A SIMPLE CONCEPT: The science was his Achilles' heel!

FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2021

Also, Krauthammer's conjecture:  Way back in April 2007, Janet Maslin reviewed Walter Isaacson's book for the New York Times. 

Credit where due! According to Maslin, Isaacson hadn't managed to make the science especially easy.

In question was Isaacson's well-received biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe. In Maslin's view, Isaacson had done a very good job with Einstein's life, but Einstein's universe had perhaps been quite a bit harder.

Maslin cushioned her blow with an "if." But she seemed to make it clear that the science hadn't been especially easy to understand:

Mr. Isaacson deals clearly and comfortably with the scope of Einstein’s life. If his highly readable and informative book has an Achilles’ heel, it’s in the area of science. Mr. Isaacson had the best available help (most notably the physicist Brian Greene’s) in explicating the series of revelations Einstein brought forth in his wonder year, 1905, and the subsequent problems with quantum theory and uncertainty that would bedevil him.

But these sections of the book are succinctly abbreviated. Paradoxically that makes them less accessible than they would have been through longer, more patient explication. Still, the cosmic physics would be heavy sledding in any book chiefly devoted to Einstein’s life and times, and Mr. Isaacson acknowledges that. “O.K., it’s not easy,” he writes, “but that’s why we’re no Einstein and he was.”

If the book had a shortcoming, it lay with the science, she said. In this way, Maslin softened her assessment, which otherwise seemed fairly clear,

Maslin cited Isaacson's joke—the sensible joke from the book's page 4 which we mentioned three weeks ago, in the first of our current reports.

(“O.K., it’s not easy,” Isaacson jokes.  But that’s because we aren't Einstein.)

Maslin cited the role of Brian Greene, the theoretical physicist who played the leading role among Isaacson's dozen or so major science advisers. In Maslin's view, the participation of figures like Greene meant that Isaacson had "the best available help" when it came to reporting the science. 

(Once again, we'll suggest a different possibility. Undeniably brilliant physicists may not always be the best guides if we're trying to determine what will be understandable to the general reader.)

In Maslin's view, the sections of the book which dealt with Einstein's revolutionary discoveries were "succinctly abbreviated," perhaps overly so. She suggested that Isaacson could have done a better job if he'd given the science "longer, more patient explication."

Everything is possible, but we're not inclined to agree. Isaacson does do an excellent job with Einstein's remarkable life—but Einstein's revolutionary universe is extremely hard. Just consider a few of the things Greene himself has said.

In The Fabric of the Cosmos, his 2004 book for general readers, Greene describes the remarkable strangeness of the universe which emerges from Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905). (The special theory is the subject of Isaacson's Chapter Six.)

"The relativity of space and of time is a startling conclusion," Greene writes in his book. "I've known about it for more than twenty-five years, but even so, whenever I quietly sit and think about it, I am amazed."

"Special relativity is not in our bones," Greene wrote in his earlier book for general readers, The Elegant Universe (1999). "Its implications are not a central part of our intuition." 

Concerning Einstein's general theory of relativity, which emerged in 1915, Greene has said that the human brain may not be designed to understand its workings. "What I can do," he said in a PBS interview, "is I can make use of mathematics that describe those extra dimensions, and then I can try to translate what the mathematics tells me into lower dimensional analogies that help me gain a picture of what the math has told me." 

So Greene said to PBS. He was describing a difficult struggle—the struggle to explain Einstein's universe.

By all accounts, Einstein's universe is extremely hard to report, describe, explicate, explain or simplify. Those bits of testimony come from a major theoretical physicist—from someone who actually does understand the complex mathematics behind the "startling" physics.

Could Isaacson have done a better job if he'd spent more time on the science? Everything is possible. But in fairness, Isaacson doesn't seem to skimp in his attempts to explore the terrain of this difficult universe. 

His Chapter Six: Special Relativity, 1905 covers a full 33 pages. He does go on at substantial length, but it seems to us that the thread has been lost in its first three or four pages.

Would a more detailed treatment have helped? This new universe is extremely hard. We know of no reason to think so.

Isaacson is an extremely capable writer and a very smart person. He's a highly experienced mainstream journalist. He's an acclaimed biographer.

Still and all, when he tries to explain special relativity, he starts with a presentation which seems almost Onionesque. With apologies, we'll quote it one more time. Isaacson starts with this:

CHAPTER SIX Special Relativity, 1905

Relativity is a simple concept. It asserts that the fundamental laws of physics are the same whatever your state of motion.

Relativity "asserts that the fundamental laws of physics are the same whatever your state of motion?" 

That formulation strikes us as almost Onionesque. Nor do matters get any better as Isaacson meanders ahead. He's an acclaimed biographer and a very smart person, but his treatment of Einstein's universe strikes us as pretty much incomprehensible pretty much all the way down.

Despite this fact, his book is blurbed by major figures saying the science is clear as a bell. Maslin could see that that wasn't the case, but she seemed to pull her punch.

Isaacson's treatment of special relativity starts in a way which seems almost Onionesque. Things don't get a whole lot clearer as Isaacson proceeds from there.

That said, no one seems to be willing or able to notice or mention this fact. In our view, this state of affairs can be seen as instructive.

DESPITE HIS OUTSTANDING TREATMENT of Einstein's life, did Isaacson fail to make Einstein's universe understandable? 

Inevitably, that's a subjective assessment. We'll offer a road map to such assessment below.

Next week, we'll be moving to a part of Isaacson's Chapter Six which is taken straight from Einstein's 1916 book for general readers, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

In Isaacson's perfectly sensible framing, the passage in question involves the "eureka moment" in which Einstein "took one of the most elegant imaginative leaps in the history of physics." At issue is "the relativity of simultaneity," a central element of the special theory. Indeed, that's the title of Chapter IX in Einstein's short 1916 book.

Midway through his own Chapter Six, Isaacson discusses the logic of this major leap. His treatment of this eureka moment is taken directly from Einstein's own book. That said, the problem is this:

On its face, this presentation has never made sense. On its face, it didn't make sense in 1916. On its face, it didn't make sense when it appeared  in Isaacson's book, in 2007.

On its face, the presentation still didn't make sense when Nova folded it into a hundredth anniversary program on Einstein in 2015. We'll review that presentation next week—but on its face, it's fairly clear that it has never made sense.

Sometimes, presentations fail to make sense in clear, straightforward ways. That doesn't mean that anyone will notice or mention such a fact, especially if the presentation carries the imprimatur of high academic authority.

Other times, presentations are hopelessly murky and jumbled. It's harder to explain what's wrong with such presentations, even though they may make little or no clear sense.

At such times, how can we say that a presentation isn't understandable? Suppose a reader has read the passage and has said that he does understand?

Let's apply that sensible question to the first four pages of Isaacson's Chapter Six. As we do, we'll formulate a pair of challenges for the careful general reader.

THE START OF ISAACSON'S CHAPTER SIX strikes us as almost Onionesque. We say that because it asserts a claim which seems to be comically obvious.

Relativity "asserts that the fundamental laws of physics are the same whatever your state of motion?" That assertion has struck us as puzzlingly obvious ever since we first encountered it, way back in '08.

Why wouldn't the fundamental laws of physics remain the same in the circumstance described? Why wouldn't those "fundamental laws" remain the same, even if I rose from my chair and walked across the room? 

Isaacson's sentences are perfectly formed as his chapter begins.  There's (almost) no technical language; there isn't any math. It's easy for readers to blow past the oddity of such a presentation and move to paragraph 2.

It's very easy for readers to do that, especially when their book jacket is covered with blurbs saying that the science has been made easy. It maybe easy for general readers to fail to notice that they don't understand.

At such junctures, we can ask them to answer some questions. With respect to Isaacson's first six paragraphs, we might as such questions as these:

1) What fundamental laws of physics is Isaacson referring to here?  

2) How many such laws can you name? How many such laws exist?

3) Why wouldn't these fundamental laws of physics remain in effect? How "fundamental" would such laws be if they changed on so flimsy a basis?

If the reader can't answer such questions, he or she has been put on notice—at this point, he or she may not fully understand what is being said. Meanwhile, as Isaacson's first four pages proceed, it's easy to think of other basic questions which might be hard for the general reader to answer.

By the third page of Chapter Six, Isaacson has moved from his description of this "simple concept" to a somewhat similar statement—to the claim that "there is no better description of relativity" than a certain presentation by Galileo in 1632.

The presentation is quoted at length. On its face, it seems to make easy-to-understand sense. But we would bet that the general reader would have a hard time with such questions as these:

4) In what way is that presentation a brilliant description of relativity? 

5) Indeed, in what way is it a description of relativity at all?

Thirteen years later, we can't exactly answer those questions ourselves. No matter how smoothly Isaacson's language sails along from page to page, we'll guess that other general readers would crash on the shoals of incomprehension when faced with such questions too.

A passage isn't understandable just because it avoids technical language and formulas and features good sentence structure. A presentation is understandable if the general reader can discuss it in certain basic ways. 

This returns us to something Charles Krauthammer said. Way back in the winter of '88, he described the way we sometimes repeat and recite the things experts say, even though we may not know what our recitations mean.

Also, he had said that it couldn't be done! Krauthammer had read, or had tried to read, Stephen Hawking's reportedly easy-to-understand book, A Brief History of Time.  

Like Richard Cohen before him, Krauthammer said he didn't understand the book. He even suggested that, in the case of modern physics, such things could no longer be done:

I understand, and if asked can readily repeat, the current notion of superstring theory that the universe has 10 (or 26) dimensions, all but four of which are curled up into tiny little balls. But what can that possibly mean?

I can also recite Hawking's solution to the age-old question: Did the universe have a beginning, or has it existed through an infinity of time? Hawking proposes a finesse: space-time is finite in extent but has no boundary or edge. Meaning: space-time is like the surface of the earth, which also is finite (197 million square miles) but round and enclosed, so that you can go around forever without reaching a beginning or an end. A universe of no beginning and no end, but no infinity. I understand. But what does it mean?

The Hawking book may be proof that physics has reached the limits of metaphor...Thousands of graduate students understand the equations whose meaning Hawking has set out to communicate. But physics is becoming the province of a small cadre of cognoscenti who occasionally send out emissaries like Hawking to speak to the rest of us in parables.

Inscrutable parables. Compare physics to biology, for example. Biology is very complicated, but in principle it is comprehensible. Give the man on the Clapham omnibus an hour, and he can gain a reasonable grasp of, say, immunology. Thirteen hours of Hawking have convinced me that you can no longer do that with physics. 

Krauthammer had struggled with Hawking's "inscrutable" book. He offered a simple but instructive assessment:

He could "recite" and "repeat" the things he had read in Hawking's book.  But he didn't know what those statements meant, and he didn't think anyone could make modern physics understandable to the general reader.

We're all inclined to read the nice sentences in some approved text, then to repeat what we've read. Depending on the circumstances, we may decide to take a pass on admitting that we don't understand some part of what we've read.

In our current series of reports, we're focusing on books which attempt to make Einstein understandable, even easy. When someone attempts to compose such a book, he's entered the World Series of explanation. Almost surely, these are the hardest possible explanations we can choose to pursue.

As we'll see in the weeks and months ahead, our remarkable failures in these areas may tend to trickle on down. In the end, it doesn't matter if we can't explain or understand Einstein's universe. In other arenas, our inability to explain and understand may matter a very great deal.

That said, our skill sets are quite unimpressive. Routinely, the spirit isn't especially willing, and the flesh is remarkably weak.

In each of our society's warring tribes, our analytical skills are persistently overrun by our passions. Have we been failed by our useless logicians? In the end, that's what we'll claim.

Next week: On its face, this has never made sense


20 comments:

  1. Maslin says: "Still, the cosmic physics would be heavy sledding in any book chiefly devoted to Einstein’s life and times, and Mr. Isaacson acknowledges that."

    So Somerby can have no beef with Isaacson. His intent was not to explain the physics and he didn't, and he acknowledged that he didn't. But he DID do a good job with Einstein's life, which is something Somerby apparently does not care about.

    Isaacson has also written books about Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs and Jennifer Doudna (who developed gene editing). He is interested in these people. If he were interested in cosmology, he would have written on it instead of focusing on important inventors and scientists.

    Somerby's beef is that people are daring to read books on subjects they will never understand. Should we all stop? How then would learning ever happen? And this must be the crime of the century, given the amount of space Somerby has devoted to it, in a world with many controversies and events that might be discussed.

    Does Somerby never stop to ask whether this is the best use of his time on our planet? He should.

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  2. "Almost surely, these are the hardest possible explanations we can choose to pursue."

    Is this true? I suspect it isn't. Judging by Somerby's own difficulties grasping material, it seems like Godel's incompleteness theorem is harder for Somerby to understand than special relativity. He comes closer to describing and he expresses less pique against Einsten than Godel (and their respective translators). Further, Einstein was able to come up with special relativity without doing the math (which was later done by Max Planck, whereas Godel's work is entirely logic, proof, and math, which Godel himself did. While the implications of Einstein's theory may be more dramatic, Godel's work probably took greater technical expertise, and thus may be harder to grasp outside his discipline.

    But Somerby's lack of concern for actual science is clear in this assertion, and in his many comments about Godel. And if Somerby is not actually concerned about science or science writing or biography, what is his purpose here? I think he is upset that anyone would write a book he cannot understand easily (i.e., without effort) because of what that implies about his own intellect.

    Maybe one day Somerby will read a new book, instead of "struggling" with the old ones assigned to him in college (was that 50 years ago?). It might rock his world!

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  3. "Like Richard Cohen before him, Krauthammer said he didn't understand the book. "

    In the questions Somerby poses about physics, his assumption appears to be that the "general reader" must know those things in order to "understand" Isaacson's book. That may be true if the goal is to understand physics, but the goal of the general reader may instead be to understand what physicists do, how they think, and what their work consists of. In that case, the questions Somerby raises are irrelevant and need not be part of the general reader's knowledge base in order to get something out of the biography of Einstein. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that any so-called general reader would be reading that book in order to understand physics.

    This is a giant strawman of Somerby's construction. His goal is evidently to claim that the general reader is being hoodwinked by academics (since that is what he is claiming) and that readers are too stupid to know what they do not understand. If you asked that general reader how much of the physics they were absorbing, I believe their answer would be quite accurate, and range from none at all to a little bit to half or three-quarters, depending on their college major(s) and subsequent work experience. The general reader is not as stupid as Somerby seems to assume.

    Why would a general reader ever want to learn special relativity? It is not important in daily life and it doesn't help in anyone's work, except a physicist or perhaps an astronaut. Curiosity perhaps. But given that special relativity has little relevance to the general reader, is it a tragedy if they understand more about Einstein the man, than they do about his work? I think not.

    But Somerby thinks this shows how terribly, awfully, irreparably damaged and stupid human beings are. And that is perhaps his purpose here. To reassure himself that he is the last intelligent creature on earth and that not only are the people who read such books very very stupid, but so are the liberals because that is the only tribe he can find the time to excoriate (would a stupid person use that word?)! You would think that someone as obsessed as Somerby is with special relativity, would have learned more basic physics by now.

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  4. "In each of our society's warring tribes, our analytical skills are persistently overrun by our passions. Have we been failed by our useless logicians? In the end, that's what we'll claim."

    What is the role of logicians in everyday life? I submit that they have no active role. Their jobs are in academia. And if they have no active role, how can they have failed us?

    Somerby also reveals some misunderstandings about passion versus analytical thinking. One doesn't "overrun" the other; they work together. For one thing, passion motivates the painstaking analysis. For another, analysis without passion to make meaningful the importance of one's thinking is useless.

    A case in point. Somerby has devoted quite a bit of analysis to this stupid book. Is his essay devoid of passion? Would anyone in their right mind be writing this stuff day after day without some passionate obsession to keep up the momentum? What is Somerby's passion about? We cannot tell solely by observing his analysis (such as it is). Passion sustains hard work. Somerby seems to have skipped the step where passion guides and directs that work toward an important goal. But I think he does have a goal that he is not revealing, and it has nothing to do with Einstein.

    Problems arise when either passion or analysis is missing and one relies on only analysis or only passion, without allowing both to guide decision-making and understanding. Without passion, an Einstein making a discovery would never shout "Eureka!" but only bleat "ho hum". Soemrby has no sense of wonder at the discoveries of Einstein or Godel, so his passion appears to be directed elsewhere and this is sophistry. He only seems to get excited when he talks about tribes, and then, only when he is beating up on liberals. What does that reveal about his motives here?

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  5. Here is an excerpt from Isaacson's book The Codebreakers. It illustrates how passion and analysis combine to result in breakthroughs:

    "When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.

    Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned ​a curiosity ​of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.

    The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code."

    Of course, Somerby would not read such a book, because it is about a girl. He wouldn't claim that the general reader doesn't understand how the Crisper works, because it would be so obviously ridiculous to expect a biography to do that job. And it doesn't fit his doom and gloom attitude about the future, nor his picture of people as dolts who cannot think.

    I find it ironic that Isaacson has already written the ultimate rebuttal to Somerby's current nonsense, in that book about biology (another field that Somerby seems to know nothing about).

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    Replies
    1. I too read Watson's book and even though I was not a biologist, I was able to follow the tale about discovery well enough to be enthralled by the story. It also shows how Rosalind Franklin was left out by the Nobel committee and yet was crucial to the discovery of the structure of DNA. The sexism of the British scientists is well-described in the book, although Watson wasn't much better, according to those who have met him.

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  6. Isn't it time to start agonizing about that cat in a box who's simultaneously dead and alive, dear Bob?

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  7. This Einstein stuff must be boring Somerby's readers, given the lack of comments. When will he to back to material that gives his commentors the thrill of bashing America and calling people priviledged racists (and trying to insult our good and faithful friend Mao)?

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    Replies
    1. When there is again an anti-establishment president, whose mental abilities are insufficiently questioned by zombie media. Or when the zombie media neglect, by a freak accident, to faithfully lick liberal ass.

      Iow: probably never.

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    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. "When there is again an anti-establishment president"

      Where have you gone, Jimmy Carter, our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.

      Delete
  8. ‘Why wouldn't those "fundamental laws" remain the same, even if I rose from my chair and walked across the room?’

    A person standing on the ground throws a baseball. A measuring device reads 60 mph.

    A person on a train going 40 mph throws a baseball. An identical measuring device on the train reads 60 mph.
    The measuring device on the ground measures 100 mph for this throw.

    Are the laws of motion different on the train? No, you just have to factor in the relative motion of the two observers.

    Our laws of physics were developed by people on the earth who assume they are at rest in their laboratories. But we actually know that the earth spins on its axis while orbiting the sun. Thus, our laws were derived in a frame of reference that is moving. Does that motion affect the physical laws we have derived? Under different circumstances, would the laws look different?

    Einstein said no.

    The example of ‘moving clocks run slow’ is illustrative. A clock that has been for a ride in an airplane will show less time has elapsed than a clock that remained earthbound.
    Does this mean physical laws operate differently in airplanes? No, said Einstein.

    The first postulate of special relativity is connected with the second: the speed of light is constant (in a vacuum) regardless of the motion of the frame it emanates from.

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  9. "In each of our society's warring tribes, our analytical skills are persistently overrun by our passions."

    Without taking into account our passions, our analysis (and any decisions resulting from it) will not reflect our values and priorities because passions are the way we determine these. I believe that Somerby has insufficient respect for how our feelings contribute to which party we affiliate with, why we feel as we do about issues, and how connected we are to our political identities.

    Belonging to different tribes does not imply that we must be at war with each other. Neither does holding our views passionately. I agree with Kevin Drum's article on the way in which Fox News has denigrated the left and made conservatives believe there is only bad faith among liberals. Somerby is trying to get across the same negative messages about liberals as Fox, in my opinion. That has nothing to do with analysis or passion, but a lot to do with "winning" in politics and accomplishing Murdoch's goals as a plutocrat. Only conservatives are talking about warring tribes, so Somerby is demonstrably in lockstep with that alt-right agenda.

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  10. Let me guess. Somerby doesn't understand Einstein. I was still hoping he would after yesterday's column (or was it one of the other eighteen straight commentaries he's done.)
    Krauthammer doesn't understand Einstein either, because he's dead. But even if Krauthammer was in a box somewhere and we couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead, he wouldn't get Einstein.
    I'm not looking in that box, and I'm not reading these things through. Any chance that Janet Maslin will criticize Somerby for being too concise?

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  11. Good grief!

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58021718.amp

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. 14% of adults in Australia have been vaccinated.

    ReplyDelete
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