Einstein's Phobia of Philosophy

The famous philosopher Henri Bergson criticized Einstein's special theory of relativity by imagining giants, microbes, two-dimensional beings, and a "supreme consciousness." He argued that Einstein had arbitrarily made a sharp distinction between local and distant events and that Einstein confused time itself with mere clock measurements. I will discuss why Einstein dodged Bergson's pushy efforts to inject more subjectivity into relativity theory by explaining how Einstein, as a lonely young man, developed his critical views on philosophy.