A dense but accessible discussion of the metaphysical role of time in human affairs.
In 1922, at a meeting of the French Society of Philosophy, Henri Bergson (1859-1941), “one of the most respected philosophers of his era,” expressed unhappiness with Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which discarded the concept of absolute time and denied the reality of simultaneity. Present in the audience, Einstein disagreed.
One consequence was that the Nobel committee changed its mind, awarding Einstein the 1922 prize for explaining the photoelectric effect on the grounds that relativity was still a matter of debate. Both reaffirmed their disagreement over the years, a matter that scholars have not considered of great importance. In this lucid if academic history of scientists’ efforts to measure time and the consequences of their success, Canales (Chair, History of Science/Univ. of Illinois; A Tenth of a Second: A History, 2010, etc.) makes a reasonable case that those scholars were wrong. Einstein did not invent the relativity of time and space, but his 1905 special theory proposed such a revolutionary view of the universe that even those who did (Henri Poincaré, Hendrik Lorentz) balked. Bergson, a brilliant thinker whose writing emphasizes intuition and perception, was also not convinced, “claiming that the sensational conclusions of the physicist’s theory were not so unlike the fantastical searches for the fountain of youth.” Canales dismisses the argument that Bergson, a polymath, didn’t understand the theory of relativity. He and his supporters’ objections stemmed from a “strong repugnance toward a philosophy that wants to explain all reality mechanically.” The author turns up a surprising number of philosophers and scientists who weighed in on an ongoing, if not world-shaking, debate that split the century “into two cultures pitting scientists against humanists, expert knowledge against lay wisdom.”
A dense but accessible discussion of the metaphysical role of time in human affairs.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-691-16534-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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