Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016826, Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:06:26 +0100

Subject
Re: Einstein and Langevin
Date
Body
On 18/07/2008 13:16, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:

> [EDNote: On Nabokov's physics, see also Robert Grossmith, "Shaking the
> Kaleidoscope: Physics and Metaphysics in Nabokov's Bend Sinister". Russian
> Literature TriQuarterly (Ann Arbor, MI), 24, 1991, pp. 151-162.
> My article "The Poetics of Science in, and around, Nabokov's The Gift", The
> Russian Review, Russian Review. 62 (2003): 243-61, touches briefly on
> Einstein's role in that novel. See also several lengthy discussions in Marina
> Grishakova's The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov¹s Fiction:
> Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames. Tartu: Tartu UP, 2006. I also have
> some forthcoming work on this topic. ~SB]
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re:
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:55:28 -0700 (PDT)
> From: joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@sbcglobal.net>
> <mailto:vanveen13@sbcglobal.net>
> To: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu>
>>
>>
>> All right I went and looked up this Langevin you spoke: a French physicist
>> most famous for his use of ultra-sound and for popularizing Einstein's ideas
>> about the Theory of Relativity. So...
>>
>> Speak Memory, Interview No 9, pg. 116 Nabokov says: "While not having much
>> physics, I reject Einstein's slick formulas; but then one need not know
>> theology to be an atheist."
>> -------
>>
>> Wonderful leads, SB, which I'll pursue at the speed of light. JA's citation
>> is fascinating, too. It's a real challenge to separate the popular
>> expositions of Relativity (and their impact on what you might call "lay
>> [laid-back?] culture") from the hard (truly hard) applied mathematics
>> involved in Einstein's "slick" formulae. One first needs to be aware of the
>> huge conceptual leap from Newtonian "absolute" space-time to Special
>> Relativity, and then, just a few years later before breaths could be caught,
>> Einstein's even more staggering leap to General Relativity. It's not clear
>> which of Einstein's many "slick" formulae VN is "rejecting," and how
>> seriously.
>>
>> One of the formulae, from Special Relativity, the approximation E =
>> mc-squared, was spectacularly verified at Hiroshima. The Einstein-Lorenz
>> time-dilation formula behind the so-called Twin Paradox (straddling both
>> Special and General Relativity) has also been verified with great accuracy on
>> many occasions. Indeed at places like CERN, it's an everyday (a
>> trillion-trillion times a day!) undeniable fact of high-energy
>> physical-particle life! Mass, length and time DO change relative to velocity!
>> See
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
>>
>> Jansy mentioned in a recent post that she ponders setting off in an
>> "imaginary" space-ship in order to test the Einstein "rejuvenation" formula.
>> In fact, Jansy, it definitely works for REAL space-ships. REAL astronauts and
>> atomic-clocks have made the journey and they do return YOUNGER.
>>
>> Pondering VN's teasing "escape" -- namely that one can be an atheist without
>> a knowledge of theology -- the boring logician/epistemologist might counter
>> as follows: the assertion "I am an atheist" is meaningful (i.e., either true
>> or false) if and only if the speaker shares with us some mutually-agreed
>> definition of "atheist." That would involve at least _some_ notion of
>> "belief/non-belief" in _some_ notion of "god(s), God(s),
>> divine/transcendental being(s)," which notions are, beyond doubt, the primary
>> topics of "theology" however you care to define it, or dodge it.
>>
>> One analogy might be VN's impatience with Edmund Wilson's criticism of VN's
>> Russian grammar, lexis and prosody! The NERVE of that guy!! Would Bunny have
>> escaped Volodya's justified wrath by using the atheist/theology trick?
>> Imagine Wilson saying "While not knowing as much Russian as VN, I reject his
>> slick translations of Onegin; but then one need not know theology to be an
>> atheist."
>>
>> Stan Kelly-Bootle


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