Quotes 'La Théorie de la relativité: séance du 6 avril 1922', Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 22 (3) (1922), pp. 91-113.

Quotes B. Latour, 'Some Experiments in Art and Politics', E-Flux 23 (March 2011).
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'The philosopher Bruno Latour referred to the debate [between einstein and Bergson] as a locus classicus for thinking about the relation between science and other areas of culture:

There is no better way to frame this question than the bungled dialog (well, not really a “dialogue,” but that’s the point) between Henri Bergson and Albert Einstein in Paris in 1922. Bergson had carefully studied Einstein’s theory of relativity and wrote a thick book about it, but Einstein had only a few dismissive comments about Bergson’s argument. After Bergson spoke for thirty minutes, Einstein made a terse two-minute remark, ending with this damning sentence: “Hence there is no philosopher’s time; there is only a psychological time different from the time of the physicist. [note: 'Latour, "Some Experiments in Art and Politics." For Latour's first solid engagement with Einstein and the theory of relativity see Bruno Latour, "A Reltivistic Account of Einstein's Relativity," Social Studies of Science 18, no, 1 (1988):5.']

"Matters of concern" faced off against "matters of fact" by direct reference to Bergson and Einstein. These, like many other binary categories, have become ingrained examples of our pertinent cultural divides, [note: 'Bruno Latour, "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Maters of Fact to Matters of Concern," Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004).'] "Can we do better at the beginning of the twenty-first century?" he asked.

A few years before the twenty-first century came to a close, Latour studied Bergson's concept of time, calling Bergson's argument "the most unfair account of science." Although he distanced himself from Bergson's critique, similarities between Bergson and Latour were readily apparent. "The crux of Bergson's argument is not really different from that of Latour," explained the sociologist Michel Callon. [note: 'Callon, "Whose Imposture?," 276.'] Latour explained how Bergson's positio nwas often dismised because it was framed as one concerned exclusively with subjectivity: "Einstein argued that there was only one space and time - that of physics - and that what Bergson was after was nothing more than subjective time - that of psychology." [note: 'Latour, "Some Experiments in Art and Politics," 5.'] According to Latour, Einstein's manner of dealing with Bergson became a typical way for scientisits to deal with nonscience, including philosophy, politics, and art. While Bergson's account of Einstein's science had been "unfair," Einstein's account of philosophy was also tendentious: "We recognize here the classical way for scientists to deal with philoosphy, politics, and art: 'What you say might be nice and interestingbut it has no cosmological relevance because it only deals with subjective elements, the lived world, not the real world.

Latour's project consisted in asking "is it possible to give Bergson another chance to make his case that, no, he is not talking about subjective time and space, but is rather proposing an alternative to Einstein’s cosmology?" [note: 'Ibid.'] But how? One could start by adopting a different metaphysical conception of time, concluding, with Latour, that it is not "coherent and homogeneous." [note: 'Latour, "We Have Never Been Modern," 134']' (356-357)

Quotes B. Latour, 'Trains of Thought: The Fifth Dimension and its Fabrication: in A.N. Perret-Clermont et. al. (eds.), Thinking Time: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Time (Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe and Hupher, 2005), pp. 173-187.
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'A few years before the twentieth century came to a close, Latour studied Bergson's concept of time, calling Bergson's arguments against Einstein "the most unfair account of science." [note: '[]']' (357)

Quotes H. Bergson (trans. L. Jacobson), Duration and Simultaneity: With Reference to Einstein's Theory (Indianapolis, New York and Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

Quoted by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
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'On the 26th of May 1911, the philosopher Henri Bergson gave a lecture to a packed hall at the University of Oxford. Bergson was at the height of his powers: his 1907 Creative Evolution had catapulted him into into the consciousness not only his native France, but that of a growing international band of followers. He would go on to be recognized as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Yet, as Jimena Canales (2015) has recently detailed, not long after this talk Bergson's reputation appeared severely diminished. Merely a decade after his triumphant tour of England, his philosophy was being portrayed as a dangerous form of mysticism out of place in the scientific culture of the twentieth century.

Canales identifies a contentious set of debates between Bergson, his fellow Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, and their respective followers as the immediate cause of the decline in influence of the former. In so doing, her work opens up Bergson's philosophy to historians of science, medicine and technology.' (423-424)

 

' A consideration of Bergson's 1911 talk, however, points to an intriguing element of Canales' analysis that remains unresolved. At Oxford, Bergson was very specific regarding the significance of modern science for philosophy...  For the Bergson of 1911, the task of philosophy was to reclaim the spirit of classical European thought, and re-cast it in the light of the new sciences of psychology and biology. Yet in Einstein's famous 1922 objection to Bergson's conception of time, the physicist appealed not only to his own science, but also to psychology, as the only possible sources of temporal experience. For Einstein, Bergson's 'philosophic' notion of time, on which the latter had founded his thought, simply did not exist: there was 'only a psychological time that differs from the physicist's' (Anon 1922, on 107. Translation from Canales 2015, 5). Furthermore, Einstein found support for his assertion from the only authority on psychology present at the debate. As Canales notes (though she doesn’t develop the point), Henri Piéron suggested there that both Einstein and Bergson's perspectives could in fact be experimentally demonstrated, in the laboratory (Canales 2015, 244-246; Anon 1922, 112-113). On the one hand, Einstein's physical time was revealed in the operation of the experimental psychologists' instruments. On the other, Bergson's duration could, just as Einstein had suggested, be identified with experimentally demonstrable temporal experience – and was in fact a psychological phenomenon of a different order to (and without influence on) physical time.

In response to these challenges, Bergson began to re-consider the relation between his philosophy and the sciences. Though he sought to remain open to the conclusions of experimental endeavour, his approach to science as a whole became more circumspect. Creative Evolution had confidently asserted the harmony of its appeal to an introspectively-derived 'duration' with emerging biological and psychological research. Duration and Simultaneity (1922) would in contrast cast philosophy and physical science as 'unlike disciplines... meant to implement each other' (Bergson [1922] 1999, xxvii; Canales 2015, 14). Why was it that Bergson did not contest Piéron's interpretation at the debate, merely noting that laboratory observation was 'imprecise' (Anon 1922, 113)? What had happened to cause him to lose confidence in the sciences that had seemed so philosophically promising eleven years previously?' (424-425)

 

'In his 1922 reference to psychological time as the only alternative to his own physical time, Einstein appealed not then to a field in which contentions regarding the nature of mind could directly inform studies of the nature of bodies, but rather to an increasingly laboratory-based discipline that addressed questions that at least nominally fell outside of the purview of physiological research. It is significant in this respect that he had since at least 1916 cultivated a close relationship with one of the pioneers of Gestalt psychology, Max Wertheimer. In 1922 Einstein asked Wertheimer to deputise for him at the League of Nations' Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, over which Bergson presided. In the same year, in the first of a number of such letters, he also penned a recommendation for him (to Moritz Schlick at Kiel) on the basis of both his personal acquaintance and his psychological expertise. [note: 'M. Wertheimer to A. Einstein, 17th Sept. 1922 and Einstein-M. Schlick, 28th Apr. 1922, trans. in E.H. Luchins and A.S. Luchins, 'Introduction to the Einstein-Wertheimer Correspondence', Methodology and Science 12 (3) (1979), pp. 165-202, on pp. 173-174 and 181. See also A.S. Luchins and E.H. Luchins, 'The Einstein-Wertheimer Correspondence on Geometric Proofs and Mathematical Puzzles', The Mathematical Intelligencer 12 (2) (1988), pp. 35-43. Einstein and Bergson's League of Nations experiences (though not Einstein's invitation to Wertheimer) are related in Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher, pp. 114-130.']'

 

'Given the above changing conditions in relation to which Bergson articulated his philosophy, his dispute with Einstein begins to appear in a different light. Canales relays a Bergson under attack, subject to the imperialistic impulses of an ambitious and somewhat ruthless early twentieth-century physical science (Canales 2015, esp. 13, 163-171). In contrast, this article has conveyed a Bergson deeply invested in a historically specific mode of intellectual practice in which consideration relating to sensation had direct relevance to that relating to bodily nature. Einstein's dispute with Bergson came at a time in which this mode was undergoing severe and seemingly irreversible decline.'

 

'this is not however to dismiss the significance of either Bergson's insights regarding the primacy of immediate experience in philosophical investigation, or Canales conclusions regarding the cultural positioning of Bergson during the twentieth century. Indeed, the two insights are linked in significant ways.'