Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher | by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books 2017/3/6 11)07

our way of thinking could one day change, and abolition of war and weapons could become possible.

Less than half of Gimbels book is about Einsteins politics. The rest of it is about his science and his philosophy. In this
review I reverse the proportions, giving more space to politics and less to philosophy. Einsteins philosophy grew directly
out of his science. During the ten years from 1905 to 1915, he created a new view of the physical universe, including atoms
and light-quanta, space and time, electromagnetism and gravitation, with all their motions and interactions governed by
precise mathematical laws. His theories were tested by observation and experiment and found to be correct. On the basis of
this dazzling success, he built a philosophy.

A philosophy for Einstein meant a general view of nature into which the scientific details can fit. His philosophy describes
nature as a single layer of observable objects with strict causality governing their movements. If the state of affairs at the
present time is precisely known, then the laws of nature allow the state at a future time to be precisely predicted. The
uncertainty of our knowledge of the future arises only from the uncertainty of our knowledge of the past and present. I call
this view of nature the classical philosophy, since all objects obey the laws of classical physics.

Ten years after Einstein completed his theories, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrdinger invented quantum mechanics,
describing the behavior of atoms and light-quanta in a radically different way. Experiments confirmed that quantum
mechanics gives a true picture of atomic processes that Einsteins theories could not explain. Niels Bohr worked out a
philosophy, generally known as the Copenhagen interpretation, to explain quantum mechanics. I prefer to call it the
dualistic philosophy, since it describes the universe as consisting of two layers. The first layer is the classical world of
Einstein, with objects that are directly observable but no longer predictable. They have become unpredictable because they
are driven by events in the second layer that we cannot see. The second layer is the quantum world, with states that are not
directly observable but obey simple laws. For example, the laws of the second layer decree that every particle travels along
every possible path with a probability that depends in a simple way on the path.

The two layers are connected by probabilistic rules, so that the quantum state of an object tells us only the probabilities that
it will do various things. The dualistic philosophy allows us to divide our knowledge of nature into facts and probabilities.
Observation of the first layer gives us facts about what happened in the past, but only gives us probabilities about what
may happen in the future. The future is uncertain because the processes in the second layer are unobservable. The power
and the beauty of quantum mechanics arise from the fact that the physical laws in the second layer are precisely linear.

All points in a linear theory are equal, and a linear space has perfect symmetry about any of its points. As a result of the
linearity of the laws, the second layer possesses a wealth of marvelous symmetries that are only partially visible in the first
layer. For example, in the first layer, symmetries between space and time are only partly visible. In daily life, we do not
mix up inches with seconds or miles with days. In the second layer, as the result of Paul Diracs elegant equation
describing the quantum behavior of the electron, the mixing of space with time in the electrons movements would be
clearly visible. But we do not live in the second layer, and so the mixing is hidden from us.

The dualistic philosophy gives a natural frame for the new sciences of particle physics and relativistic cosmology that
emerged in the twentieth century after Einstein and Bohr were dead. The new sciences are dominated by mathematical
symmetries that are exact in the second layer and approximate in the first layer. The dualistic philosophy seems to me to
represent accurately our present state of knowledge. It says that the classical world and the quantum world are both real,
but the way they fit together is not yet completely understood. The dualistic philosophy is flexible enough to accept
unexpected discoveries and conceptual revolutions.

Now, eighty years after the dualistic philosophy was invented by Bohr, it is generally regarded by the younger generation
of physicists as obsolete. The younger generation mostly rejects duality and accepts what I call the quantum-only
philosophy. The quantum-only philosophy says that the classical world is an illusion and only the quantum world exists.
The concept of a classical world arose because the effects of quantum mechanics are rapidly erased by a phenomenon
known as decoherence. Decoherence hides the quantum world by destroying rapidly the waves arising from quantum
effects. After the waves have disappeared, whatever is left obeys classical laws and looks like a classical world. According
to the quantum-only philosophy, the marvelous harmony of Einsteins classical universe is only an approximation, valid
when quantum waves happen to be small enough to be neglected.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/05/07/albert-einstein-jew-and-philosopher/"printpage=true 4/5
Einstein as a Jew and a Philosopher | by Freeman Dyson | The New York Review of Books 2017/3/6 11)07

To summarize the present situation, there are three ways to understand philosophically our observations of the physical
universe. The classical philosophy of Einstein has everything in a single layer obeying classical laws, with quantum
processes unexplained. The quantum-only philosophy has included everything in a single layer obeying quantum laws,
with the astonishing solidity and uniqueness of the classical illusion unexplained. The dualistic philosophy gives reality
impartially to the classical vision of Einstein and to the quantum vision of Bohr, with the details of the connection between
the two layers unexplained. All three philosophies are tenable, and all three are incomplete. I prefer the dualistic
philosophy because I give equal weight to the insights of Einstein and Bohr. I do not believe that the celestial harmonies
discovered by Einstein are an accidental illusion.

Einstein in real life was not only a great politician and a great philosopher. He was also a great observer of the human
comedy, with a robust sense of humor. The third side of Einsteins personality is not emphasized by Gimbel, but was an
important cause of his immense popularity. He came as an observer to my boarding school in England in 1931, a few years
before I arrived there. He was in England as the guest of Frederick Lindemann, an Oxford physicist who was also a friend
and adviser to Winston Churchill.

Lindemann took him to the school to meet one of the boys who was a family friend. The boy was living in Second
Chamber, in an ancient building where the walls are ornamented with marble memorials to boys who occupied the rooms
in past centuries. Einstein and Lindemann wandered by mistake into the adjoining First Chamber, which had been
converted from a living room to a bathroom. In First Chamber, the marble memorials were preserved, but underneath them
on the walls were hooks where boys had hung their smelly football clothes. Einstein surveyed the scene for a while in
silence, and then said: Now I understand: the spirits of the departed pass over into the trousers of the living.
Letters
Murders & Massacres from Both Sides June 4, 2015

When You Got to Go May 14, 2015

RELATED
A Martial Law Carol !
Joseph Brodsky

What Scientists Really Do Time Regained!

Priyamvada Natarajan James Gleick

1963-2017 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/05/07/albert-einstein-jew-and-philosopher/"printpage=true 5/5