When Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson rowed about time
A century later, the dispute between the physicist and the philosopher still resonates
A CENTURY AGO, on April 6th 1922, the world’s most famous philosopher debated against the most famous physicist and lost. Henri Bergson, a French thinker who caused Broadway’s first traffic jam when he gave a lecture in New York, had challenged the notion of time advanced by Albert Einstein, the discoverer of relativity. Bergson was putting his thoughts into book form when Einstein came to Paris.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Time v the machine”
Culture April 9th 2022
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