Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/einstein/einstein.005

Text File | 1992-08-29 | 7KB | 143 lines

                                                                                March 16, 1936

Einstein's Reality



     Constant Constant

     In the Einstein universe the velocity of light is regarded
as a fundamental constant. Ten years ago Physicist Albert Abraham
Michelson clocked the velocity of light between two mountains in
California, got an average result of 186,284.45 mi. per sec. For
further precision he built a mile-long vacuum tube. Before the
measurements were complete he died. Grizzled Dr. Francis Gladheim
Pease of Mt. Wilson and Fred Pearson, longtime Michelson
assistant, carried on. Two years ago they announced that their
measurements were showing systematic variations, an astounding
situation which raised the question of whether light speed was a
constant after all.

     Last week final results were published in the Year Book of
the Carnegie Institution. Average velocity, in four series of
measurements over periods of two to five months, was 186,270.75
mi. per sec. Best modern figure for light's speed, this is almost
14 mi. per sec. slower than the results of ten years ago.
Inconstancies between individual measurements were ascribed to
experimental error or "disturbing influences of unknown origin."
But no doubt was expressed that the true velocity of light is
indeed a constant constant.


     Einstein's Reality

     As with Herbert Hoover, a notable change in the post three
years has come over the public demeanor of Professor Albert
Einstein. Whereas he was once almost as frozen and frightened in
the presence of strangers and newshawks as was the onetime
President of the U.S., the German mathematician now chuckles,
gestures, jokes, smokes in public with considerable self-
assurance. Last May Dr. Einstein made the short journey from
Princeton to Philadelphia to receive the Franklin Medal of the
Franklin Institute. A throng of scientists and dignitaries was
assembled to hear what the medalist had to say. Einstein genially
informed the chairman that he had nothing to say, that
inspiration which he had awaited until the last  moment had
failed him. The chairman, much more embarrassed than the
medalist, conveyed this information to the audience.

     Explicitly to atone for his silence on that occasion, Dr.
Einstein last week published in the Franklin Institute's
"Journal" a bulky essay entitled "Physics and Reality" setting
forth his own intuitive, emotional, thoroughly scientific view of
the state of modern physics.

     "It has often been said," he began, "and certainly not
without justification, that the man of science is a poor
philosopher. Why then should it not be the right thing for the
physicist to let the philosopher do the philosophizing? . . . At
a time like the present, when experience forces us to seek a
newer more solid foundation, the physicist simply cannot surrender
to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical
foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely
where the shoe pinches."

     In other words, the non-scientific philosopher, though he
may be dissatisfied with the trend of modern physics, is not well
enough equipped to put his finger on the source of the trouble.

     "Science concerns the totality . . . of concepts directly
connected with sense experiences, and theorems connecting them.
In its first stage of development, science does not contain
anything else."

     Primitive science consists of a great mass of observed
facts, a great number of attempts to connect one with another.
But the connections (theorems) themselves have little
interconnection. It is as if each existed in a different world,
or as if the world itself had no logical unity. To a scientist
this is repugnant. he accepts on faith that the world is a
harmonious whole; he may choose any way he wished to connect
different phenomena; if he chooses the right one it will fall
into place as naturally as a word in a puzzle, and no conceivable
experiment will dislodge it.

     Thus the body of science is like pyramid. The broad base
rests on sense impressions. As one proceeds farther & farther
from sense impressions, fewer & fewer systems are necessary to
explain Nature, since each system explains more. Thus mechanics
and heat are merged when heat is revealed as molecular motion.
But this is far from the pyramid's base; a hand dipped in hot
water feels heat, not motion. The apex of the pyramid, not yet
reached, would be a single system containing the terms necessary
to describe all phenomena.

     "We now realize, with special clarity, how much in error are
those theorists who believe that theory comes inductively from
experience. Even the Great Newton could not free himself from
this error ('Hypotheses non fingo')." ['I do not make
hypotheses.']

     In other words, assembling a great mass of observed facts
and stirring them around until a connecting theory emerges does
not work. Speculation and intuition are supremely necessary. What
sets Dr. Einstein apart is the quality of his intuition. There
have been abler mathematicians than he. But from a very few
observations--the constancy of light's speed in space and the
equivalence of gravitational mass and inertia--he divined how the
cosmos was made. he did not, like Newton, invent mathematics to
describe it but borrowed the mathematics of Riemann, Fitzgerald,
Lorentz and Minkowski.

     At present man's closest penetration to the heart of reality
is not single but double. Relativity deals with time, space,
gravity, the finite speed of light; quantum mechanics with
particles, electricity, the action of light. The two are not only
separate but in some cases conflict. Relativity dispenses with
the idea of absolute time; quantum mechanics retains it. Although
it is a tremendously powerful approach to atomic behavior,
quantum mechanics is shot through with uncertainty. It has given
birth to the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg, which states
that the position and velocity of an electron cannot be
simultaneously ascertained. In the Schrodinger wave mechanics,
the little symbol [psi] is important. It stands, roughly, for
statistical probability. Instead of locating the electron, it
locates a region in which the electron probably occurs.

     "Is there any physicist who believes that we shall never get
any inside view [of the behavior of single electrons]? To believe
this is logically possible without contradiction; but it is so
very contrary to my scientific instinct that I cannot forego the
search for a more complete conception.

     There is no doubt that quantum mechanics has seized hold of
a beautiful element of truth, and that it will be a test stone
for any future theoretical basis. . . . However, I do not believe
that quantum mechanics will be the starting point in the search."

     An approach from the relativistic starting point, on the
other hand, has already made progress. But so far only one
particle at a time can be dealt with. Perhaps an intuitive genius
of the future will find a new basis for unification--a basis now
lying in the abysm of the Unknown.