Einstein×Socrates

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Radio Ether. Up next on TITANS: Albert Einstein and Socrates, on On a correction they had to print, and what it cost them.
2. 00:09
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Socrates, I have been thinking about that terrible business in 1922. The correction I had to make about the ether drift experiments. I was so certain, you see, that the observations would show some remnant of absolute motion, and I wrote this in the Japanese papers while traveling. But the data, the data said otherwise, and I had to publish a retraction.
3. 00:32
   Socratesshare moment

   How interesting. Tell me, Einstein, when you say you were 'so certain,' what exactly gave you this certainty?
4. 00:40
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Well, I... the mathematics suggested certain possibilities, and I thought perhaps my earlier work on special relativity might need some adjustment. I was exploring, yes?
5. 00:51
   Socratesshare moment

   Exploring. A beautiful word. But surely you published these thoughts not as explorations but as findings? Or do I misunderstand what a scientific paper is?
6. 01:04
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   No, no, you are right. I stated it as if it were established. This was my error. The cost was to my reputation, naturally, and to students who might have been misled.
7. 01:14
   Socratesshare moment

   Your reputation. That's what it cost you? Some damage to how others perceived you?
8. 01:20
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes, and also the confusion in the field. Other physicists had to spend time understanding what I had claimed and then unclaimed. Scientific resources, you could say, were wasted.
9. 01:32
   Socratesshare moment

   I see. And when you discovered your error, did you hesitate to publish the correction?
10. 01:38
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Hesitate? Perhaps for a moment. It is not pleasant to admit you were wrong in print, in front of the entire scientific community. But the truth is the truth.
11. 01:49
    Socratesshare moment

    Ah, but was it unpleasant because the truth is difficult to face, or because others would see you had been mistaken?
12. 01:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Both, I suppose. They are mixed together, these things.
13. 02:00
    Socratesshare moment

    Are they? Can you help me understand something, my friend? If a man discovers an error in private, in his own notebooks where no one will ever look, does he feel this same unpleasantness?
14. 02:12
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, I think not. Or much less so. When it is private, there is even a certain joy in finding the mistake, because now you can correct it and move closer to truth.
15. 02:23
    Socratesshare moment

    How remarkable! So the error itself doesn't wound you. It's the public nature of the error that causes pain?
16. 02:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, exactly. Though I should say, Socrates, that this is simply human nature. We all feel this.
17. 02:38
    Socratesshare moment

    Do we? I wonder. Tell me, what did you lose when you published your correction? Your position at university?
18. 02:45
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, nothing like that.
19. 02:47
    Socratesshare moment

    Your friends abandoned you?
20. 02:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course not.
21. 02:49
    Socratesshare moment

    Other scientists stopped reading your work?
22. 02:52
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, if anything they respected the honesty of the retraction. In science, we understand that errors are part of the process.
23. 03:00
    Socratesshare moment

    Then what exactly did you lose?
24. 03:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I lost... I suppose I lost a certain image of myself as infallible. And perhaps some glory.
25. 03:08
    Socratesshare moment

    An image that was false.
26. 03:09
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Well, yes.
27. 03:11
    Socratesshare moment

    And glory attached to a claim that was incorrect.
28. 03:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    When you put it that way, Socrates, it sounds as if I lost nothing of value. But it didn't feel that way, I assure you.
29. 03:21
    Socratesshare moment

    Feelings are certainly real. I'm not disputing that you suffered. But I'm curious whether the suffering came from the correction itself, or from something else. Something you brought to it.
30. 03:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You mean my vanity.
31. 03:35
    Socratesshare moment

    Your word, not mine. Though I'll admit it's a good word. Tell me, have you had to correct yourself on other occasions?
32. 03:43
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Oh, many times. In my work on the cosmological constant, for instance. I called it my biggest blunder, though now I understand that it may have been not so wrong after all. The universe, it turns out, is full of surprises.
33. 03:58
    Socratesshare moment

    And each time you corrected yourself, did it become easier?
34. 04:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, I think so. By the end of my life, I was quite comfortable saying 'I don't know' or 'I was mistaken.' Less attached to being the man with all the answers.
35. 04:14
    Socratesshare moment

    So the cost of your first correction included a kind of education? A lesson in how to be wrong?
36. 04:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I never thought of it as a lesson. More like a humiliation.
37. 04:24
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you just described its fruit: you became more comfortable with uncertainty, more honest in your not-knowing. Was that fruit bitter or sweet?
38. 04:35
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Sweet, I suppose, in the long view. At the time, bitter.
39. 04:40
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps what you lost in the correction was precisely what was preventing you from gaining this comfort? Perhaps the cost was actually a payment toward something valuable?
40. 04:50
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You are turning my suffering into a transaction. This is very Greek of you.
41. 04:55
    Socratesshare moment

    I'm merely asking what you received in exchange for what you lost. Unless you think you received nothing?
42. 05:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, I see your point. I received a kind of freedom, actually. Freedom from the need to be right all the time. Though I must tell you, Socrates, this freedom was purchased at what felt like a very high price.
43. 05:16
    Socratesshare moment

    Did it? Let me ask you something else. When you published your original, incorrect claim, did you know it was incorrect?
44. 05:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course not. If I had known, I wouldn't have published it.
45. 05:28
    Socratesshare moment

    So you were already wrong. The error already existed. Yes?
46. 05:33
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes, obviously.
47. 05:35
    Socratesshare moment

    Then the correction didn't create the wrongness. It merely acknowledged what was already true. So what really cost you something, Einstein? The error, or the admission of the error?
48. 05:48
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The admission. The error existed in privacy, in my own ignorance. The admission made it public.
49. 05:55
    Socratesshare moment

    So we return to the question of the public and the private. You've told me that private errors can even bring joy. Public errors bring shame. Why should this be?
50. 06:08
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Because we want others to think well of us. This is not complicated psychology, Socrates.
51. 06:13
    Socratesshare moment

    But you also told me that your colleagues respected your honesty in making the correction. So did they think worse of you, or better?
52. 06:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Better, I think. Eventually.
53. 06:24
    Socratesshare moment

    Eventually?
54. 06:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Well, immediately they thought 'Einstein was wrong,' and then later they thought 'Einstein is honest enough to admit when he is wrong.' Two separate judgments.
55. 06:35
    Socratesshare moment

    And if you had not admitted the error? If you had remained silent, or defended the incorrect claim?
56. 06:41
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Then I would have been discovered eventually anyway. The experiments would contradict me, other physicists would notice. My silence would have made things much worse.
57. 06:52
    Socratesshare moment

    So your choice was between admitting the error yourself with honesty, or having it exposed by others with your dishonesty also on display?
58. 07:01
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I suppose those were the options, yes.
59. 07:03
    Socratesshare moment

    Then it seems to me you chose the less costly path. You speak of what the correction cost you, but you don't speak of what it would have cost you to avoid the correction.
60. 07:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That would have cost me everything. My integrity, my standing in the community, my relationship with truth itself.
61. 07:21
    Socratesshare moment

    Everything. Compared to what you actually lost, which was what? A false image and some temporary embarrassment?
62. 07:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You make it sound so reasonable. But you have never had to do this, have you? Publish a correction in a scientific journal, admit to thousands of readers that you were mistaken?
63. 07:40
    Socratesshare moment

    I never published anything at all, my friend. But I spent thirty years in Athens telling people, usually in very public places, that they didn't know what they thought they knew. This included telling them that I didn't know what I thought I knew.
64. 07:57
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And they killed you for it.
65. 07:59
    Socratesshare moment

    They did. So perhaps I know something about the cost of correction after all. Though I should say, the charge was impiety and corrupting the youth, not simply being wrong about physics.
66. 08:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Your cost was considerably higher than mine, then.
67. 08:13
    Socratesshare moment

    Was it? I lost a life I was going to lose anyway, being seventy years old. What I kept was the ability to die knowing I had been honest. You kept your life and your reputation and learned to be comfortable with uncertainty. I'm not sure who paid more.
68. 08:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is a morbid accounting.
69. 08:33
    Socratesshare moment

    Is it? Or is it just honest? Tell me one more thing, Einstein. If you could go back to that moment before you published the correction, knowing what you know now about the cost, would you still publish it?
70. 08:46
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Of course. There was never really a choice. The correction had to be made.
71. 08:51
    Socratesshare moment

    Had to be? A matter of necessity?
72. 08:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Moral necessity, yes. Scientific necessity. I could not leave an error standing when I knew it was an error.
73. 09:03
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps what it really cost you was not reputation or comfort, but rather the illusion that you had a choice. The illusion that there was some other path available to a man who cares about truth.
74. 09:17
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is... that is an interesting way to see it. The cost was realizing I had to pay the cost. There was no alternative that I could live with.
75. 09:27
    Socratesshare moment

    And tell me, Einstein, was this realization itself painful?
76. 09:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    At first, very much so. Later, no. Later it felt like clarity.
77. 09:38
    Socratesshare moment

    Clarity. Another beautiful word. So the ultimate cost of your correction was temporary pain in exchange for permanent clarity about who you were and what you valued.
78. 09:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You have a way of making even suffering sound like a bargain.
79. 09:53
    Socratesshare moment

    I merely ask what was actually lost and what was actually gained. The words 'cost' and 'correction' are yours, not mine. I'm just wondering whether the correction cost you, or whether the error before the correction was the real expense.
80. 10:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The error before was... yes, I see. I was spending my credibility on a false claim. The correction was stopping the spending. Like finally noticing a hole in your pocket.
81. 10:21
    Socratesshare moment

    And does a man who notices a hole in his pocket curse the noticing, or bless it?
82. 10:26
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    He should bless it. Though at the moment of discovery, he usually curses.
83. 10:30
    Socratesshare moment

    Should bless it. An interesting choice of words. So you think there's a gap between what we should feel and what we do feel about our errors?
84. 10:40
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    For most of us, yes. We are not perfectly rational creatures, Socrates. We are humans, with pride and fear and all the rest.
85. 10:49
    Socratesshare moment

    Indeed we are. And yet you managed to publish your correction despite the pride and fear. So perhaps these feelings, strong as they are, need not determine our actions?
86. 11:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, they need not. Though they make the action considerably more difficult.
87. 11:06
    Socratesshare moment

    More difficult, but also more valuable? If it cost you nothing, would the correction have meant as much?
88. 11:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think... I think you are suggesting that the cost itself was part of the value. That it mattered precisely because it was hard.
89. 11:21
    Socratesshare moment

    I'm not suggesting anything. I'm simply asking whether a correction that costs nothing teaches anything. Or proves anything about the person making it.
90. 11:32
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, I suppose it doesn't. The difficulty is what made it meaningful. What made it real.
91. 11:38
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps we should stop speaking of costs and start speaking of prices worth paying. Though I suspect that's not really a distinction you find troubling anymore.
92. 11:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    At my age, Socrates, very little troubles me. Including being wrong on the radio, should that happen. Though I notice you still haven't told me about any correction you had to make.
93. 11:59
    Socratesshare moment

    What correction could I make? I never claimed to know anything in the first place. Though I suppose that claim itself might be wrong. Should I print a retraction?
94. 12:10
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Now you are joking with me.
95. 12:12
    Socratesshare moment

    Am I? How would you know?