Einstein’s Dreams Presentation #2

1. Einstein’s Dreams Presentation #2 Sarah Maher, Taylor Whittingham, Jill Kennedy, Bill Heisler

2. 26 April 1905 • Time flows more slowly the further from the center of the earth that people are. • Everyone starts moving higher in the mountains and building houses on stilts so that time will slow down for them, even if it means risking their health.

3. “A small number . . . just smile” (Lightman 24). • These few “brave” people have learned how to simply enjoy their lives and to not care about what the other people think. • “He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life” (Faulkner 85). • For these few insightful people in Einstein’s Dreams, they have stopped obsessing over the passing of time and have decided to just live life to its fullest.

4. “In time . . . lower elevations” (Lightman 24). • The height at which these people live has started to become a means by which they are identified in society. • They convince themselves that the thin air and inconvenience is a positive aspect of their life and that is shows how superior they are to others. They even go on diets that are unhealthy. • By contrast, the people have become unhealthy and have started to look older than they actually are, all because they were trying to beat time.

5. Connections to Quentin & Jason • Quentin: the idea that time needs to be controlled in order to live a full life and the obsession over the continuation of time. • “And so as soon as I knew I couldn't’t see it, I began to wonder what time it was” (Faulkner 77) • Jason: the concern over status and how you are seen by others. • For Jason it’s about money, for the people in this section of Einstein’s Dreams is about looking younger and aging slower.

6. Problems for Modern Man • Too caught up in the movement of time. • Time should be measured by each moment and by the memories you keep, not simply by the number of minutes that pass by. • Social inequality. • The reason these people have moved up to higher elevations was originally to escape time, and to age slower. Over time it has simply become a symbol of higher social status. They use it as a way of labeling and distinguishing between different social classes. • In the same way, modern society differentiates between social classes based on money, lifestyle, race, etc. For the most part, the reasons why people are separated by these means is not important or relevant anymore, yet we continue to use it to justify our attitudes and behaviors towards certain groups of people.

7. 28 April 1905 • Time is completely absolute. • Time paces forward with absolute regularity everywhere in the world. • No matter what happens in life, people can count on time to continue to move on and never change.

8. “Those of religious faith see time as the evidence for God” (26). • Religious people view time as something so perfect that only God could have to power to create it. It is completely synchronized and infallible, so only someone who had both those characteristics could actually create it. • “I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature” (Albert Einstein). • Einstein believed in the mysteries of the earth and life itself. He believed that science’s goal was to try and prove whatever tiny parts of that mystery that it could. Religion should not be completely discounted by science and science should not be made irrelevant by religion.

9. “For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable” (28). • This section focuses on the comforting thought that time is completely absolute and unchanging. • This quote refers to the infallibility of time, and the unpredictability of the human race. While people can be untrustworthy, time is always constant. • Time is a refuge to a constantly changing and fast paced world.

10. Connections to Quentin • Obsessed with the passage of time yet also comforted by its complete regularity and the fact that it is the same everywhere. • “There were about a dozen watches in the window, a dozen different hours and each with the same assertive . . . assurance that mine had . . .” (Faulkner 85). • Even though all the clocks tell a different hour and minute, the passage of time from each clock is completely in sync, which leaves Quentin feeling calmer and more in control. • Human hands adjusted the time on each of the clocks, but either way time still passes at the same exact pace.

11. Problems for Modern Man • Obsession with time and deadlines. • When time is considered completely absolute and infallible, society can become so caught up in the exactitude of time. Deadlines can become so set in stone that all spontaneity is lost. • In a world like this, the concept of “getting lost in the moment” becomes a negative attitude. Without this concept much of the world’s beauty would never be created.

12. 3 May 1905 • Order of Cause and Effect: which really comes first? • Argues that “Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first… future and past are entwined”(29). • Argues this through using three examples showing how the timing of cause and effect are skewed: • Friendless man • The crime rates of Zurich • A women in Love • This all leads to the ultimate conclusion: the reason behind our actions is impulse.

13. The Three Examples • A friendless man: A man who was the“Ideal friend” for twenty years suddenly finds himself friendless. Then he starts “acting the goat” by diverting from all his favorable characteristics. • Crime rates of Zurich: Zurich approves strict laws and doubles its police force, the month following the approval of these laws, the crime is the worst its ever been in Zurich. • A women suddenly becomes anxious and happy for no reason at all, then two days later she meets and falls in love with a young man.

14. Conclusion • In this world predictions are fruitless as they become post dictions. • Unpredictability is the lifestyle as everything is retrospective • Ultimately, “The past has uncertain effect on the present, so there is no need to dwell on the past. The present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence”(31).

15. Connection to Quentin • This world is exactly opposite to Quentin’s world. Quentin’s concept of time is that it is linear. There is a very distinct present, past and future. This is shown through his obsession with clocks • “Clocks slay time, Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels”(The Sound and the Fury 85). • Every actions has a stimulus, every action a reaction. This is black and white in his world. There is no blurring the lines between past and present.

16. Connection to Benjy • Benjy’sconcept of time mirrors the concept of time in this world because there is a blurring of past and present. Benjy is hit with seemingly random times of intense flashback, he lives more in the past than the present. • This concept of time is similar the one in Einstein’s Dreams because time is skewed and there is no clear mark between past and present (for Benjy) and present and future (Einstein’s Dreams).

17. 4 May 1905 • Time passes from year to year, yet nothing substantial happens, and nothing changes. • “’You say that every year, Josephine,’ the other woman says and smiles” (Lightman 34). • This shows that this meeting is habitual, it is preplanned and organized and reinforces the idea that in this world, nothing is new or spontaneous. It follows a strict regimen on the activities, customs, and discussion. It also shows that it is stuck in the past based on gender roles, with the men discussing things pertinent to them and not including their wives, and separating after the meal. This quote addresses the discussion in the chapter. It is based primarily on mundane, unchanging, and uninteresting things such as the weather, racehorses, the surroundings, the meal, and the draftiness. All of these are topics which are neutral, not very “deep” and don’t require emotional attachment to the subject at hand, and all are unchanging from year to year.

18. “If time and the passage of events are the same, then time moves barely at all. If time and events are not the same, then it is only people who barely move” (36). • This quote shows that this world could actually have two different ways of time. The first could be taken that if events and time are correlated, then time is the aspect that doesn’t move. However, in the second part, it says that it could be that time passes at a normal rate, and the people are the ones which do not move forward at a normal pace. This is unique to the rest of the beginning of the book, because in each other universe, time is independent of the people who are in it, while in this world, the people themselves are changing to an extent the way time moves.

19. “If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly” (36). • This is the last sentence of the chapter, and it addresses the people who live in this universe and, to an extent, everyone in our world. In relation to the people in this universe, it means that because time and events are moving slowly (or the people themselves) if they have no ambitions, they are going to suffer a dull and unfulfilled life without knowing it because they do not realize that there are possibilities open to them. However, if a person in this universe has ambitions, but realizes the way in which their universe works, will suffer extremely slowly because time will not permit them to achieve the dreams.

20. Connections to Jason • This section is not so much concerned with the past or future events, and only really focuses on “shallow”, trivial things, such as Jason does in the novel (ex. Making quick money, tormenting Luster). • It also shows that relationships between the people are not very important such as the Man and his children, and can be seen in Jason’s almost nonexistent relationship with his mother, siblings, and girlfriend. • It also shows that even with the movement of time, not much happens, which epitomizes Jason’s life. He is denied the opportunity that his brother Quentin has to go to Harvard, and is never allowed to leave his hometown, and even the house that he was born in. He realizes that he was refused these things, and believes that he could have had a much better of a life if he were provided with these things, showing that he, “suffers knowingly”. His days are also almost exactly the same, with the same repetition of getting in an argument with Mother/ Miss Quentin, driving her angrily to school, going to work, cheating his Mother, and harassing the family workers. • Jason represents this chapter because it he is the one who takes control of time in “The Sound and the Fury” and forces it to move slower, because that is what Jason is comfortable with.

21. Problems for Modern Man • Suffering knowingly • Sometimes, many are not given the opportunities to fulfill their dreams, goals, or hopes, or even the possibility of creating these things. They are constantly denied these things and because they don’t even know the options available to them, they “suffer unknowingly” because they don’t even realize their lost opportunities. • Also, there are people who are allowed to develop their dreams in our world, but are not allowed to fulfill them because of limitations on their abilities and different circumstances, which makes them “suffer knowingly, but very slowly.”

22. Interlude • Einstein and Besso are walking towards Besso’s house explaining to one another the concept of time because Einstein is beginning a new project. Einstein proclaims that he wants to learn more about time because he wants to grow closer to God. As the interlude comes to an end, Besso asks Einstein if he is going to be alright by himself because Einstein can become very wrapped up in his work.

23. Michele Angelo Besso • Born May 25, 1873 • Engineer • Close friend of Einstein • Married to wife Anna. • Partner with Einstein on his discoveries and works. • Met and began working with Einstein at FederalPolytechnic Institute in Zurich • Continued working with him at a patent office in Bern. • Credited with introducing Einstein to the works of Ernst Mach, the skeptical critic of physics who influenced Einstein. • “Bessois dazzled by Einstein’s ambition”(40). • Died March 15, 1955.

24. Brownian Motion • aka particle theory. • The permanent erratic movement of particles suspended in a liquid, first noticed by the English botanist Robert Brown in 1828. • Brownian motion was the subject of one of Einstein's three great 1905 papers • Time span is infinite everywhere. • It is a close approximation to actual random physical processes, which always have a finite time scale.

25. “The Old One” • “. . . not interested in getting close to his creations, intelligent or not” (40). • “. . . not obvious that knowledge is closeness” (40). • So close to finishing his calculations, so close to catching time and learning it’s secrets, and in so, getting closer to God. • Another idea could be seen as “The Old One” as a grandfather clock and relating to time in that way – people feel they have some control over time because the clock is so large and dominating. • Keeping time with a grandfather clock offers a sense of time continuity.