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Nearer to our own time, Einstein appears as the incarnation
of this drive toward a formulation of physics in which no reference
to irreversibility would be made on the fundamental level.
An historic scene took place at the Societe de Philosophie in
Paris on April 6, 1922,1 when Henri Bergson attempted to defend
the cause of the multiplicity of coexisting "lived" times
against Einstein. Einstein's reply was absolute: he categorically
rejected "philosophers' time." Lived experience cannot
save what has been denied by science.
Einstein's reaction was somewhat justified. Bergson had obviously
misunderstood Einstein's theory of relativity. However,
there also was some prejudice on Einstein's part: duree,
Bergson's "lived time," refers to the basic dimensions of becoming,
the irreversibility that Einstein was willing to admit
only at the phenomenological level. We have already referred
to Einstein's conversations with Carnap (see Chapter VII).
For him distinctions among past, present, and future were outside
the scope of physics.
It is fascinating to follow the correspondence between Einstein
and the closest friend of his young days in Zurich, Michele
Besso. 8 Although he was an engineer and scientist, toward the
end of his life Besso became increasingly concerned with philosophy,
literature, and the problems that surround the core of
human existence. Untiringly he kept asking the same questions:
What is irreversibility? What is its relationship with the
laws of physics? And untiringly Einstein would answer with a
patience he showed only to this closest friend: irreversibility is
merely an illusion produced by "improbable" initial conditions.
This dialogue continued over many years until Besso, older
than Einstein by eight years, passed away, only a few months
before Einstein's death. In a last letter to Besso's sister and
son, Einstein wrote: "Michele has left this strange world just
before me. This is of no importance. For us convinced physicists
the distinction between past, present and future is an illusion,
although a persistent one." In Einstein's drive to perceive
the basic laws of physics, the intelligible was identified with
the immutable.
Why was Einstein so strongly opposed to the introduction
of irreversibility into physics? We can only guess. Einstein
was a rather lonely man; he had few friends, few coworkers,