himself read the book
and we have evidence of

two different ways
in which he talked about it,

and one is the private way
and the other one is the public way.

And, in private,
he wrote in his journal,

he was going to Japan
after being in France,

and he got woken up in the morning

because the sailors
were cleaning the decks,

and that was the time that it took
to read the book,

and there, he says,
that he considered

that Bergson had fully grasped
the essence of relativity.

But then, in public,
he wrote many letters

saying that Bergson had been mistaken,
so this is where we see this debate

and that Bergson did not understand
certain aspects of science.

But it turns out that
Paul Langevin and Bergson--

Bergson, when he talked about
the theory of relativity -

he liked to remind the people
of the work of H.G. Wells

and the time travel machine.

So, Bergson very explicitly brought in
these precedents in science fiction.

But the other person who was
fascinated with science fiction

had been Einstein
as a young man - as a child.

Around the age of 12,
he remembers reading time travel stories

with what he describes
as “breathless attention.”

And Einstein is well known for
having come up with a thought experiment,

in German, it's the Gedankenexperiment,

that led to his wonderful work,

and I'll describe a little bit
what the thought experiment is.

So, in this thought experiment,

we have Einstein thinking of himself

traveling along a beam of light.

Sometimes historians described this
as the the "light-beam rider,"

And this is from his autobiography,
where he says:

"After 10 years of reflection,
such a principle resulted from a paradox

"upon which I had already hit
at the age of sixteen."

And he says: "I pursue a beam of light
with the velocity c

"(velocity of light in a vacuum),"
and this goes on.

Then he says: "The germ of
the special relativity theory

"is already contained in this paradox."

Other translations say that
it's the kernel of the special relativity

that are in this.

So, what happens
when you pursue a beam of light?

[ orchestral music ]

[Dr. Canales:] This is a movie from 1924.

[ music stops ]

So, let me go back to that.

So, what this little movie is showing,

and that's a film called
"The Einstein Relativity" film.

It's what happens if you travel
at speeds faster than that of light.

So, since the 17th century,
people had noticed that

the speed of light
took time to be transmitted.

The light rays actually take time
to reach your eyes,

so, when we look at the Sun,
the Sun is eight minutes in the past.

If you look at Jupiter -
that's around 54 minutes in the past.

And Uranus is more than
two hours in the past.

But, scientists started to wonder is
what happens if--

how does the Earth look
to someone who's so far

that the present light waves
have not yet reached them.

So, they are able to see the Earth
in the past just as we,

whenever we look at the Sun,
we're already seeing the Sun in the past.

So, the speculations -
what a number of writers speculated -

was what happens if you travel
faster than the speed of light

and you can see the world
playing in reverse -

the history of the world
playing in reverse -

and the more that you hop,
the farther away that you go -

you have to have a large telescope
in order to look back on Earth.

So, it turns out that this idea
of chasing a light beam

was part of the scientific culture
of the late 19th century

and it started in the mid-19th century.

It wasn't only Einstein's idea.

So, this is...
[ orchestral music starts ]

Again, I'll show the movie.

That's the bullet
that's being shot to overtake.

Those are the light waves
coming out from Earth.

And that's the bullet
that's overtaking them.

So that's traveling faster
than the speed of light

And they can go to
any moment of history whatsoever.

They chose to start from 1492.

Turn around.

And that's where they find in 1492
Columbus discovering America.

[ music stopped ]

So, these are the other people
who talked about that trope.

This one is a book by Aaron Bernstein,
and it is through those stories

that Einstein--
that Einstein read those stories.

They're the stories that he described as
reading with "breathless attention."

And, Bernstein took them
from other authors,

which I will mention.

He, in particular,
was obsessed with

going back and seeing the world
at the time of Abraham.

This one's from Richard Proctor,
an astronomer,

the "Other Worlds Than Ours,"
and he continued to think about

really in more minute detail
how this actually happened,

and he said,
"well, there's something"--

one thing that is
a little bit complicated is that

the Earth spins around, so yes,
it's emitting all of these light waves

but they're going to get
a little bit jumbled up

when they reach a distant star
but still you could potential decode them.

This one's my favorite:
"Lumen" by Camille Flammarion,

and there he describes this spirit
that can travel

faster than the speed of light.

And... Camille Flammarion is
obsessed with the Battle of Waterloo

and he really is obsessed with
trying to see it play in reverse,

and to see Napoleon
at the end take the throne

instead of lose the battle,

and to see soldiers
waking up from the dead,

from the ranks - he calls it
"a Waterloo of the afterlife."

And, he also dreams of traveling
exactly at the speed of light

so you can take a snapshot
of the favorite moment in your life,

find it in this great library -

Bernstein called it
the "cosmic postal service" -

and just travel at the same speed
so you would have a frozen image

of the most wonderful moment
in your life.

All of these authors speculated
or knew that in world history

the only thing that would go undetected

would be things that happened in the dark,

because no light wave could escape,
which had a very moral argument.

The original author is
Felix Eberty in 1846,

and he wrote anonymously
"Die Gestirne und die Weltgeschichte."

So, history is a vast archive

where every light wave
that has escaped in Earth

can potentially be recaptured.

Camille Flammarion even speculated
that somewhere in the Universe

there would be a planet -
a rotating planet -

that had a photosensitive surface,
and in it, as the planet rotated,

all of world history would be recorded,

and you could basically
go back to the planet

and figure out everything
that had ever happened,

like a phonograph technology.

But Einstein's stories were not
identical to those of his predecessors,

to those who had
fascinated him as a child,

Einstein made one essential difference
to the stories,

and that is that nothing can ever
travel faster than the speed of light.

So, he said, you know:

"If I'm chasing a light beam,

"there's no such thing
as these others were describing,

"on the basis of experience
nor according to Maxwell's equations."

He found no evidence -
no possibility -

for ever traveling faster
than the speed of light.

Therefore, those stories,
those time travel stories,

would not work as they did.

The other way of traveling in time
would have to be

the one described by Langevin
in the Twin Paradox,

which is about ageing more slowly
if you go at speeds

close to that of light.

The more you move, the less you age.

So, he came up with this insight,

which is the basis insight
of relativity theory:

"I should, if I pursue a beam of light--
I should observe such a beam of light

"as an electromagnetic field at rest
thought spatially oscillating,"

and I've got a little video for you
of what he's chasing.

[ audience ripple of laughter ]

So, this is an illustration of
one of the main characteristics of light,

and, that is,
that it is invariant,

that it is independent of
the source of its motion,

and that, therefore, leads to
the effects of relativity theory,

the most stunning of which are
time dilation and length dilation,

that time expands according to

the velocity and length as well,

and masses, of course, increase.

And, all of this is from
the special theory of relativity.

So, Einstein, when he first published
the beginning of the theory of relativity,

it was 1905, almost nobody cared about it.

He then completed-- worked further in it

and developed
the general theory of relativity,

which is more comprehensive
and gave more importance to

the special theory of relativity,
but still, nobody cared about it.

He completed this at the end of 1915,

and in 1916, in order to try to
get more people interested,

he actually wrote a popular book,
a book for the reader,

where he described~
the purpose of the book -

he didn't describe it as something
that would revolutionize

everyday notions of space and time,
but he described it of

giving a reader some happy hours,

and those are the famous stories
where you see-- where you've read

and you probably were taught
in high school

of being in the train carriage
and seeing a flash of light here

and a flash of light there,
and being inside an elevator,

and all these very evocative
thought experiments that make him famous.

But, in 1919 he had a huge break,
and this came with an eclipse expedition

that was organized by British astronomers

and that's the moment where
Einstein became a worldwide star.

But, there was one problem:
what the eclipse expedition measured

was the bending of light
by the power of gravity,

and that is something that is related to
his theory of relativity

but it's very different to go
from that insight

to go all the way to the twin paradox -
it requires a lot of work.

And there were still three people -
the ones I call the "three Henrys" -

who were not convinced
that Einstein's work would lead us

to have to change our every day notions
of space and time,

and that was the thing that
they did not want to let go -

they completely accepted the theory,

they completely accepted
all the experimental results.

Hendrik Lorentz was a Dutch physicist.

He came up with the equations that

Einstein used in
his special relativity paper.

Henri Poincaré was one of
the most renowned physicists in France.

And, there was, of course,
Henri Bergson.

And, all of these men were
in conversation with each other

and they remained unconvinced that
one needed to go-- take that further step.

And, this is what happened in 1922,
where all these ideas just came to a head.

So, in 1922,

we have at the
Société française de philosophie,

we have Einstein presenting his theory
and Bergson is in the audience.

Langevin, in some of the descriptions,

is shown as whispering ideas,
whispering answers to Einstein,

whose French was really not that great.

And, in the audience is Henri Bergson,

and Einstein utters this phrase
that served as a detonator

for the debate, and he said:

"Il n'y a donc pas
un temps des philosophes."

Basically, it could be translated as

"The time of the philosophers
does not exist."

And here, he was face-to-face with
one of the most important intellectuals

of the era.

Bergson responded with about half an hour

and much of it was later expanded
and repeated in his book

"Duration and Simultaneity."

What was Bergson's response?

So, Bergson wanted a notion of time

that included new things
emerging into the world,

And, Einstein was content with thinking
that time was what clocks measured

and, therefore, any other notion of time,
including a philosophical notion of time,

was really not real,
it was not objective,

were the words that he used.

Bergson, on the contrary,

wanted to go to a more basic,
more human notion of time

and this is a quote
from the way that he responded.

He said, irritated by the idea
that one would measure time with clocks

and that clocks would explain
time in its entirety,

he said, if we didn't have
a prior notion of time,

clocks "would be bits of machinery
with which we would amuse ourselves,"

they "would not be employed
in classifying events,"

and the word "events" here
is very important.

"They would exist for their own sake
and not serve us."

So, he also wanted to think of clocks as
servants for larger purposes,

and instruments in general -
scientific instruments - as servants.

"They would lose their raison d'être
for the theoretician of relativity

"as for everybody else,
for he too calls them in

"only to designate the time of an event."

And later in the book,
when Bergson was asked to explain time,

he said: "What is time?
Time is action itself."

Time is the emergence
of something new via action.

And recently, Einstein's theory
has received quite a bit of criticism

or is widely acknowledged
for not explaining the flow of time.

His theory - the Einstein universe -

is described as being
a "block universe"

where there's no way to distinguish
what makes a now

important from another now,
from a separate now.

There's really not a flow of time.

In many, many places,
Einstein said that

our sense of temporality
was an illusion,

an illusion of our senses,
an infirmity of our senses

that made us feel as if
things were happening,

but in reality everything was already
contained in this block universe.

When Einstein's best friend, Besso, died,

Einstein wrote a letter of condolence
to his family and he said:

"You know, it really doesn't matter
because, for us physicists -

physicists of faith -
he said the distinction between the past,

the present and the future
is just an illusion.

One of the things
that just struck me was--

made this story even more fascinating

was to encounter a book
written by Einstein in 1923,

sorry, an introduction for a book.

The introduction was written in 1923
of this book,

and that's the book by Felix Eberty
that originated the time travel stories

where one could see the world in reverse

if one traveled faster
than the speed of light.

So this is a reprint edition of
the 1846 book by Felix Eberty.

At the time, Einstein was
a very busy, busy man.

He had many, many things to do,
he was well known,

he was covered in newspapers,
he was a worldwide star.

And to see him take time
out of his busy scientific agenda

to write a short introduction to a book.

So, this introduction
served as a trigger warning,

and he said that not everything
that Eberty had described was possible,

and what was not possible was
traveling faster than the speed of light.

There was no evidence in nature
that anything could ever travel

at speeds faster than that.

So, he said, these stories,

he reclassified these stories
from the way that

he had read them as a child,
which were science popularization,

to belonging to
the realm of science fiction.

So, I see in this debate
a larger division between

the science and the humanities.

The wonderful thing about it is
that you're able to give flesh and bones

to two of the main characters that
divided-- that represent these divisions.

And, we're used to talking about these:
the two cultures,

from C.P. Snow to the present.

There are many discussions in universities

about the role of STEM
and about the role of the humanities,

and it is as a historian that
I sort of see like, well,

where did this division
actually come from,

and what are the resolutions?

So, you see that
there was really no dialogue

between them in terms of understanding:

you have people writing different things
in private and in public.

This is a period where,
despite Bergson's objections,

we see the rise of
the authority of science.

We see Einstein very preoccupied
throughout his life -

and this isn't just in 1922
and in writing the introduction to

the book of science fiction,

but all the way up to
the end of his life,

and in correspondence
with his best friend, Besso,

fighting against the views of
Bergson as a philosopher

and fighting against a view of time
that wasn't completely linear,

that wasn't completely mathematical,
and that wasn't reducible to measurement

and the measurement of clocks.

On the side of Bergson,
we see him become--

continue to be very famous
in a much smaller circle

of professional philosophers,

many of them French,
who continue to read him and study him

and work in his tradition.

And we see that debate being cited
by some of the most important

intellectuals of the 20th century
all over the world.

And you find evidence of people,
journalists writing, for example,

in Barcelona, and saying things like
everybody has heard of the encounter

between Einstein and Bergson.

And these are the same words
that the Nobel Prize committee present

or said: "It has been no secret that
Bergson has challenged the theory."

But we see the debate being cited
over and over again

by figures like Martin Heidegger
who claims that he wrote "Being and Time"

was a response to the two notions
of the two alternatives

that were presented to him,
the scientific alternative

and its opposite,
the Bergsonian one.

If I had known that
before I read "Being and Time,"

I would have been very grateful.

Merleau-Ponty, a French phenomenologist

cited the debate,

and Gaston Bachelard.

It became very important
for American pragmatism,

where we see a way of trying to reconcile
expert knowledge with lay wisdom,

and how do we have
a communication between those.

So these are very relevant issues today.

In France, Gaston Bachelard,
who talks about the relation

between science and fiction
mentions the debate

and he wonders why the presence
of all these stories,

of time travel stories and trains
and cigars shrinking in relativity,

and he says:
"Well, they're not really illustrations,

"they're much more
and they're more prevalent."

And we need to see them as integral
to the process of scientific production

because it is with those stories
that we can effect

a total reconfiguration
of our notions of time and space,

which is what Einstein actually wanted
and needed in order to succeed

and convince people
like the three Henrys -

Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré
and Henri Bergson

that when he was writing about
a T in an equation

and the measurement of time
in coordinated clocks,

clocks that were coordinated
via light signals

that he was also talking about -
the time in general,

the type of everybody
and the time of the Universe.

So, I would just like to leave you
with my dream,

and this would be my discipline.

My disciplinary home dream would be

the science and the humanities
once again together.

I think that we need to know
knowledge and scientific knowledge,

but that we can also add to it
knowledge about knowledge,

and that includes history.

And, who made this knowledge?
And, for what purpose?

And, in what context?

And this is what I try to do in my work

and will continue to do in my future work

if I get a chance, so thank you.

[ applause ]

[Guest 1:]
I do have a question over here.

Did either Henri Bergson
or any of the other Henrys recant

or say that they really felt strongly
that Einstein was right?

[Dr. Canales:] Never.

Never, absolutely never.

Henri Poincaré died in 1911 -
I think - at the end of 1911,

but Lorentz lived to see the debate
and beyond that.

Bergson died in the 1930s

right with the occupation of Paris,

and Bergson said that
he had been misunderstood,

and Einstein also would claim
that he was misunderstood.

So, I had the challenge of writing a book

where there's no agreement in the end,

And it's about a book

and I think historians
don't do this frequently

but I decided to write a book
about misunderstanding and mistrust.

And we never have a positive resolution.

And we have a world divided,
intellectuals divided,

disciplines divided,
still taking sides -

sometimes violent confrontations
continued to happen.

And there were people
that were not happy with me

reviving the debate between...

[ laughter ]

between the two men.

[Guest 2:] Hi.

How do you think this debate
maybe might inform more current debates

of science and philosophy,
such as the field of consciousness

and something of that nature?

[Dr Canales:] I think that
we're still living in this world

of this broad division
between science and humanities

and I don't-- I'm not doing science,
I'm a historian,

but I think that one way to start is
by looking at when these things happened

in very concrete and modest ways.

So, if I have to talk about--

instead of going back to the big question
of "what is time"

and something that's
been discussed for centuries,

and going back to Saint Augustine,

"if you don't ask me, I know;
if you ask me, I don't know" what time is.

And you sort of can by stymied,
can be caught in these impossible circles.

But the way out is to actually say:

"Well, how has this discourse
happened in history?"

And today, when people want to
figure out what time is,

they don't go to philosophers,
they go to Stephen Hawking,

to the "Brief History of Time,"
which has been in the bestseller list

for more than a decade.

And this is a moment where
it was exactly the opposite

Bergson had been the authority
on the nature of time

and his books a creative evolution,
so we see the history of

how the torch was sort of
taken away forever

or for until now
for the discussions on time.

And then, we have this
quite uncomfortable, very evident paradox

in which the way that time is used
by artists, by filmmakers,

by authors - by literary authors -
is very Bergsonian in nature -

it looks around,
it's very rarely chronological.

It's highly edited:
there's salient moments,

not every moment whatsoever
counts the same.

So we're sort of
living in this contradiction

and in a way that's not only intellectual,

but every day you go and watch
"The Bourne Identity,"

you're sort of in Bergsonian time,
but then you go out

and Stephen Hawking
would give you the authority

and other physicists about what time is.

[Guest 3:] In a small book that
Einstein wrote for the general public,

he pointed out that
time was dependent on motion.

If there was no motion,
if the Universe went to absolute zero,

there would be no time.

Now, that's perfectly identical -
it seems to me - to Bergson and action.

[Dr Canales:] And what?

[Guest 3:] Action.
[Dr Canales:] And action, well--

[Guest 3:] There can't be action
without movement,

and there can't be time,
according to Einstein,

without movement.

[Dr Canales:] So the difference is

between the asymmetry of time
and the flow of time.

So, the flow of time has to do with
the emergence of really something new

that wasn't there before
in any sort of prior way,

into the scene of the Universe
versus a view in which

the past and the future
are obviously different,

and that's, an asymmetrical relation,
but there is no flow of time.

This is discussed by many physicists
to try to distinguish those aspects.

[Guest 4:] I understand that
while the Earth is spinning

and the Earth is in motion
around the Sun,

and the Sun is in motion
throughout the Universe,

we are moving quite fast.

Does that mean time is slowing down?

And is there a different time
on different stars

that are larger and their planets are
spinning faster or slower?

[Dr Canales:] Yes, yes, absolutely -
that's the relativity of time.

So, the-- although the rate of time,
the proper time,

does not change -
when you compare it,

it depends on the velocity
of when you're traveling.

So, time definitely flows differently,
even on a mountaintop,

than it does on the surface of the Earth.

And, one would explain that
through general relativity

where you would consider
the space-time continuum

affected by gravity.

[Guest 5:] Was the Internet helpful?
Or did you actually find libraries

and research material to be actually
more of the "aha" moments for you?

[Dr Canales:]
No, the Internet is not helpful.

[ general laughter ]