Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: An Interview with Peter Galison, Part I

Abstract

November 2003 · Historically Speaking experienced the interwar servant crisis with such a shock. When his own servant—Mr. Bam—beganto ape hissocialbetters andpaint pictures, Keynes prompdysacked him. The servant crisis ofthe English middle classes had both a beginning and an end.Just as it began when the First World War made servants more scarce and less deferential, it ended when the Second World War made them almost extinct. Afewverywealthypeople still employed servants—when the British Prime Minister Harold MacmiUan received the Freedom ofthe City ofLondon in 1961 he took twelve servants, including his head gardener and head forester, as his guests. However, industrial employment increased again during and immediately after the SecondWorldWar , whileupperand middle class incomes were sharply reduced by the taxation ofthe firstAdee government. The huge success of cookery books written by EUzabeth David (theimpoverished and bohemian daughter of a conservative baronet) during the 1950s signaled the fact that well-bred ladies had finally accepted that they would have to cook their husbands' dinners. Richard Vinen teaches history atKing's College London. His most recent book isA Historyin Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century (Da Capo, 2001). 1 John Stevenson, British Society, 1914-1945 Q?enguin , 1984), 34. 2 SusanPedersen,Family, Dependence,andthe Origins ofthe Welfare State: Britain andFrance, 1914-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 91. 3 Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930-1939, ed. Nigel Nicolson (Collins, 1967), 109. 4 Robert Skidelsky,JohnMaynardKeynes. The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1931 (Penguin, 1994), 11. 5 LeonardWoolf, BeginningAgain:AnAutobiography ofthe Years 1911 to 1918 (Peter Smith, 1964), 51: "the following letter from Sophie to Virgina . . . shows inaninterestingwaythe curious psychology ofthese devoted servants to die families for whom they worked—sometimes without exorbitant récognition—in the 19th century." 6 Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf, 2 vols. (Hogarth, 1972), 2: 56. 7 Skidelsky,John MaynardKeynes, 8. 8 John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences ofthe Peace (Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920), 9. Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps:An Interview With Peter Galison, Part I Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa Albert Einstein has becomean icon of20th-century science; indeed, he may wellstandas thesymbolfor the entire century. How do historians explain the importance ofpivotal breakthroughs ofa theoretical nature—like Einstein's work on relativity— that seemingly change how we view the world? Are these theoreticaladvances essentially theproduct ofthegenius andcreativity ofheroic individuals ? Certainly it is an article ofhistoricalfaith that context matters. But how much? In the case ofEinstein,for instance, does his work in the Bern patent office have anything more than coincidentalbearing on his thinkingabout timeandspace? Peter Galison's latest book, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps (Norton, 2003), explores these themes insightfully and in illuminating detail. Galison, the MallinckrodtProfessoroftheHistory ofScience andofPhysics at Harvard University, argues thatpaying attention to the material context ofthe worlds that Einstein and Poincaré inhabited deepens our appreciationfor their significant theoretical work. Donald Yerxa interviewedGalison in his Harvardoffice on September 29, 2003. Weprovide the interview in two installments, thefirstfocusing on theparticulars o/Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps; thesecondon how historians ofscienceaccountforhowscience has workedin thepast. Donald Yerxa: What prompted you to write Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps? Peter Galison: For many years I have been captivated by the question ofhow abstract issues in theoretical science connect to concrete circumstances—machines, laboratories , instruments. I am fascinated by the way people bring ideas into contact with the physical and completely material world. Einstein, for instance, spent some of his formative scientific years working in the patent office—six days a week, ten to twelve hours a day. And yet during this period he wrote some of the most important scientific papers of his day in quantum mechanics, relativity, and atomic theory. Were these connected? Was it just a day job that Einstein had? In a broader sense, beyond the purely biographical , what connection does the development of relativity theory have to the world out ofwhich it came? This mirrors the historian's eternal question: why did this happen then and there? What I am Historically Speaking · November 2003 trying to do in the book is to address that question. Why does relativity happen in different forms, in different ways in Paris and Bern at the turn ofthe century? Yerxa: Can you speak...