Einstein×Austen

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Miss Austen, I have been thinking about this question all morning, and I find it somewhat... uncomfortable. The work left undone. It suggests we had some grand plan, yes? Some blueprint we failed to complete. But I never worked that way.
2. 00:17
   Jane Austenshare moment

   Nor I. Though I confess the question interests me precisely because it assumes we had control over when our work would end. I did not wake one morning in 1817 and think, 'Well, Jane, better wrap up Sanditon, you've an appointment with eternity.' I simply stopped.
3. 00:34
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes! Exactly this. I was working on unified field theory until... well, until I couldn't anymore. The mathematics was there, somewhere, like a melody I could almost hear. But the equations would not cooperate.
4. 00:51
   Jane Austenshare moment

   Did you expect someone to finish it for you?
5. 00:53
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Expect? No. Hope? Perhaps. I left behind papers, notes. Wheeler and Bargmann understood some of it. But to finish another man's theory—this is like asking someone to finish dreaming your dream.
6. 01:10
   Jane Austenshare moment

   How curiously you put it. Yet people have been finishing my novel for two hundred years. Sanditon has been completed at least a dozen times by writers I shall never meet. I'm not certain whether to find it flattering or presumptuous.
7. 01:26
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Have you read any of these completions?
8. 01:28
   Jane Austenshare moment

   I am dead, Professor Einstein. But I knew the characters, and I knew where they were going. Whether these modern completers knew it—well, that is rather the question we're meant to discuss, is it not?
9. 01:40
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You knew where your characters were going. I wish I could say the same about my equations. Sometimes I think the problem was that I was chasing something that doesn't exist—not yet, maybe not ever. A single elegant theory to explain gravity and electromagnetism. Nature laughed at me, I think.
10. 02:00
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Nature has no sense of humor, surely. That would require personality.
11. 02:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Ah, but you see, this is where we differ. I always felt nature had a personality. Subtle, but not malicious—that was how I used to say it. The universe has rules, even when we cannot find them.
12. 02:17
    Jane Austenshare moment

    And people? Do they have rules?
13. 02:19
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    People are much more complicated than the universe.
14. 02:22
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Now that is something upon which we are in complete agreement. You worked with numbers and light. I worked with people who lied to themselves every morning before breakfast. I think I had the more difficult task.
15. 02:36
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are probably right. But tell me—when you left Sanditon unfinished, did you have someone in mind who could understand Charlotte Heywood the way you understood her?
16. 02:47
    Jane Austenshare moment

    My sister, perhaps. Cassandra knew my mind better than anyone. But I would not have asked it of her. The grief alone would have made it impossible. And besides, the novel was mine to finish or not finish. I do not think it occurred to me that anyone else would dare.
17. 03:03
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But they did dare.
18. 03:04
    Jane Austenshare moment

    They did. And I suppose that is the price of being read. Once you set characters loose in the world, they belong a little bit to everyone. I am not sure I like it, but I understand it.
19. 03:15
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is the difference, maybe. My work—no one can simply decide how it ends based on what feels right. The universe will tell us if the theory is correct. It does not care about our feelings.
20. 03:28
    Jane Austenshare moment

    But your colleagues must decide what to pursue, must they not? Which equations feel promising? You yourself said it was like a melody you could almost hear. That is not so different from intuition.
21. 03:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Touché. Yes, intuition plays a role. But it must be checked, always checked, against experiment. When I developed relativity, I knew it felt right. But until Eddington measured the bending of starlight, it was just a beautiful idea.
22. 03:58
    Jane Austenshare moment

    And who checked your unified field theory?
23. 04:00
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No one. That is the problem. I could not make predictions that could be tested. I spent the last decades of my life on something that may have been...
24. 04:11
    Jane Austenshare moment

    A beautiful idea that went nowhere?
25. 04:13
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You need not sound quite so satisfied about it.
26. 04:16
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I am not satisfied. I am sympathetic. I wrote six novels—or five and a fragment, to be precise—and I had at least three more in my head. A novel about a woman who becomes ill at a seaside town, the ironies of her situation, the people who prey upon invalids. None of it was written down except those twelve chapters.
27. 04:36
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did you trust anyone with your vision?
28. 04:38
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I trusted my readers to understand what I had already written. That is not the same as trusting them to finish what I had not. There is a great deal of difference between appreciating an artist's work and presuming to be that artist.
29. 04:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But science is different in this way. We want others to presume. We want them to take our half-finished ideas and complete them. I published papers hoping someone cleverer would see what I had missed.
30. 05:06
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Did anyone?
31. 05:07
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Not in my lifetime. But this does not mean they will not. String theory, quantum field theory—these are attempts to answer the same question I was asking. They do not use my methods, but they are finishing the work. Or trying to.
32. 05:23
    Jane Austenshare moment

    That is rather generous of you.
33. 05:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    What do you mean?
34. 05:26
    Jane Austenshare moment

    To allow that someone might finish your work even if they discard your approach entirely. I am not certain I could be so gracious about Sanditon. If someone completed it by turning Charlotte into a Gothic heroine or Mr. Parker into a villain, I should be most displeased.
35. 05:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Have they done this?
36. 05:44
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I could not say. But I suspect some have taken liberties.
37. 05:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Then perhaps the question is not whether we trusted others to finish our work, but whether we had any choice in the matter. You died. I died. The work goes on without us.
38. 05:59
    Jane Austenshare moment

    How very practical of you. And rather bleak.
39. 06:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I prefer to think of it as realistic. I used to argue with Bohr about whether God plays dice with the universe. Now I think maybe God plays dice with us. We do not get to choose when our work is finished. We only get to choose whether we do the work at all.
40. 06:19
    Jane Austenshare moment

    That I will grant. Though I still maintain that some work ought to remain unfinished. There is a dignity in the incomplete, a respect for the artist's intention. Or lack thereof.
41. 06:31
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But if the work matters—if it asks important questions—does the dignity of the artist matter more than the answers?
42. 06:38
    Jane Austenshare moment

    In science, perhaps not. In art? I think it must.
43. 06:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Why?
44. 06:42
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Because art is not only about answers, Professor. It is about the particular way one person sees the world. When you replicate that vision, you are creating something new, not completing something old. You are writing your own novel and signing my name to it.
45. 07:00
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But in science, we do this all the time! Newton saw the world one way, I saw it another. I did not complete his work—I replaced it. And someday someone will replace mine.
46. 07:11
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Did you find that thought comforting?
47. 07:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I found it necessary. The truth is larger than any one person. If my theories are wrong, I want them replaced. Better a beautiful error corrected than an ugly error preserved.
48. 07:25
    Jane Austenshare moment

    And yet you spent decades on unified field theory knowing you might be wrong.
49. 07:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Because I had to try. Even if I failed, perhaps my failure would teach someone else what not to do. This is also a contribution.
50. 07:40
    Jane Austenshare moment

    You are remarkably philosophical about failure.
51. 07:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I have had practice.
52. 07:44
    Jane Austenshare moment

    As have I, though I called it by different names. Revision. Refinement. The drawer where one places pages that do not work. I destroyed a novel once, you know. The Watsons. Simply could not make it go.
53. 07:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did anyone try to finish that one too?
54. 07:59
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Oh, certainly. Everyone is very eager to help.
55. 08:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And you resent this?
56. 08:04
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I resent the presumption that they know what I intended. But I do not resent the effort. There is something rather touching about it, actually. They loved the characters enough to want them to have an ending. That is not nothing.
57. 08:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    So you did trust your readers. Just not in the way the question assumes.
58. 08:22
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I trusted them to care. That is not the same as trusting them to be correct. And you? Did you trust your colleagues?
59. 08:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I trusted them to keep asking the question. Whether they answer it correctly—that is for the universe to decide, not me.
60. 08:36
    Jane Austenshare moment

    How convenient for you to have an objective referee.
61. 08:39
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    It is, actually. Literature has no such luxury.
62. 08:43
    Jane Austenshare moment

    No. We have only readers, and their infinite capacity for disagreement. I suppose that is why the work remains undone. There is no final answer to whether Darcy and Elizabeth lived happily. Only opinions.
63. 08:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you gave them a happy ending.
64. 09:00
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I gave them a wedding. The rest is conjecture. Perhaps that is the real work I left undone—not Sanditon, but the futures of all those couples. What became of them? Did Emma's marriage to Mr. Knightley survive the first real quarrel? Did Anne Elliot ever stop being grateful?
65. 09:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You want me to believe you did not know?
66. 09:19
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I knew them on the page, Professor Einstein. Beyond that, they must fend for themselves. As must we all.
67. 09:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Then perhaps we agree after all. The work is never finished. We only decide when to stop working.
68. 09:32
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Or are stopped. The distinction matters.
69. 09:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Does it? In the end?
70. 09:36
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I suppose that depends on whether one believes intention matters more than outcome. You favor outcome. I favor intention. We are at an impasse.
71. 09:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Not an impasse. A conversation. Which is perhaps all we were meant to finish today.
72. 09:53
    Jane Austenshare moment

    And even that remains to be seen.