EinsteinFest - 2005

Albert Einstein remains one of most famous scientists in world history. His image is instantly recognizable and for many people, Einstein personifies genius. But who was Einstein really? What was he like as a person? What did his science actually mean? From his years in Europe where he was known mainly for his scientific genius to his life in the United States where his scientific contributions declined as he aged as he became more involved in the political, humanitarian, and social concerns, Alice Calaprice, co author of Albert Einstein, a biography explores the man behind the genius. Alice Calaprice, Einstein, family, biography, early years, young,

In November 1919 the British scientific community announced the confirmation of Einstein\'s prediction for the bending of light by the sun’s gravitational field. This announcement made sensational headlines in British and American papers, and soon thereafter Einstein was thrust into the stratosphere of stardom. To appreciate this phenomenon requires taking a closer look at the role of leading image makers of the day, particularly in Weimar era Germany. The intense media coverage of Einstein and his theory did much to stimulate event fascination, producing results that were at times odd, occasionally ridiculous, and in some cases polarizing, like so many other phenomena of Weimar culture. To the extent that the relativity revolution reflected a new sensibility with deep psychological roots it could not have found more fertile soil than in Einstein’s Berlin. David Rowe, Einstein, fame, England, politics, relativity, space-time, Minkoski, Mach, inertia, Newton, Einstein tower, oberada,Moszkowski, Weimar culture, anti-relativity, Gehrcke, Anti-Semitism, newsprint

This talk deals with representative works of German and Hapsburg fiction ca. 1905—a literature produced by the genius of Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Robert Musil (1880-1942) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924), registering swiftly changing perceptions of human time and space owing to the frenetic pace of Central European modernization—of technical innovations in the manufacture of commodities; of the acquisition of wealth, producing changes in class-structure; of the growth of cities, creating centers of simultaneous but dissociated activity requiring new medial connection—processes greeted by some writers as matters of great intellectual interest, by others as signs of the pathological breakdown of older norms and values. Stanley Corngold, time, space, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, modernity, Georg Lukacs, symbolism, duality, fiction, german, perception modernization, norms, values, literature, early 20th century, 19th century, Goethe, prose

One of the most hotly debated topics of the late nineteenth century concerned the geometry of physical space, an issue that arose with the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. Lobachevsky and Bolyai opened the way, but it was not until the 1860s that scientists began to take this revolutionary theory seriously. Assuming the free mobility of rigid bodies, Helmholtz concluded that the geometry of space was Euclidean or else of constant curvature (either positive of negative). In 1899 these cases were tested by the astronomer Karl Schwarzschild who used data on stellar parallax to estimate the minimum size of the universe. Many argued that the notion of a curved space was nonsensical, whereas Poincaré, the most prominent mathematician of the era, thought that the geometry of space could never be determined absolutely. These classical debates played a major role in the discussions spawned by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. David Rowe, geometry, space-mathematics, Euclid, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Gaussian curvature, Gaussian Theory, Einstein, differential geometry, playfair, spherical triangles, platonic solids, Netwon, non-Euclidean geometry, Riemann, Ricci, Poincare, Klein

What was happening in Philosophy in 1905? This lecture will seek to answer that question by picking out some of the most influential works of philosophy that were published in or shortly before that year, describing both those works themselves and their intellectual context. The works discussed will include Henri Poincare\'s Science and Hypothesis, Edmund Husserl\'s Logical Investigations, Gottlob Frege\'s Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic and Bertrand Russell\'s \'On Denoting\'. What I hope to bring out is how the seminal works of that period established the tone and content of twentieth century philosophy and drew the battlelines of the great philosophical disputes of the last hundred years: Intuitionism versus Logicism, Phenomenology versus Analytic Philosophy, etc. Ray Monk, Philosophy, Poincare, science, Bertrand Russell, intuitism, logicism, metaphysics, analytic, phenomenology, mathematics, Gottlob Frege, 20th century, arithmetic

In 1905, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen completed the first ever transit of the fabled Northwest Passage, culminating a centuries long quest that had claimed ships and lives. Amundsen\'s feat was one of many human achievements in the first decade of the new century, and a landmark in the history exploration. Amundsen\'s voyage was preceded by the controversial North Pole expedition of Robert Peary, another long sought prize of explorers. Amundsen\'s quests shifted south to Antarctica and the South Pole, a prize he achieved, and then back to the Arctic, when he tried and failed to navigate, locked in the polar ice, to the North Pole. This presentation will examine the life, feats, trials, failures and successes of Amundsen. James P.Delgado, Roald Amundsen, northwest passage, north pole, south pole, exploration, Arctic, Frobisher, Peary, Franklin, Clark, Ross, Mclure,

At the turn of the century, numerous figures were attempting to form a new unitary science of psychology, modelled on how they imagined sciences like physics and chemistry functioned, with the discovery of universal laws and discoverers who would be proclaimed to be on the scale of Copernicus and Newton. It was intended that the formation of this new science would be nothing less than the completion of the scientific revolution, and that as a consequence, it would transform psychiatry, psychotherapy, the human sciences and indeed, all walks of life. Already by 1905, this dream was receding in an endless proliferation of competing and incompatible practices and conceptions - and one which has not ceased till this day. This talk reconstructs some of the multiple intersecting trajectories in one year of this would be science. Sonu Shamdansani, unitary science, psychology, psychoanalysis, mind and body, consciousness, 20th century, experimental, pathological, psychiatry, history