Einstein (29 page)

“It was my good fortune,” said Whitehead, “to be present at the meeting of the Royal Society in London when the Astronomer Royal for England announced that the photographic plates of the famous eclipse, as measured by his colleagues in Greenwich Observatory, had verified the prediction of Einstein that rays of light are bent as they pass in the neighbourhood of the sun. The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly that of the Greek drama. We were the chorus commentating on the decree of destiny as disclosed in the development of a supreme incident. There was dramatic quality in the very staging — the traditional ceremonial, and in the background the picture of Newton to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalizations was now, after more than two centuries, to receive its first modification. Nor was the personal interest wanting; a great adventure in thought had at length come safe to shore.

“The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the remorseless working of things.… This remorseless inevitableness is what pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics are the decrees of fate.”

FIGURE 3
(
Illustration Credit 6.1
)

FIGURE 4

The observations of the British eclipse expedition of 1919 were repeated with refined methods by an American expedition in 1922 at Wallal (Western Australia) organized by the Lick Observatory, University of California.
FIG. 3
shows the original photo of the eclipsed sun, its corona and the brightest stars in the sun’s vicinity. The images of the stars are encircled.
FIG. 4
shows the observed deflection of the stars in the gravitational field of the sun. The arrows represent the deflection of the images of the fifteen best measured stars in size and direction. (Lick Observatory Bulletin 397)

Einstein and Charles Proteus Steinmetz
(
Illustration Credit 6.2
)

At this time the president of the Royal Society was Sir J. J. Thomson, himself a great research physicist. He opened the session with an address in which he celebrated Einstein’s theory as “one of the greatest achievements in the history of human thought.” Continuing, he said: “It is not the discovery of an outlying island but of a whole continent of new scientific ideas. It is the greatest discovery in connection with gravitation since Newton enunciated his principles.”

Then the Astronomer Royal reported in a few words that the observations of the two expeditions gave the value 1.64 seconds of an arc for the deflection of light, as compared with the value 1.75 seconds predicted by Einstein. “It is concluded,” he announced briefly and dispassionately, “that the sun’s gravitational field gives the deflection predicted by Einstein’s generalized theory of relativity.”

Sir Oliver Lodge, the famous physicist, who is widely known as an exponent of extra-sensory perception and other “parapsychological” phenomena, was always a convinced adherent of the existence of an “ether” that filled all space, and therefore hoped that the observations would decide against Einstein’s theory. Nevertheless, after the session he said: “It was a dramatic triumph.”

The scientists of the Royal Society were now ready to recognize that a direct observation of nature had corroborated the theory of the “curvature of space” and the invalidity of Euclidean geometry in gravitational field. Nevertheless, it was ominous of coming developments that during the formal session the president of the Royal Society himself said: “I have to confess that no one has yet succeeded in stating in clear language what the theory of Einstein really is.” He persisted in his assertion that many scientists were themselves forced to admit their inability to express simply the actual meaning of Einstein’s theory. It really meant that they were unable to grasp the meaning of
the theory itself; all they could understand were its consequences within their special field. This situation subsequently contributed a good deal to the confusion of the lay public regarding Einstein’s theory.

The significance of the new theory was soon appreciated by men who were themselves creatively active in the development of science, but many of the so-called “educated” people were annoyed that the traditional knowledge acquired with great effort in the schools had been overthrown. Since such people were themselves convinced of their lack of understanding of astronomy, mathematics, and physics, they attacked the new theory in the fields of philosophy and politics, in which they felt themselves qualified.

Thus an editorial writer in a reputable American newspaper wrote of the session of the Royal Society described above: “These gentlemen may be great astronomers, but they are sad logicians. Critical laymen have already objected that scientists who proclaim that space comes to an end somewhere are under some obligation to tell what lies behind it.”

We recall that the statement: “Space is finite” has nothing to do with an “end” of space. It means rather that light rays traveling through the world space return along a closed curve to their origin. The editorial writers of daily newspapers like to represent the standpoint of the “man in the street,” who is more often influenced by a medieval philosophical tradition than by the progress of science.

The editorial continues:

“This fails to explain why our astronomers appear to think that logic and ontology depend on the shifting views of astronomers. Speculative thought was highly advanced long before astronomy. A sense of proportion ought to be useful to mathematicians and physicists, but it is to be feared that British astronomers have regarded their own field as of somewhat greater consequence than it really is.”

The same tendency to play off common sense — that is, in this case, the knowledge acquired in elementary schools — against the progress of science is also evident in another editorial that appeared in the same reputable paper about this time:

“It would take the president of at least two Royal Societies to give plausibility or even thinkability to the declaration that as light has weight space has limits. It just doesn’t, by definition, and that’s the end of that — for common folks, however it may be for higher mathematicians.”

Since in the opinion of the man in the street the two Royal Societies were affected by delusions which made them incapable of understanding things that were clear to anyone with an average school education, he began to inquire why such a thing had happened. An explanation was soon found, which was very illuminating for the man in the street.

One week after the famous London meeting, a professor of celestial mechanics at Columbia University, New York, wrote:

“For some years past the entire world has been in a state of unrest, mental as well as physical. It may well be that the war, the Bolshevist uprising, are the visible objects of some deep mental disturbance. This unrest is evidenced by the desire to throw aside the well-tested methods of government in favor of radical and untried experiments. This same spirit of unrest has invaded science. There are many who would have us throw aside the well-tested theories upon which have been built the entire structure of modern scientific and mechanical development in favor of methodological speculation and phantastic dreams about the Universe.”

The writer then pointed out that the situation was analogous to the period of the French Revolution, when as a result of similar revolutionary mental diseases doubts were expressed concerning the Newtonian theory, though these objections later proved to be incorrect.

While various individuals were vexed by these innovations which disturbed their pride in their education, others received the matter in a more friendly manner. Einstein’s predictions of the stellar shifts had shown, so these men thought, that physical phenomena could be predicted by means of pure thought, by pure mathematical speculation about the geometry of universal space. The view of the “wicked” empiricists and materialists that all science rests on experience, a view that caused so many conflicts with religion and ethics, had now been dropped by science itself. In an editorial dealing with the session of the Royal Society the London
Times
said: “Observational science has in fact led back to the purest subjective idealism.” And “idealism” for the educated Englishman who received his education from his school, his church, and the
Times
was the diametrical opposite of “materialistic” Bolshevism.

The psychological situation in Europe at this time increased the interest of the general public in Einstein’s theory. English newspapers tried to efface every connection between Germany and the man whom they were honoring. Einstein himself was averse to any tactics of this kind, not because he placed any value in being regarded as a representative of German science, but because he hated every manifestation of narrow-minded nationalism. He also believed that he could advance the cause of international conciliation if he utilized his fame for this purposeé. When the
Times
requested him to describe the results of his theory for the London public, he did so on November 28 and used this opportunity to express his opinion in a friendly, humorous way. He wrote:

“The description of me and my circumstances in the
Times
shows an amusing flare of imagination on the part of the writer. By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of the reader, today in Germany I am called a German man of science and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a ‘
bête noire
’ the description will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the German and a German for the English.”

At that time Einstein did not anticipate how soon this joke would come true. The editor of the
Times
was slightly annoyed by the characterization of the way in which regard was taken of the prejudice of the middle-class British, and likewise answered in a semi-humorous vein: “We concede him his little joke. But we note that in accordance with the general tenor of his theory Dr. Einstein does not supply any absolute description of himself.” The
Times
was also somewhat uneasy over the fact that Einstein did not have any feeling of belonging completely to a definite nation or race.

In Germany itself the news of the events in London acted like a spark that caused the explosion of pent-up emotion. It was a double satisfaction. The achievement of a scientist from a defeated and humiliated country had been recognized by the proudest of the victor nations. Furthermore, the discovery was not based on any collection of empirical researches but arose rather from a creative imagination which by its power had guessed the secret of the universe as it actually is, and the correctness of the solution of the puzzle had been confirmed by the precise astronomical observations of the cool-headed Englishmen.

The situation contained still another peculiarity in that the
discoverer was a descendant of the Jewish people who had often been insulted and slighted by the defeated nation. The members of the Jewish community had often been compelled to hear and to read that while their race possessed a certain craftiness in business pursuits, in science it could only repeat and illuminate the work of others, and that truly creative talents were denied them. That this unique, ancient people had again produced a leader in the intellectual world not only seemed exciting for the Jews themselves, but also was a kind of consolation and stimulus for all the vanquished and humiliated people of the world.