WITTGENSTEIN MADE EASY: Wittgenstein tops a second list!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2021

But first, our own brush with greatness: Yesterday, we learned of another survey.

We'd checked in with the leading authority of the life and work of the late Willard Van Orman Quine, a Harvard philosophy professor of long standing, and also of high renown.

In the street-fighting fall of 1967, we took, or largely pretended to take, Quine's one-semester course, Phil 140: Deductive Logic. We'll only tell you this:

The grade we were unaccountably given kept us out of Vietnam. Disaffection could carry a hefty price back in those street-fighting days!

In 1999, Professor Lackey asked 4,000 philosophy professors to identify the most important philosophy texts of the 20th century. As we showed you yesterday, Professor Quine's 1960 book, Word and Object, earned sixth spot on that survey's list, with you-know-which book ranking first and described as "a runaway winner:"

The most important philosophy books of the 20th century:
1) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
2) Martin Heidegger, Being and Time 
3) John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
4) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
5) Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica
6) W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object
7) Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
8) Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
9) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
10) A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality

It occurred to us that we knew almost nothing about Professor Quine's life and work—and so, we decided to check with the leading authority on the subject. We were struck by a certain aspect of that authority's overview—but for now, let's just consider this statement:

"A 2009 poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries."

Another survey had been taken, this time in 2009! As it turns out, this second survey was conducted by Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog.

We can't find an account of this second survey's methodology. Based on what we've been able to discover, we aren't sure that this survey was actually restricted to "analytic philosophers" (a subset of the larger group), or even to philosophy professors at all.  

That said, the survey was conducted by Professor Leiter, and sure enough! When we checked, we saw that Professor Quine had been ranked fifth—and that you-know-who had triumphed again:

The most important philosophers of the past 200 years:
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein
2. Gottlob Frege
3. Bertrand Russell 
4. John Stuart Mill
5. W.V.O. Quine
6. G.W.F. Hegel
7. Saul Kripke
8. Friedrich Nietzsche
9. Karl Marx 
10. Soren Kierkegaard

As best we can tell, Professor Leiter had made no attempt to ensure that his respondents were a representative sample of some larger group. Still, there we see  a second survey, conducted within the world of academic philosophy, in which respondents, whoever they may have been, named Wittgenstein as king of the roost—in this case, as the most important philosopher of the past two hundred years!

This survey was taken in 2009. Coupled with Lackey's earlier effort, it seems to call Professor Horwich onto the carpet.

Four years later, in 2013, Horwich would claim that the philosophy academy had largely thrown the later Wittgenstein under the bus. He made his claim in this essay at the The Stone, the New York Times' philosophy blog.

We've cited Horwich' intriguing essay on several occasions in the past. Within the next few days, or perhaps within the next week, we expect to do so again.

Basically, Horwich said that the later Wittgenstein's work undermined much of the traditional philosophy canon. As such, it undermined much of the work favored by philosophy professors. For that reason, Horwich said, professors had begin to disregard, even perhaps to mock, Wittgenstein's later work.

By the time we saw Horwich's essay, we'd been wondering about that possibility for several decades. We persist in thinking that, at least in theory, his thesis makes good sense.

That said, here were two surveys in which large numbers of philosophy professors placed Wittgenstein at the top of the pile! Setting Horwich's claims to the side for now, we return to the capsule summary of Professor Quine's highly-regarded work.

Without any question, Professor Quine was seen as a giant in the field. Even as we acknowledge that fact, we think the overview of his work has a slight sideways feel:

Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century." From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978.

Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. Quine was famous for his position that first order logic is the only kind worthy of the name, and developed his own system of mathematics and set theory, known as New Foundations. In philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities. However, he was the main proponent of the view that philosophy is not conceptual analysis, but continuous with science; the abstract branch of the empirical sciences. This led to his famous quip that "philosophy of science is philosophy enough."...

His major writings include the papers "On What There Is," which elucidated Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment, "To be is to be the value of a variable," and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) which attacked the traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism, undermining the then-popular logical positivism, advocating instead a form of semantic holism. They also include the books The Web of Belief, which advocates a kind of coherentism, and Word and Object (1960), which further developed these positions and introduced Quine's famous indeterminacy of translation thesis, advocating a behaviorist theory of meaning.

A 2009 poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries...

Quine received his B.A. summa cum laude in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1930, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932. His thesis supervisor was Alfred North Whitehead. He was then appointed a Harvard Junior Fellow, which excused him from having to teach for four years.

[...]

At Harvard, Quine helped supervise the Harvard graduate theses of, among others, David Lewis, Gilbert Harman, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Hao Wang, Hugues LeBlanc, Henry Hiz and George Myro.

Quine's thesis supervisor was Alfred North Whitehead! Whitehead finished fifth and tenth on the "most important books" list, but let's set that to the side.

As we read that overview, we had a certain reaction. We were struck by the fact that, while Quine seems to be viewed, within the academy, as one of the most important philosophers of the past two centuries, a general reader will have no idea what any part of that overview might mean.

Quine is said to have offered "a famous quip"—a quip the average person won't likely be able to recognize as a quip of any kind. He's said to have offered a famous thesis—a famous "indeterminacy of translation thesis," in which he "advocated a behaviorist theory of meaning."

In a passage which sounds almost Onionesque, Quine is even said to have advocated a position or belief referred to as "coherentism." Rather, he's said to have "advocated a kind of coherentism," an almost Onionseque construction which seems to suggest the existence of several varieties of this comically-named philosophical mystery meat.

Quine "was famous for his position that first order logic is the only kind worthy of the name," this overview said. Presumably, he was famous for that only within the academy. Elsewhere, would anyone have any idea what such a position entails?

Outside the academy, does anyone have any idea what any of that overview means? Meanwhile, there sits Wittgenstein once again, listed as king of all he surveyed. Does anyone outside the academy have even the slightest idea what he may have said or done to merit his high rank?

In the coming weeks and months, we'll be advocating a certain alternate view. We'll advocate the view that there's a highly worthwhile type of logic known as "Daily Logic"—a type of logic largely honored in the breach. We'll also advocate for this view:

It's in part for lack of this daily logic that our failing nation has long been miserably failing, as it continues to do today.

To appearances, the world of academic philosophy walked away from the world of daily affairs many years ago. Tomorrow, we'll click one link in the Quine overview, allowing us to offer more thoughts on this unfortunate subject.

We suspect that Professor Horwich is right. But for now, as the surveys keep rolling in, his thesis will just have to wait.

Tomorrow: An astonishing list of specialties, plus additional brushes with greatness

WITTGENSTEIN MADE EASY: It was the century's "most important book!"

MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2021

Or has it been discarded?: We were surprised to learn the news, but sure enough—there it was!

Dating to early 1968, we've spent more time with the book in question than with any other book. Still and all, who knew?

The book in question is Philosophical Investigations, the imprecisely-titled, definitive text of "the later Wittgenstein." And good lord! According to the leading authority on such matters, it was once named the most important philosophy text of the 20th century!

From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the relatively slim 75-page [work] which appeared...in 1922 under the Latin title, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus...

His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. A survey among American university and college teachers ranked the Investigations as the most important book of 20th-century philosophy...

In a survey taken in 1999, Philosophical Investigations was rated "the most important book of 20th-century philosophy!" Seriously, though:

Who knew? 

As it turns out, Professor Lackey of Baruch College devised and administered the survey. In his estimation, Wittgenstein's posthumous text emerged from the survey as "the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations."

That's how Wittgenstein's text was viewed. Or at least, so the survey said.

Just for the record, how extensive was the survey which produced this result? Each observer can judge for himself, but the basic info is this:

In Lackey's detailed account of his survey, he says he received "a good response rate" to his emailed questionnaire—a questionnaire which was received by 4,000 philosophy professors. To our mind, the total number of responses—414—seems a bit underwhelming. 

It's hard to know what would have occurred had Lackey received more responses. But it's worth recording his fuller account of the reaction to Wittgenstein's famously difficult text:

We asked respondents to name the five most important books in philosophy in the twentieth century, and also the five most important articles. Giving five choices permits discretion, but five is a small enough number to force voters to choose their selections carefully. Since we were interested in judgments of quality, we instructed respondents to make their choices on the basic of intrinsic merit, not on the basis of causal influence.

[...]

The immediate, indisputable, and unexpected result is that there is a runaway winner in first place. Wittgenstein’s Investigations was cited far more frequently than any other book and was listed first on more ballots than any other book. The Investigations was cited by persons whose other selections were all logic books, by persons whose other selections were all phenomenology books, by persons whose other selections were all Asian books. It is the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations.

Philosophical Investigations was "a runaway winner," Lackey said. It "was cited far more frequently than any other book."

"At the same time," Lackey acknowledged, "it was only cited on 43% of all ballots. There is, apparently, no book that a majority of American and Canadian philosophers will put on a short list of five."

Inevitably, so it goes.

On the merits, how about it? Was Philosophical Investigations "the most important book in philosophy in the twentieth century?" 

Obviously, that's a matter of judgment—and the vast majority of philosophy professors didn't respond to Lackey's emailed questionnaire.

That said, the Investigations did outdistance all other books by a substantial margin. It should be noted that Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the definite text of "the early Wittgenstein," was named the fourth most important book of the century on Professor Lackey's survey. As such, this survey of the past century's philosophy texts made Wittgenstein a big winner all around.

We first learned about this 21-year-old survey in just the past few weeks. We were surprised to learn about its result for a particular reason—a reason we've discussed in the past. 

We first studied Wittgenstein back in the late 1960s. He was extremely hot at that time, but it had long been our impression that Wittgenstein had been losing favor within the academy as the century ground to a close. 

That had long been our impression—and then, sure enough! In 2013, Professor Horwich of NYU made that direct assertion in this challenging post for The Stone, the New York Times' "forum for contemporary philosophers." 

According to Horwich, the academy had thrown Wittgenstein under the bus because his later work undermined so much of the traditional canon—and with it, so much of the academy's ongoing work. Tomorrow, we'll review Horwich's thesis in more detail, but we'd been wondering about that possibility for several decades by the time we saw his fascinating post. 

For that reason, we were surprised to see that Philosophical Investigation had been named as the century's most important philosophy text, even in a survey with only 414 responses. We were surprised, but we were also pleased—we regard the Investigations as almost impossibly murky, but also as a deeply instructive book.

We were struck by something else as we read Professor Lackey's account of his survey. We were struck by the absence of a single book on the survey's Top 25 which has influenced the American public discourse in any significant way.

There are well-known books in other fields which have deeply affected the discourse. We see no such title on Lackey's list—a list which includes this Top Ten:

The most important philosophy books of the 20th century
1) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
2) Martin Heidegger, Being and Time 
3) John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
4) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
5) Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica
6) W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object
7) Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity
8) Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
9) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
10) A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality

We're not saying there's anything "wrong" with any of those books, though almost surely there is. We're saying that none of those books has affected the public discourse in the manner of a Silent Spring or a Feminine Mystique.

No title came to be well-known within the public discourse, in the manner of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Black Like Me or Unsafe at Any Speed. In the manner of The Diary of a Young Girl, or in the manner of any number of widely-known novels. 

None of those titles has entered the public consciousness in a way which reflects the reach and influence of its contents. With the possible exception of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, the same is true of the rest of the books on Professor Lackey's full list.

We regard Philosophical Investigations as a maddening text. For that reason, we'd be slow to call it "a masterpiece."

That said, we'd list it as a book of logic—and we'd describe it as a book which, in spite of its maddening difficulty, is also deeply instructive, if only in potential.

According to Professor Lackey's survey, a cross-section of philosophy professors regarded Philosophical Investigations as the most important book in their field of the previous century. At the same time, the book has had exactly zero effect on this struggling nation's failing public discourse—and according to Professor Horwich, the academy, by and large, had decided to throw it under the bus as of 2013.

Rachel Carson? Betty Friedan? Ralph Nader? Dee Brown and so many others? Many such people have written books which turned them into household names while helping expand the horizons of public knowledge and driving the public debate.

By way of contrast, no one has the slightest idea who Ludwig Wittgenstein was, or what he may have said in the most important philosophy text of the previous century. Nor has any other logician—more generally, any other "philosopher"—exerted any comparable influence on public understanding and debate.

Here at this site, we often think of Wittgenstein's text when we puzzle over explanations we encounter in "Einstein made easy" books. The people who author these explanations are often, by any measure, among the brightest people in the world—but due to our logicians' retreat, they've been deprived of access to the cogency / clarity skills explored in Wittgenstein's admittedly maddening text.

This week, we're going to make Wittgenstein easy. Along the way, we'll discuss the way the nation's logicians have long since abandoned their posts.

Tomorrow: Is Horwich allowed to say that?

Our own blue tribe is long gone too!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2021

Just look at this morning's Post: We're so old that we can remember when man [sic] was widely said to be "the rational animal."

Major anthropologists with whom we consult have persistently laughed at that notion. Actually, we humans are the tribal animal, these disconsolate scholars insist. 

We divide ourselves into warring groups. We then invent, and we promulgate, mandated Storylines and Beliefs. Or so these award-winning experts all tell us!

To what extent do current events suggest that these experts are right? Consider two snapshots of our warring red and blue tribes.

First, take a look at the current behavior of many of the reds. A snapshot of their tribal behavior and beliefs is offered in a humane but despondent guest essay in today's New York Times.

The writer is Anton DiSclafani, a novelist and associate professor of creative writing at Auburn University. DiSclafani says she loves living in her native South, but she also offers this about her region's many refuseniks:

DISCLAFANI (8/14/21): Southerners are famous for their graciousness. All of that seems lost right now; one only has to witness a City Council meeting, as I did last week, and listen to people ranting furiously about their freedoms and all that they have lost, and stand to lose, by masking to understand that we live in a deeply troubled place. A place where a local pediatrician is mocked online for enrolling her children in vaccine trials, where science and medical advice are sources of deep, unending suspicion.

If only the people who are so opposed to masks and vaccines could put that energy to something that is a real threat, like climate change. But they won’t. I sometimes imagine that their houses could be washed away in a flood or burned down by a wildfire, as is happening in some places right now, and they’d still refuse to believe that humans have any effect whatsoever on the weather. You could put them on top of a melting iceberg. You could—well, I could go on. But there’s no point, because the idea of truth has suddenly become slippery. There is no truth, it seems. Only what you choose to believe, and how.

Among the people she describes, "there is no truth" at the present time. There is "only what you choose to believe."

According to experts, DiSclafani is describing our war-inclined species as it actually is—and as it has always been. Sadly enough, it's true:

Our brains are wired in similar ways over here in our own blue tribe!

Is there "only what you choose to believe" within our blue tribe too? If you're inclined to reject such assessments, consider an instructive news report in today's Washington Post.

The report was written by Perry Stein, a Post education reporter. In print editions, the report is bannered across the top of page B1—the first page of the paper's Metro (D.C. area) section.

The report is thus given substantial prominence. In print editions, its headline, and its boxed sub-headline, advance these striking claims:

Study finds racial bias in District's teacher evaluation system
Black, Hispanic instructors received lower average scores than White colleagues

We'll assume that Stein didn't compose those headlines. That said, it's easy to see what those headlines seem to be saying.

What do those headlines seem to be saying? For starters, the headlines flatly say this:

On average, black and Hispanic teachers in D.C. received lower evaluations than their white counterparts. 

That fact is specifically stated. Also, the headlines seem to say this:

The headlines seem to attribute this difference in average scores to "racial bias" in the evaluation system. Also, the headlines seem to attribute this finding to a recent study.

Taken at face value, those headline may seem to make a certain suggestion. They may seem to suggest that any such difference in average scores just has to be an artifact of racial bias.

It can't be that the white teachers, for whatever reason, actually did perform somewhat better, on average, than their black and Hispanic counterparts. If the average scores don't come out the same, it has to be racial bias!

How about it? If the average scores don't come out the same, does it have to be racial bias? Rational people will understand that this assumption involves a giant irrational leap.

It could be racial bias, of course—but it could be something else! A person who's even slightly rational will understand this obvious fact. 

That said, you can see the judgment which seems to be implied by the Post's headlines. For the record, those headlines reflect an assertion which appears at the start of the actual news report.  

Here's how the news report starts:

STEIN (8/14/21): The District’s teacher evaluation system is not pushing effective teachers out of the classroom in significant numbers, according to a city-commissioned study released Friday. But the study found that the evaluation system, known as IMPACT, is racially biased, with White teachers on average receiving higher scores on their evaluations than their Black and Hispanic colleagues.

Dozens of teachers and principals interviewed for the study—which was conducted by the American University School of Education—said that IMPACT could be an effective tool at getting rid of bad teachers, but many said it also created a culture of fear and fell short of achieving its second goal of supporting teacher growth.

The study was conducted by American University—and sure enough:

Right there in the opening paragraph, we're told that "the study found that the [D.C.] evaluation system...is racially biased." The evidence seems to be the fact that the average scores didn't come out exactly the same.

If the one group's average score is higher, can that only be an artifact of racial bias? No rational person would make that assumption. But also, consider this striking fact:

This news report never attributes any such statement to the study itself! No such statement from the study is ever quoted. There's no sign that the authors of the study ever said that the difference in average scores resulted from racial bias.

The Post's report does describe, or at least seems to describe, the magnitude of the difference in average scores. But it does so only in this incompetent manner:

STEIN: The study portrayed a complicated picture of how teachers are assessed and why teachers may be leaving the school system.

In the 2018-2019 academic year, Black teachers—who account for 54 percent of the teacher workforce—on average received an IMPACT score that was 17 points lower than their White colleagues. (IMPACT is based on a 400-point scale). Hispanic teachers scored 9 points lower than White teachers.

In that passage, Stein and her editor seem to report the size of the difference in average scores. But as part of a 400-point scale, do those 9- and 17-point differences in average scores represent differences which are large? Or are they rather small?

Absent further information, there's no way to make such an assessment. Those differences seem to be rather small, but those numbers tell us very little.

The report goes on to offer possible explanations for the differences in average scores. This might seem to undermine the claim that the differences were an artifact of "racial bias" as commonly imagined.

As commonly pictured, a reader might think that this alleged "racial bias" would result from a system in which white evaluators are marking down non-white teachers. 

Is that what happened in this case? Very late in her report, Stein mentions this:

STEIN: [Chancellor Ferebee] said the study is the first step in making changes [in the evaluation system] and plans to meet with the union and school leaders to determine how to move forward and what else needs to be assessed.

Among the next steps: Ferebee said the school system would develop anti-bias training for the people who evaluate teachers. According to the D.C.’s data, 70 percent of people who evaluate teachers are Black and 23 percent are White.

Very late, we're offered those facts. Only 23 percent of the people who evaluated the teachers were white. 

In a system where 54 percent of the teachers were black, 70 percent of the evaluators were black. Inevitably, Ferebee is going to develop anti-bias training for future evaluators, given these recent results.

Did racial bias play some significant role in these evaluations? We have no way of knowing. The answer could of course be yes. The answer could be no.

That said, right from the jump, the Washington Post seemed to be saying this: 

What else could it possibly have been? It simply had to be "racial bias!" We're even willing to pretend that that's what "the study" asserted!

As with our red friends, so too with us. Here within our embattled blue tribe, we now have an array of facts which, by dint of tribal law, simply have to be true.

DiSclafani is humane but unhappy in Alabama. We can't say we blame her. These are destructively tribalized times.

Way up north, where our blue tribe roams, we increasingly function in similar ways. Sadly, the Washington Post now features such tribally mandated work pretty much every day of the week.

Our own blue tribe is long gone too! To us, this meltdown has gotten so bad that we've moved on to loftier topics on a daily basis.

Still, this is the way our brains are wired, disconsolate experts all tell us. Also, there's no good way to get out of this mess, or so these top scholars have said.

IN SEARCH OF CERTAIN SKILLS: So many ways to lack cogency / clarity!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2021

But also, so little time: "Trust but verify," a renowned logician once said.

When it comes to the work of the upper-end press corps, we agree with every word. Except for the part about trust!

It's easy to be misled or misinformed by the things you may encounter in the upper-end press. For starters, everyone makes mistakes, and we all have limited skills.

For those reasons, you can be misinformed or misled even by people working in total good faith at the top of our upper-end press corps.

Yes, this can actually happen! Consider the way Ira Flatow opened one episode of the long-running NPR program, Science Friday, back when it was still a part of the now-defunct Talk of the Nation.

This takes us back eight years in time. As he started the day's program, Flatow quoted Albert Einstein:

FLATOW (5/17/13): This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flatow. 

To most of us, time is real. You've run out of time; you don't have time, what time is it? But not to most physicists. Albert Einstein once wrote: "People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." 

Time, in other words, he said, is an illusion.

Flatow was introducing a 21-minute segment which you can listen to here. At the program's web site, the segment is summarized thusly:

Generations of physicists have claimed that time is an illusion. But not all agree. In his book Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that time exists—and he says time is key to understanding the evolution of the universe.

Smolin was going to argue that time does exist, whatever that might turn out to mean!

Flatow had opened the program with a quotation from Einstein—with something Einstein "wrote." It's a quotation which is frequently cited—a quotation in which Einstein says, according to Flatow's paraphrase, that time is an illusion.

On this day, Smolin was prepared to argue that time does exist. Regarding Flatow's introduction, that quotation from Einstein may have been a bit misleading. 

The statement in question isn't something Einstein "wrote" in a formal science paper. Nor is it drawn from spoken remarks at a physics forum.

That isn't where that spicy statement by Einstein comes from! As Dan Falk explained in this report for Quanta Magazine, Einstein's statement is drawn from a letter of condolence he wrote in 1955, when he himself had just a few weeks to live. 

Einstein had just learned that his lifelong friend and colleague, Michele Besso, had passed away, in Geneva, at the age of 81. He wrote a letter of condolence to Besso's family, in which he offered this:

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

That frequently-quoted statement by Einstein is drawn from that letter of condolence.  Walter Isaacson describes the same letter in his sweeping 2007 biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe (see page 540). 

Whatever Einstein may have discovered, proven or come to believe about the workings of time, it's silly to think that we can discover it in that letter. For another account of the letter to Besso's family, you can just click here. 

What were Einstein's developed views on the workings of time? We'll assume that it's a challenging task to explain that matter to non-specialists. That said, it doesn't strike us as sound practice to open a major NPR program in the way Flatow did that day, though we'll assume that he was working in good faith.

At any rate, so it frequently tends to go, even at the very top of our mainstream media. There may be a tendency to create added excitement concerning the topic at hand for the day—and, as we have noted above, nobody's judgment is perfect.

What were Einstein's developed views about the workings of space and time? For people who write about Einstein's universe, this constitutes a major area of concern. 

It's generally agreed that Einstein's special theory of relativity revolutionized understanding of the workings of space and time—and it's generally agreed that it's a challenging task to make the universe Einstein discovered understandable for general readers.

(For those "who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics," to use the gentle language Einstein employed in the preface to his 1916 book for general readers.)

To what extent have writers been able to make Einstein's universe understandable for general readers? While we're at it, to what extent have popular writers been able to make Gödel easy?

We expect to pursue such questions in the weeks and months ahead. But we disagree with our colleague Drum's recent account of the nature of our interest. 

Recently, Drum took the Make Einstein Easy Challenge, as he has done in the past. Headline included, he started his post like this:

Here’s the theory of relativity in 500 words

Bob Somerby keeps asking for an understandable explanation of the theory of relativity. In this post, I shall try to oblige him in less than 500 words. Note, however, that I am taking an, um, nontraditional approach.

Drum continued from there. However accurate his account may be, we can't say that it passes our "understandable to the general reader" test, though that's neither here nor there.

More to the point, we'll say this:

We'd like to see an understandable account of the special and general theory. But we're mainly interested in exploring the ways in which pre-existing attempts at this task may have failed.

When someone sets out to make Einstein understandable, he or she has signed up for the World Series of explanation. By all accounts, the universe which Einstein revealed can be extremely hard to explain—unless we're looking for standard bromides we can simply repeat and recite.

We've been a consumer of Einstein-made-easy fare dating at least to Stephen Hawking in 1991. For decades, we've been fascinated by the various ways these attempts at explication seem to fallen short, even to have failed.

The analysts like the fact that their Uncle Drum is inclined to try to explain relativity. We think it's an admirable instinct too.

Indeed, within just the past week, we've engaged in high-level exchanges with Drum about what seems to be his ongoing work in this area. We've even proposed that we barnstorm the nation together, in a slightly updated version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

These forums would start in smaller venues, though they'd almost surely become arena events before long. Drum would focus on attempts to describe and explain the universe that Einstein discovered. We would focus on the various ways earlier attempts at this task have fallen short of the mark, or perhaps have massively failed.

Starting with Hawking himself, some hugely qualified physicists have tried to explain Einstein's universe. In our view, they've frequently lacked the cogency / clarity / coherency skills which were pursued in the admittedly murky work of the later Wittgenstein.

We've often been struck by the various ways our physicists have failed at this second-order task. At times, we've marveled  at their lack of basic cogency skills.

We blame this on the nation's logicians. Starting Monday, we'll try to explain. For today, we close with this:

That famous quotation on Science Friday came from a letter of condolence! There are a million ways to  get misled, even when the work is coming from the very top of our upper-end press corps. Very little is perfect out there. Let's try to keep that in mind.

How does Wittgenstein figure in this? So many ways to improve our clarity skills, but also so little time!

Starting Monday: Rated top book of the century! 

IN SEARCH OF CERTAIN SKILLS: Back out of all this now too much for us...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2021

Brian Greene v. Wittgenstein, with a whole lot we all can learn: Much as a beam of light, speeding its way toward our watery planet, may be bent off its course by a disturbance in the trampoline-reminiscent, yet four-dimensional, fabric of spacetime, so we've been distracted this week from our principal mission.

We've been distracted by the immediate tragedies, and the never-ending follies, surrounding us right here in the everyday world:

By the onset of climate disaster. By the onset of death and subjugation in Afghanistan.

By the profit-fueled tribalism overtaking our nation's ability to function as a nation. By the love of tribal loathing bred deep in our human bones. By our love of simplified story in support of the themes we prefer!

We've been distracted by these tragedies, but also by the difficulty of the task we've been self-assigned. Consider the relative ease surrounding last week's task:

Last week, we were discussing The Worst Explanation Ever Given--a key explanation offered as part of the Nova / PBS program, Inside Einstein's Mind, which aired in November 2015.

When that PBS program first aired, we marveled at what a bad explanation that key explanation was. In part through use of an illustration largely taken from Einstein himself, Nova's narrator plainly suggested that two people in relative motion will always reach different judgments concerning the simultaneity of two events.

Walter Isaacson appeared as a guest commentator on the PBS program. Eight years earlier, in his sweeping biography of Einstein, he had cited the same illustration from Einstein. Concerning those judgments of simultaneity, he had said that Einstein's "key insight" was this:

The key insight was that two events that appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly. 

Eight years later, Nova presented that same idea, though in verbally simplified form.

In the specific example used by Isaacson and then by Nova, that sweeping claim bore out. A particular pair of lightning strikes would have "appeared to be simultaneous" to a particular man standing on a railway platform. But they wouldn't have "appeared to be simultaneous" to a particular woman moving rapidly past him on a very long train.

In that one proffered case, Isaacson's pronouncement would have been right. But as might have been obvious to anyone watching the Nova program, any such general principle or declaration would, in fact, quickly break down.

Uh-oh! To some other woman seated farther back on the rapidly-moving train, the lightning strikes would have "appeared to be simultaneous"—and this second woman was traveling just as rapidly as the original woman was.

Meanwhile, to an array of additional men standing else on that long railway platform, the two lightning strikes would have not have appeared to be simultaneous. The strikes would have appeared to be simultaneous to the one man who was standing on the platform, but not to an array of others—and none of these various men would be in motion at all. 

None of the men would be moving at all—but they would not have agreed on this question of simultaneity! The additional men would all agree with the original woman on the fast-moving train.

Back in 2015 and 2016, we gathered our youthful analysts around us. We taught them to marvel at how bad an explanation can be, even on a major PBS program!

It's the Worst Explanation Ever Made! You can still see the explanation unfold, just by clicking here.

On its face, Nova's explanation had failed. We thinks of the mournful Dylan lyric from the great song, Tears of Rage. A father's daughter has turned him away. In this lyric, the father responds:

I want you to know that while we watched you discover
That no one would be true
I myself was among the ones who thought
It was just a childish thing to do.

We hated teaching our youthful analysts that they should doubt everything they hear, even from the highest journalistic / academic sources. But that's a lesson we started to learn a long time ago, and it holds water even today.

This brings us to the question of Brian Greene, a highly accomplished theoretical physicist—and a writer of books and PBS shows designed for the non-specialist. Greene understands the physics and the math—but how well does he understand the possible pitfalls lurking within the various pathways of the English language?

The question seems rude, but it frequently needs to be asked. Today, we make a type of confession, accompanied by a preface.

Our preface goes like this:

Walter Isaacson is a very smart person, a deeply experienced journalist, and an acclaimed biographer. According to his acknowledgements, his explanations of Einstein's science were reviewed and critiqued by at least a dozen major physicists, starting with Greene himself.

Also this:

PBS is widely viewed as the upper end of American TV journalism. Nova is widely regarded as residing on the high end of PBS programming, and of general science broadcasting in general.

Nova's reputation puts it at the top of the heap—and not only that! Its 2015 broadcast featured remarks and commentary by these major physicists:

Clifford Johnson, University of Southern California

Janna Levin, Columbia

David Kaiser, MIT

Robbert Dikjraaf, Institute for Advanced Study

Sean Carroll, Cal Tech

Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
Eleanor Knox, King's College London

The PBS program featured those seven and at least several more. As noted, the program also featured remarks by Isaacson, who isn't an academic but who was consulted, while writing his earlier book, by an array of major physicists.

Concerning Nova's failed explanation:

The writer's credit for Inside Einstein's Mind goes to Jamie Lochhead, who isn't an academic. The program's credits also cite one "scientific advisor," one "senior science editor," and one person credited with "research."

Those physicists all appeared on air, but they may have played minimal roles—or no role at all—in assembling the broadcast's script. 

Still, Nova is regarded as highly reliable, and its cast featured that array of major academics. And yet, on its face, its presentation concerning simultaneity seems to make no sense. The same is true of Isaacson's earlier presentation, in a book which was widely reviewed and was favorably blurbed for its alleged clarity.

Our point is this:

As with Dylan's fictional daughter, so too here. During a time of generational upheaval, that fictional daughter had come to feel that "no one would be true." We'd suggest that you consider a related possibility. Turning the tables of Dylan's fictional father, we'll suggest you consider this:

You shouldn't assume that you're receiving coherent work, even when the work has been blessed or written or performed by the highest academic authorities in the some particular field. Even when work is coming from the highest ranks of academic authority, you can't assume the work is correct, or even that it makes sense.

Within our blue tribe, people will often be strongly inclined to defer to academic authority. We suggest that you discard that impulse. Beyond that, we offer this:

Brian Greene is widely regarded as a source of information about theoretical physics for the general reader / non-specialist. We assume that he is a brilliant physicist—but, regarding his popular work, we'd offer this advice:

Trust but verify.

In our view, there's a lot of learn from extended discussion of Greene's work for the general reader in the notoriously difficult realm of modern theoretical physics. Again and again, we'll suggest that the notoriously difficult work of the later Wittgenstein comes into play at this point.

Is making Einstein easy hard? Just try making Wittgenstein easy! Ironically, this apostle of upper-end clarity was  never able to make the point of his own work especially clear.

That said, there's a great deal for all to gain as we bring Greene and Wittgenstein together. Tomorrow, we'll visit the analysts' Uncle Drum in an attempt to clarify our own objectives.

After that, we'll try to explain these challenging points as we stumble ahead.

Tomorrow: Their uncle's perspective, but also our own

Inside Einstein's Mind: To review the program's transcript, you can just click here. To watch videotape of the failed explanation, you can just click this.

Also this:

Stop assuming that the professors simply have to be right! As Isaacson's explains again and again in his excellent treatment of Einstein's life, Einstein got to be who he was because he abandoned that approach at a very early point!

IN SEARCH OF CERTAIN SKILLS: Give us this day our Daily Logic!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2021

Do Collins and Milbank lack skills?: Yesterday afternoon, Joseph R. Biden, a veteran pol, made a rookie mistake.

He let a bunch of American journalists ask him several questions. When American pols make that rookie mistake, it frequently doesn't turn out well.

After a bit of clarification, the initial question posed to Biden was perfectly sensible. The question involved the ten-year tenure of New York governor Andrew Cuomo. 

In the exchange we're discussing, Biden tried to clarify what he was being asked. With his prods toward clarification included, that question went like this:

REPORTER (8/10/21): Mr. President, if I may? Ironically, one of the Democrats, through the years, that you spoke with about infrastructure the most was Andrew Cuomo, who announced he's resigning today. You had traveled New York with him when you were vice president to the launch of the reconstruction of LaGuardia. 

He was someone who supported your campaign early on, though you called on him to resign, though you condemned the alleged behavior. But you're someone who spends a lot of time with mayors and governors. How would you assess his 10 and a half years as governor of the state?

BIDEN: In terms of his personal behavior or what he's done as a governor?

REPORTER: What he's done as a governor.

Biden sought a bit of clarification—and he got it! He was asked to evaluate what Cuomo "has done as a governor." He wasn't asked to evaluate the "personal behavior" on the basis of which Cuomo will be stepping down.

It was clear what the veteran pol had been asked. After receiving the clarification, he offered his assessment:

BIDEN (continuing directly): Well, he's done a hell of a job, he's done a hell of a job. And I mean both on everything from access to voting, to infrastructure, to a whole range of things. That's why it's so sad. 

Last question, right here.

Concerning "what he's done as a governor," the veteran pol said that Cuomo "has done a hell of a job." He said that's why Cuomo's resignation, due to that personal behavior, was so sad.

Inappropriate behavior to the side, has Cuomo been a good governor? We have no well-developed idea, but we'd be inclined to assume that he's been mediocre at best.

That said, the question to Biden was quite specific. Also, it's easy to understand what he actually said.

It's easy to understand what Biden said—unless the American press is involved! Moments later, this challenge was posed:

COLLINS: Can I quickly follow up on your comment on Governor Cuomo? Can you really say that he has done, quote, "a hell of a job" if he's accused of sexually harassing women on the job?

The question came from CNN's Kaitlan Collins. We've fulsomely praised her work at certain times in the past. Concerning that particular question and what followed, we can only say this:

Sad.

Instantly, Biden must have realized that he'd made the classic rookie mistake. He'd appeared in public, with cameras rolling, and he'd allowed our mainstream journalists to ask him several questions.

Concerning these high-profile journalists, let it be said that they've often "gone to the finest schools," much as Dylan once said. That said, it often seems that they fall a bit short in the realm we're inclined to describe as the realm of  Daily Logic.

Instantly, Biden realized that he'd made the classic mistake. Now he tried to save himself—but this latest auto-da-fe unfolded exactly like this:

BIDEN (continuing directly): You asked me two questions. You asked the substantive—

Should he remain as governor is one question. And women should be believed when they make accusations that are able to, on the face of them, make sense, and investigate it, they're investigated. And the judgment was made that what they said was correct. 

That's one thing. The question is, did he do a good job on infrastructure? That was the question. He did.

COLLINS: Well, the question was, How did he do as a governor?

BIDEN: No, the question was, correct me if I'm wrong—

ORIGINAL REPORTER: About how was he as a governor generally. Outside of his personal behavior.

BIDEN: Outside of his personal behavior. Okay.

COLLINS: Can you separate the two? Since—

 [CROSSTALK]

BIDEN: No, I wouldn't. I was asked a specific question. I'm trying to answer specifically. What do you want to ask me specifically?

COLLINS: Well, I'd like to ask you about infrastructure as well...

Again, we regard that performance by Collins as sad. That said, there's no ultimate way to render such assessments.

There's no ultimate way to assess such conduct—and at some point, the rest of the press corps may feel inclined to wade in. This very morning, we became aware of this exchange because it was featured by MSNBC early in the 5 A.M. hour, right at the start of the channel's live broadcast day.

The excerpt the channel chose to air seemed to show a veteran pol floundering in the face of some aggressive questioning. We had to turn to the transcript at Rev to get the fuller picture of what had actually occurred. 

When we did, we saw a striking lack of Daily Logic, perhaps inflected with a dollop of "gotcha." What we saw struck us as sad, but also as sadly typical.

These upper-end journalists today! They've frequently gone to the finest schools, Quite often, you wouldn't know it. 

That's especially true when they're advancing some favorite issue or policy position, or when they're pursuing some official press target. At such times, their access to basic Daily Logic may seem quite fragile indeed.

We see this unhelpful characteristic in various news reports and opinion columns in this morning's Washington Post. In some cases, certain relevant facts aren't presented. Elsewhere, bogus facts have been included, helping drive home preferred frameworks.

Always, the lack of Daily Logic! For a particularly sad example, consider Dana Milbank's new column.

Milbank went to one of the finest schools. He was even Skull and Bones! 

Today, Milbank writes about the presentation made by Cuomo when he announced that he'd be resigning. More specifically, he writes about the presentation made by Rita Glavin, Cuomo's lawyer. 

After reading Milbank's column, we compared what he had written to the full transcript of Glavin's remarks. We were struck by the lack of moral and intellectual sophistication the journalist had put on display.

In today's column, Milbank is all in on Good versus Evil. This very much tends to be the way our journalists play. 

That said, we were struck by the childishness of Milbank's presentation, We were struck by how much of Glavin's presentation he simply brushed aside—by how many possibilities he simply chose to ignore. 

For our money, Glavin's remarks were far more interesting that Milbank's column. But that column's lack of sophistication lies at the heart of the way our journalists tend to play.

What did Andrew Cuomo actually do in the various cases under review? At this site, we aren't really able to tell you. 

It's possible that Cuomo has engaged in conduct which is worse than the conduct described in Attorney General Letitia James' formal report. It's also possible that attorney Glavin made some sensible points.

Milbank tells the simplest story—the story involving one villain. We're sorry to complicate your world, but the following possibilities could all be true. Many of these possibilities could be true at the same time:

1) It's possible that some of Cuomo's specific denials are accurate. It's also possible that none of them are.

2) It's possible that some accusations against Cuomo are inaccurate. It's possible that none of them are.

3) It's possible that one or more of Cuomo's accusers has been acting in bad faith. It's also possible that the accusers have all been completely sincere. 

4) It's possible that Cuomo wasn't acting with the motives imputed to him. It's also possible that he was.  

5) It's possible that political motivations of various kinds may have tilted the way the investigation was conducted. It's also possible that the investigation was conducted in perfect good faith. 

It's possible that Cuomo has been acting in total bad faith as he responds to these claims. It's possible that James has been acting in some degree of bad faith too. 

They could each be acting in some degree of bad faith at the same time! Also, each could be sincere.

It may be that James has behaved in total good faith. Also, it's possible that attorney Glavin believes every claim she has made, and believes in the value of every objection she has raised.

Many possibilities exist in such a complex case—unless you live in the childish realm in which we humans sometimes prefer to dwell, even after spending four years at one of the finest schools.

It's possible that there were some thumbs on the scale as the probe was conducted. Consider this post by David Freedlander, which says that James is now positioned to be the front-runner in a 2022 or 2026 gubernatorial run. 

(Freedlander suggests no misconduct by James.)  

After that, consider this post by Irin Carmon! Imaginably, many motives could be floating around the state of New York in this multifaceted case.

Is it possible that some thumbs were on the scales during this probe? Is it possible that some accounts by some accusers may be significantly inaccurate?

Of course those things are possible! Except in the childish realm which produced Milbank's stirring headline:

Cuomo could have departed with dignity. Instead, he sicced his lawyer on his accusers.

He sicced his lawyer on his accusers! Our question—if a politician knows that some accusation is false, is his lawyer permitted to say so?

Has Cuomo misbehaved in the ways described? We can't personally tell you.

It could be that his conduct has been even worse! Of course, that's also true of Milbank himself, and of everyone else. 

We've watched this press corps for 23 years as it has struggled with bone-simple matters of Daily Logic. Within this remarkably unimpressive guild, the basic elements of Daily Logic tend to be honored in the breach. 

What does any of this have to do with books which try to make Einstein easy? You're asking a very good question!

We'll continue with that question tomorrow. For today, we'll leave it at this:

Biden made a rookie mistake, and Collins entered the breach. She's been superb at times in the past. We'd call yesterday's questioning sad.

Ditto for someone at MSNBC—for whoever chose to rush (one part of) yesterday's videotape on the air.  The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we humans need help with our logic, and our logicians, such as they are, seem to have walked off their posts.

Tomorrow: Philosophy profs choose top book

IN SEARCH OF CERTAIN SKILLS: Does high-level cogency actually matter?

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021

Especially for the young, has the die already been cast?: We strongly agree with a letter which appears in in today's New York Times.

The letter-writer lives in Nashville. In her letter, she laments the situation unfolding in Afghanistan:

To the Editor:

It makes some sort of logical sense to say we should let the Afghans control their own infighting, their own religious wars. It really does. American heroes have paid the price, extravagantly.

But, and this is the crux, women and girls are going to suffer. They are going to be under the cruel thumb of the Taliban men (and other rigid groups) who won’t let them be fully human.

This is heartbreaking, any way you look at it. In 2021, there is a country where men of the ruling class are going to completely subjugate women.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions. And the will to stop the despicable Taliban is dead. So, sadly, we’ll be reading about the ruin of Afghan women for years to come.

That's what the letter said. A link was provided to this front-page report in yesterday's hard-copy Times. 

(Headline: "As Taliban Capture Cities, U.S. Says Afghan Forces Must Fend for Themselves.")

In fact, many people are going to suffer under the Taliban, even including boys and men. More precisely, a whole lot of people are going to suffer, and quite a few others will die. They're being murdered every day in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.

For these reasons, we weren't inclined to support the removal of American troops. That said, the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Afghanistan is only one part of a larger mosaic as a certain world seems to be nearing its end.

In the last two mornings, front-page reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times have described the new climate projections from the IPCC. 

For perhaps the last decade, for perhaps a bit more, it has seemed to us that the die had already been cast—that there was no conceivable way to forestall future climate disaster. 

Last Saturday, we enjoyed a drive-by visit from two great-nieces, ages 9 and 15, and from their charming parents. It seems to us that people of their generation are almost surely looking forward to a world of massive dislocation and gigantic hurt.

Then too, we have our nation's tribal disaster—our increasing division into various warring groups. 

As we've noted in the past, we see no good way out of this second mess, or out of the warfare it portends. Again, here's why we say that:

Modern technologies have made tribal division a very large, profit-based business. Thanks to "cable news" and talk radio, through the behavior of Internet sites and even in the realm of social media, it's easier than it ever has been to spread tribal narratives all around, including narratives built upon complete total screaming bullsh*t. 

It isn't just that it's easy to spread such matter around. Under current arrangements, this practice is also highly profitable. And as a wide array of individuals and institutions have pursued  such ends, we've all been exposed to a new anthropological fact:

It's amazingly easy to get us humans to believe any damn fool thing you want! It's amazingly easy to get us to truly believe, so long as you're advancing tribal narrative at a time of high tribal division. 

At times of heightened tribal division, we humans are very suggestible. In his column in today's Times, Paul Krugman explores this theme, though he does so exclusively from our own blue tribe's tribal perspective.

"It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the paranoid, anti-rational streak in American politics isn’t as bad as we thought; it’s much, much worse," Krugman writes.

We agree with that assessment, but a basic point should be added. This "anti-rational streak" isn't just as Amerikan trait. This impulse exists all over the world, and it always has. 

Still, the past dozen years have demonstrated that this anti-rational streak is stronger than we ever would have imagined. For us, the starting point would probably be the widespread acceptance of the claim that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. 

Your starting-point may differ.

We agree with Krugman today, except on one major point. Reading his column, a person would think that this reflexive adherence to tribal narrative is only happening Over There, among the red tribe's clans. 

Sadly, no! It's also happening within our own blue tribe. Generally, this involves our tribe's adherence to various narratives involving gender and "race." 

The journalism of the Post and the Times reflects these instincts and fluffs these narratives on a daily basis. For today, we'll link you to one horrendous example.

We encountered that remarkable news report on the Post's web site this past Sunday evening. It wasn't accompanied by this related news report. At that time, it appeared on its own.

It seemed to us that the news report defines a tribal era. Eye-catching headline included, the news report starts like this:

‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped'

JACKSON, Miss.—Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.

“The last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond. “But the thing is, lynchings never stopped in the United States. Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped. The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.”

In classic fashion, the headline is a quotation—a quotation expressing one person's stated belief. The opening paragraph in the report floated the idea around which the report was based:

There have been at least eight suspected lynchings in Mississippi just since the year 2000! Needless to say, the key word there is "suspected." 

The report proceeds to list all eight "suspected lynchings." In at least several cases, the report fails to include the impressive body of information which led to the deaths being viewed as suicides. In at least one case, this judgment was reached with as many as 30 FBI agents investigating the case.

How many of those eight deaths really were suicides? Aside from one beating death which was successfully prosecuted, were any of those "suspected lynchings" actually homicides?

We have no way of knowing. Neither did the reporter or the editors who put that report on line—and the answer, of course, could be no. (As best we can tell, these two related news reports haven't yet appeared in print editions of the Post.)

The Washington Post doesn't know! But the report is clearly designed to send a tribal narrative out into the ether. Tribal excitement was hurried along by the elimination of information which cuts against the grain of preferred belief. 

Commenters quickly fell in line, asserting their unexamined belief that all eight cases were lynchings! So it goes as an army in blue resembles an army in red.

In simpler times, the word for a report like this would have been "irresponsible." In this time of heightened tribal anger, the report is stunningly "anti-journalistic," a near relative of the term Krugman uses today.

According to major anthropologists, this is the way the human brain is wired, whether we like it or not. Throughout the course of human history, the fruit of this wiring has been the death and destruction of full-blown war, as in today's Afghanistan.

Over the past few months, we've found it harder and harder to write about this depressing tendency  within our own blue tribe. A month ago, we switched to a more high-minded topic. We began exploring a lofty question:

Have elite writers—journalists, academics, book authors—ever been able to make Einstein easy? Have such figures ever been able to make Einstein's universe understandable to general readers—to us non-specialists?

We plan to continue this investigation next week. For this week, we've decided to explain our interest in this topic—why we think it's worth discussing.

Does this question actually matter?  Probably not. As we noted above, it's our impression that the die has already been cast.

It's our impression that there may be no good way out of the various disasters we currently face. That impression could always be wrong, but it remains our best guess.

That said, there's a striking shortage of cogency / clarity skills among our culture's elites. It shows up in various fascinating ways when academics and writers try to make Einstein (and Gödel) easy for general readers.

Does it matter if non-specialists can understand Einstein's universe? No, it basically doesn't. Relativity is a point of interest, but nothing turns on such understanding among the nation's unwashed.

Meanwhile, does it matter if our academic and journalistic elites lack those cogency / clarity skills? Conceivably, yes it does!

We speak here of a type of trickle-down. If the nation's logicians chose to serve, we could imagine a possible spread of cogency into our daily assessments of topics which really do matter. 

We can imagine such trickle-down, though it's clear that it never will happen. 

Tomorrow, we'll discuss this notion a bit more. We'll start with a small, perfectly understandable misunderstanding on the part of the analysts' Uncle Drum, our long-time favorite blogger.

The Drumster described our interest in this matter in this recent post. We'd have to say that he misconstrued what it is we're after.

In the end, we do suspect that the die has been cast. As we explore these lofty concerns, it's like we're hanging around on the beach, like Gregory Peck before us.

Tomorrow: What their Uncle Drum said

IN SEARCH OF CERTAIN SKILLS: The latest crystal-clear book has appeared!

MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2021

Or so it says in the Times: Did Albert Einstein really define a revolutionary principle known as "the relativity of simultaneity?"

(That's the term Einstein used in his 1916 book for general readers.)

Did he come up with "a simple thought" in this general area—a simple thought which had "mind-blowing significance?" 

(We're quoting the 2015 Nova/PBS program, Inside Einstein's Mind—and yes, that's the term Nova used.)

Did Einstein's "key insight" in this area really produce "one of the most elegant imaginative leaps in the history of physics?" 

(We're quoting Walter Isaacson's 2007 biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe.)

Did Einstein really accomplish those things? At this point, we're prepared to answer those questions in two different ways:

On the one hand, we're prepared to assume that Einstein actually did produce such achievements. We're prepared to assume that his work on "the relativity of simultaneity" really did play a transformative role in the history of physics.

On the other hand, though, there's this:

We feel quite sure that neither Isaacson, nor the writers of the Nova broadcast, were able to explain what that mind-blowing insight actually was in their discussions of this part of the special theory of relativity. Simply put, their explanations of "the relativity of simultaneity" made absolutely no sense—and nobody seemed to notice. 

We can't tell whether Einstein managed to explain this matter clearly himself, in his 1916 book aimed at general readers. It seems possible to us that he didn't accomplish that task in his somewhat more technical effort,  but we aren't really equipped to make that assessment.

We're prepared to assume that Einstein actually did come up with a mind-blowing insight in this particular area. But if that insight does exist, we know that Isaacson and the Nova writers lacked the cogency to explain what the insight was.

One last time, we'll review Isaacson's account of Einstein's "key insight" to show you why we say that, or maybe we'll just link you to last Friday's account. After that, we'll define our goal for the reports we'll be producing this week.

Spoiler alert! All week long, we'll be heading off in search of certain skills. But before we further define that search, consider a book review which appeared in yesterday's New York Times.

CARLO ROVELLI IS AN ITALIAN theoretical physicist. He knows more math and physics than all the kids in your high school trigonometry class combined!

He seems to be no slouch! In 2019, Foreign Policy magazine included Rovelli in its "10th annual special edition of Global Thinkers"—a list of the  planet's one hundred most influential thinkers—though it seems that Foreign Policy included him for a perceived special skill:

"Rovelli’s professional colleagues rarely prioritize writing for lay readers," the magazine said in its profile, "but the Italian theoretical physicist has done just that."

Rovelli has indeed written several books about modern physics aimed at general readers. How skillful is he at the task of making contemporary physics accessible to non-specialists? 

We can't exactly answer that question. We own his 2018 book, The Order of Time, but we haven't studied his work. 

Yesterday, in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, we saw a review of Rovelli's latest book for non-specialists. That new book is called Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution.

Has Rovelli made quantum physics easy in this latest book? We don't have the slightest idea. But near the start of his review, accurately or otherwise, Anil Ananthaswamy advanced a familiar type of claim about the refreshing book:

For many decades now, the mysteries of our quantum underworld have at times been confused with the other conundrum that confronts us, the nature of consciousness. But in “Helgoland,” the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli tackles both the quantum realm and the ways it helps us make sense of the mind with refreshing clarity and without hand-wavy mystery-mongering. 

Ananthaswamy, a science journalist, has also written at least one book about modern physics for the general reader. We've struggled with that book too!

Yesterday, in his review of Rovelli's book, Ananthaswamy said the book has been composed "with refreshing clarity."  Given the fact that everything's possible, he could even be right! 

That said, many such claims have been advanced over the many long years. In our experience, few of these claims have ever paid off. Still, it remains a familiar norm:

Writers claim to make modern physics accessible to general readers. Reviewers then proceed to declare that they've succeeded at the task—and we marks may purchase and even read the books, quite possibly failing to notice the many logical gaps.

(Describing this two-step in the style of the Soviet-era joke: They pretend to explain modern physics and we pretend to get it!)

Ananthaswamy may be right when he says that Rovelli's book displays refreshing clarity. "Rovelli’s writing, translated from Italian by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, is simultaneously assured and humble," he adds at a later point.

Ananthaswamy may be right! But please consider this second assessment from later in his review:

“Helgoland” is poetic and spare. Readers unfamiliar with quantum physics may struggle to get its full import.

The book is written with refreshing clarity, but readers may struggle to get it! 

Physics Today once published a somewhat similar review of Einstein's 1916 book.  We'll reprint that reviewer's tongue-in-cheek assessment before the week is through.

THE CLAIM THAT CERTAIN WRITERS can make Einstein (and modern physics) easy has become a standard part of our journalistic and publishing worlds.  

In his sweeping biography of Einstein, Isaacson tried to make Einstein's revolutionary theories accessible to non-specialists. By all accounts, this is am unusually difficult task.

PBS routinely presents hour-long programs, even multi-part series, which implicitly claim to do the same thing. PBS may tend to promote these programs which hellzapoppin' claims about the "thrill ride" you'll be taken on—"beyond the limits of your wildest imagination!"—as you take in the mind-blowing work. (Narrator's introduction, Part 1.)

As a general matter, the spirit has proven to be willing, but the skills have been notably weak. We refer to the types of analytical skills we'll be in search of this week.

Was Isaacson able to explain Einstein's "key insight" in the realm of simultaneity? Was Nova able to do it?

In our view, it's plain that they lacked the types of skills which would have produced such an outcome. We can only suggest that you go back and review last Friday's report—but back in 2007, Isaacson's account of Einstein's "key skill" made zero sense on its face.

Eight years later, in 2015, Nova's treatment of this matter was even worse. 

Einstein first developed this material in 1905. More than a hundred years had passed, but these presentations, on their face, made absolutely no sense. 

Even more amazingly, each presentation had been composed with the help of major theoretical physicists—highly accomplished physicists who lack certain types of skills.

WHAT IS THE KEY INSIGHT WHICH lies behind "the relativity of simultaneity?" After years of reviewing this type of material, we still can't tell you that. Nor is that our objective.

In the weeks and months which follow, we won't be trying to explain Einstein's theories of relativity. That isn't our primary goal. We're focused on something else.

Our primary goal will be something different. We'll be trying to document the widespread absence of a certain set of skills.

We're heading out to clean the pasture spring, in search of certain skills! The skills we seek are skills of cogency and clarity—the kinds of skills which might conceivably make it possible for someone to make Einstein easy.

By all accounts, explaining Einstein's universe is extremely hard. If it's possible at all, explaining that world to general readers would call for a certain set of skills.

It would call for certain basic skills in the realm of cogency / clarity. These skills are widely lacking in our culture, even at the very top of the academic, journalistic and publishing piles.

For decades, we've been fascinated by the absence of these skills in such lofty realms. Here's a bit of background:

Long ago and far away, the later Wittgenstein explored the remarkable absence of these skills in the highest realms of academic discourse. He was very hot in the late 1960s, when we were introduced to his later work as an undergraduate.

His work was maddeningly jumbled, but it was also very useful. By now, the academy has chosen to throw his work away, or so Professor Horwich has said.

(We'll only say this: It shows!)

In the weeks and months ahead, we'll be documenting the absence of these basic clarity / cogency skills. In the absence of these skills, one writer after another inaccurately claims to have made Einstein (or Gödel) easy.

Major professors step up to swear that their colleagues have succeeded at these tasks. We've long been amazed by the absence of basic clarity skills as these claims are advanced. 

In the next few days, we'll offer a few examples from books which claim to make Einstein easy. After that, it's on to Gödel, and to a pair of Gödel-made-easy books.

We're heading out to clean the pasture spring in search of basic clarity skills! Time after time, again and again, at the very highest levels, the gods and goddesses of our discourse lack these delicate skills.

Wittgenstein's work didn't make a dent. Others seem blissfully unaware of the fascinating high-level problem which, for that reason, persists.

Tomorrow: Is that the way things actually are, or is that the way they appear?

HAS NEVER MADE SENSE: The Nova broadcast didn't make sense!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2021

Apparently, nobody noticed: Way back in 1916, Albert Einstein did, in fact, describe "a very long train" moving with a "constant velocity" along a railroad track. 

As part of the same thought experiment, he also described two lightning strikes. He can be said to have mentioned a person standing halfway between them. 

In Einstein's scenario, the lightning strikes hit the embankment alongside the railroad tracks at two distant points, A and B. Also this:

According to Einstein's imagined example, the very long train was moving away from Point A. It was moving toward Point B. 

Einstein sketched this thought experiment in Chapter IX of his 1916 book for general readers, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. To review his short presentation, you can just click here.

As he sketched this scenario, Einstein mentioned a male "observer" (a passenger) seated on the long train. He didn't mention any specific person on the railway embankment, though in our view it's perfectly reasonable to act as if he did.

Einstein sketched this "thought experiment" in Chapter IX of his book. As we noted in our last report, Walter Isaacson discusses this matter at some length in his sweeping biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe, which appeared in 2007. 

What point was Einstein trying to make through this illustration? As we've noted, this is the way Isaacson describes the "key insight" which allegedly lies at the heart of this matter:

[T]he key insight was that two events that appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly. And there is no way to declare that one of the observers is really correct. In other words, there is no way to declare that the two events are truly simultaneous.

Plainly, Isaacson treats that "key insight" as a major element in Einstein's  special theory of relativity, which he formulated in 1905. After describing the thought experiment involving the train and the lightning strikes, Isaacson quotes Einstein from Chapter IX, then offers his own assessment:

“We thus arrive at the important result: Events that are simultaneous with reference to the embankment are not simultaneous with respect to the train,” said Einstein. The principle of relativity says that there is no way to decree that the embankment is “at rest” and the train “in motion.” We can say only that they are in motion relative to each other. So there is no “real” or “right” answer. There is no way to say that any two events are “absolutely” or “really” simultaneous.

This is a simple insight, but also a radical one. It means that there is no absolute time. Instead, all moving reference frames have their own relative time. Although Einstein refrained from saying that this leap was as truly “revolutionary” as the one he made about light quanta, it did in fact transform science. "This was a change in the very foundation of physics, an unexpected and very radical change that required all the courage of a young and revolutionary genius," noted Werner Heisenberg, who later contributed to a similar feat with his principle of quantum uncertainty. 

In Isaacson's treatment, the thought experiment involving the train and the  lightning strikes was based on a simple but radical insight. This radical insight produced a transformative change, "a change in the very foundation of physics."

In Isaacson's treatment, Einstein's thought experiment showed that "there is no way to say that any two events are 'absolutely' or 'really' simultaneous"—and the whole thing stemmed from that initial key insight. Here it is once again:

Two events which appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly.

According to Isaacson, that "key insight" produced a radical change in the world of physics. It came to Einstein in a "eureka moment"—a moment which led him to take "one of the most elegant imaginative leaps in the history of physics."

To Isaacson and almost everyone else, this "relativity of simultaneity" is a major component of Einstein's universe That said, there's a major problem with Isaacson's assessment of this important matter:

Isaacson's description of Einstein's "key insight" just doesn't seem to make sense.

Two events which appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who's moving rapidly? In some situations, that will be true—but in other situations, it won't be! And that's just the start of the problem with the formulation we've quoted.

On it's face, Isaacson's account of Einstein's "key insight" just doesn't make any sense. In order to see why that's true, let's consider an hour-long PBS broadcast which aired in November 2015.

That PBS program, Inside Einstein's Mind, was a production of Nova. Because Nova dumbed this matter down a bit, its broadcast makes it easier to see why this whole high-level shebang has never made any sense.

THE NOVA BROADCAST AIRED in November 2015. It was designed as a hundred-year commemoration of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which Einstein formulated in November 1915.

That said, the Nova broadcast started at the beginning. Roughly eight minutes into the program, Nova reviewed that thought experiment from the earlier part of Einstein's career—the one which featured the very long train and the two lightning strikes.

In certain ways which seem perfectly reasonable, Nova made the scenario a bit easier to describe and to follow. Nova's narrator said that Einstein had specifically pictured a man standing on a railway platform as a train went by. The narrator further said that Einstein had pictured a woman passenger on the train—and the narrator said that the train was moving "at close to the speed of light." 

(To watch this part of Nova's broadcast, you can just click here.)

These were minor editorial changes to Einstein's original text. At least on their face, they strike us as reasonable—and they make the imagined situation easier to discuss and describe.

What was the source for Nova's treatment of this "thought experiment?" We'll take a guess—Nova may have been working directly from Isaacson's book, since Isaacson was one of the several major figures who appeared periodically as "talking heads" on the PBS program.

At any rate, as Nova proceeded, it simplified the matter—arguably, dumbed it down— in a way which turned out to be instructive. 

Indeed, if Nova was working from Isaacson's somewhat jumbled text, they simplified it considerably. Below, you see the transcript of Nova's presentation:

ISAACSON: [Einstein] realized that any statement about time is simply a question about what is simultaneous. For example, if you say the train arrives at seven, that simply means that it gets to the platform simultaneous with the clock going to seven.

NARRATOR: In a brilliant thought experiment, [Einstein] questions what "simultaneous" actually means, and sees that the flow of time is different for an observer that is moving versus one that's standing still.

He imagines a man standing on a railway platform. Two bolts of lightning strike on either side of him. The man is standing exactly halfway between them, and the light from each strike reaches his eyes at exactly the same moment. For him, the two strikes are simultaneous. 

Then Einstein imagines a woman on a fast moving train. Travelling at close to the speed of light, what would she see? 

As the light travels out from the strikes, the train is moving towards one and away from the other. Light from the front strike reaches her eyes first. For the woman on the train, time elapses between the two strikes; for the man on the platform, there is no time between the strikes.

This simple thought has mind-blowing significance. Simultaneity, and the flow of time itself, depends on how you're moving.

(For Nova's full transcript, click here.)

Some parts of that short presentation are bafflegab. For starters, we'll advise you to ignore the narrator's remarks about "the flow of time." Stick to what the narrator says about "simultaneity."

Stating the obvious, this account of Einstein's thought experiment parallel's Isaacson's account:

Nova says that simultaneity "depends on how you're moving." Isaacson said that events which appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to someone who's moving rapidly.

Nova says that this simple thought "has mind-blowing significance." Isaacson said that Einstein's simple but radical insight produced a transformation of physics. The two accounts are virtually identical, but Nova's account is extremely concise. 

Nova's account in quite concise. According to Nova, this is what was going on in that "brilliant thought experiment:"

For the man who's standing on the railway platform, "the two strikes are simultaneous," the Nova narrator says. For the woman on the fast-moving train, "time elapses between the two lightning strikes." 

Rather plainly, that seems to mean that the two strikes "are not simultaneous" for the woman on the train. According to Nova's summation, this means that "simultaneity depends on how you're moving." 

Except for one rather basic word change—Nova dropped the word "appears"—this concise presentation mirrors Isaacson's more convoluted account. According to Nova's concise presentation, here's what's going on: 

In Nova's treatment, the man is standing on a railway platform. The woman is moving past at a high rate of speed.

For the man, the two lightning strikes are simultaneous. For the woman, they aren't.

Isaacson used the word "appeared." Nova spoke more simply. 

That said, Isaacson's presentation didn't make sense. Eight years later, neither did Nova's.

AT LONG LAST, IT'S TIME TO EXPLAIN why Isaacson's account doesn't make sense. In his account, the story of the two lightning strikes illustrates this "key insight:"

Two events which appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly.

The lightning strikes appear to be simultaneous to the man on the railway platform. They don't appear to be simultaneous to the woman who's moving rapidly past him. According to Isaacson (and later according to Nova), this is supposed to illustrates a "mind-blowing" point about the way a pair of events will seem, depending on an observer's state of motion. 

In reality, no such thing has been illustrated. It's time to explain why we say that.

FOR STARTERS, IT'S TRUE! In the specific situation which has been described, the lightning strikes will appear to be simultaneous to the man on the platform. Also, they won't appear to be simultaneous to the woman on the train.

Having said that, so what? To some other people on that fast-moving train, the lightning strikes will appear to be simultaneous. And to many other people standing on the railway platform, the strikes won't appear to be simultaneous, as they do to that one well-positioned man.

As a general matter, the state of motion of these observers has nothing to do with the appearance of simultaneity! Let's go into more detail:

As noted in the original story, the woman on the train is directly adjacent to the man on the platform when the two lightning strikes hit. But uh-oh! By the time the light from the lightning strikes arrives at the railway platform, she has moved far down the track.

The man is exactly halfway between the strikes. For that reason, light from the two strikes reaches him at the same time, and they appear to be simultaneous. By now, though, the woman on the fast-moving train is closer to the lightning strike which hit at Point B.

For that bone-simple reason, the light from lightning strike B will reach her before the light from lightning strike A. For that reason, the two strikes won't seem to be simultaneous to her.

In this particular case, the man is standing on the platform and the woman on the train is moving rapidly past him. But now consider another case. Consider the case of a second woman—a woman who's seated a hundred cars back inside this very long train.

The case of the second woman:

A second woman, Woman 2, is riding on this train. She's seated a hundred cars back from the original woman, Woman 1. As a matter of fact, she may be seated all the way back at the rear end of the train!

When the lightning strikes hit, this second woman is closer to lightning strike A; she's farther away from lightning strike B. But uh-oh! By the time the light arrives, she has drawn directly adjacent to the man on the railway platform! 

As with that man, so too with this woman. Because of where she now finds herself, the light from the two lightning strikes will reach her at the same time!

For this woman, Woman 2, the lightning strikes will appear to be simultaneous! She's moving at the same high speed as Woman 1, but the lightning strikes will seem to be simultaneous to her.

This has now become a tale of two women. Each is moving at the same rate of speed. But for Woman 2, "the lightning strike are simultaneous." For Woman 1, "time elapses between the two strikes."

Einstein's key insight, as described by Isaacson, has already broken down. To make matters worse, let's consider the case of the additional men.

The case of the additional men:

The original man—we'll call him Ishmael—was standing on the railway platform. By Einstein's stipulation, he was exactly halfway between the two distant lightning strikes.

That said, the train is a very long train—and it's hurtling past a very long railway platform. With that in mind, consider two additional men—men who are standing at the far ends of this very long platform.

One of these men—we'll call him Man 2—is at the end of the platform which is closer to lightning strike A.  Another man—we'll call him Man 3—is standing at the end of the platform which is closer to lightning strike B.

Man 3 is closer to lightning strike B; he's farther away from lightning strike A. For that reason, light from the two lightning strikes won't reach him at the same time! 

For him, the lightning strikes won't appear to be simultaneous, even though he's standing stock still on the railway platform, exactly as Ishmael is.

Light from the two lightning strikes will reach our original man at exactly the same time. But that won't be true for Man 2, and it won't be true for Man 3. For them, time will elapse between the two strikes—and for that reason, the lightning strikes will not appear to be simultaneous.

All three men are standing on the railway platform. None of the three is in motion. But for one, the lightning strikes appear to be simultaneous. For the other two men, they do not.

Back to that key insight:

At this point, we return to Isaacson's account of Einstein's "key insight." By now, we should be able to see why it doesn't make sense.

Allegedly, the key insight was this: two events which appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly. 

Within the context of this thought experiment, that presentation has now broken down. 

In some specific circumstances, that sweeping claim will turn out to be accurate. In some circumstances, two events will appear to be simultaneous to someone who is standing motionless, but will not appear to be simultaneous to someone else who's moving rapidly.

That will be true in some cases—but in other cases, it won't be! Indeed, given the scenario with which we're working, it won't be true is most cases.

Given the scenario with which we're working, the lightning strikes will appear to be simultaneous only to someone who is positioned exactly halfway between them (or is equidistant from them). But for everyone else—for people all through the surrounding area—the lightning strikes won't appear to be simultaneous. 

That will be true for people who are in rapid motion; it will be true for other people who aren't. It isn't a question of their state of motion. It's a question of their position with respect to the two lightning strikes.

Nova and Isaacson convey a false impression. Without explicitly saying so, they seem to say that questions of simultaneity will always seem different to two people who are in relative motion.

It's hard to see why that would be true. On its face, their shared presentation just doesn't seem to make sense. 

Something else is hard to see. At least as this matter has been described, it's hard to see how a revolution in physics could have emerged from this twaddle. And yet, the twaddle has come from a major, well-received book whose contents were fly-specked by a dozen major physicists, and from a journalistic organization thought of us one of our best.

DID EINSTEIN MAKE SOME SORT of mistake in Chapter IX of his historic 1916 book?

We don't know how to answer that question, though it's certainly possible that he could have. (Einstein was a genius as a theoretical physicist, not as a popular writer. He also wasn't an all-star shortstop or a master chef.)

In his presentation, Einstein used more technical language that Isaacson or Nova later did. Speaking as a general reader, we'd have to say that Isaacson's treatment seems to follow reasonably from what Einstein seems to have written. It's just that Isaacson didn't realize that his presentation of Einstein's "key insight" doesn't seem to make any sense. 

On its face, Isaacson's presentation didn't make sense; eight years later, neither did Nova's. This is a point of special interest because Isaacson's scientific work was reviewed by all those major physicists, starting with Brain Greene himself, and because Nova is generally believed to work from the brainiac end of our vaunted PBS.

Did none of those physicists notice the fact that Isaacson's presentation of this seminal principle didn't seem to make sense? Eighty-nine years after Einstein's book first appeared, how could that be possible?

Also, please note: 

Isaacson and Nova both quote major physicists saying that Einstein's treatment of this matter illustrates a transformative, mind-blowing point. 

In the case of Nova,  Sean Carroll instantly vouches for the claim that Einstein's insight was "mind-blowing." Unfortunately, as presented in the Nova program itself, the whole thing simply doesn't make sense.

Nova's treatment of this matter doesn't make a lick of sense. It may be the worst explanations we've ever seen of any matter, scientific or otherwise.

That said, so it goes! Borrowing from the old Soviet joke, so it goes as they pretend to explain Einstein's universe, and we pretend to get it!

Again and again, attempts to explain Einstein's universe have come to us from the higher ends of the journalistic, academic and publishing worlds. They come to us in Brian Greene's books, and in endless PBS programs.

These attempts to make Einstein easy pretty much always fail. Two recent attempts to make Gödel easy have also plainly failed, including one which was favorably blurbed by everyone from Steven Pinker on down.

They pretend to explain Einstein's universe. We pretend that they've done it! They jangle the chains of academic authority and we quickly defer. Ironically, Isaacson makes a key point in his excellent treatment of Einstein's life:

Einstein's genius was closely tied to his lifelong refusal to do that.

In part, this is an artifact of anthropology, of our basic human imperfections.  More specifically, it's a reflection of the flight of the logicians, of their long-standing failure to serve. 

As deeply imperfect creatures, we humans have a crying need for the skills of clarity and cogency. But our logicians walked off their posts long ago, and there's no sign that they plan to return.

The logicians have walked away from their posts! As the weeks and months roll by, we'll eventually get to that point. This will take us to Wittgenstein's muddled but valuable work, and also to Horwich's claim.

Next week: "Appearance" and its discontents