Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Slavoj

    How sensible of Slavoj Žižek. Better than sensible, even.

    …only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe’s greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?

    Of course this is the cue for thousands of parrots and robots and zombies to come clattering and squawking and staggering up to intone ‘Stalin Hitler Mao Pol Pot’ at us – but atheism wasn’t the essence of Communism or Nazism the way Christianity is to Christianity or Hinduism is to Hinduism, so try something else for a change.

    Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn’t exist, then everything is permitted…This argument couldn’t have been more wrong: the lesson of today’s terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted.

    There’s another in the eye for the robots.

    [T]hose who displayed the greatest “understanding” for the violent Muslim protests those cartoons caused were also the ones who regularly expressed their concern for the fate of Christianity in Europe. These weird alliances confront Europe’s Muslims with a difficult choice: the only political force that does not reduce them to second-class citizens and allows them the space to express their religious identity are the “godless” atheist liberals…

    And the best bit –

    Respect for other’s beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple “regimes of truth,” disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth. What, however, about submitting Islam – together with all other religions – to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as serious adults responsible for their beliefs.

    That’s downright quotable. And it’s exactly why I’ve been sneering so heavily at all the nonsense talked about ‘respect for others’ beliefs’ throughout this cartoon thing (and a lot longer than that, but it all got ratcheted up with the cartoon thing). Nobody with any sense should want either to be patronized or to be truth-relativized. Think about it, believers.

  • Peer Review

    Just a little more of this (as Don called it) labyrinthine topic, then I’ll talk about different, straight up and down topics. I just want to say just this one more thing, as an old friend used to say on the phone when we were fifteen. (She’s a public radio producer now, so she has to do that fund-raising stuff; she’s in the middle of it right now, it’s ‘Pledge Week’. Terrible.) Just this one more thing on the moral right and people ought not to prevent us.

    Lies and falsifications are generally (and certainly in the case of Holocaust-denial) morally wrong. And it does seem puzzling, even paradoxical, to say that we can have a moral right to do that which is morally wrong. Nonetheless it’s true that we do: we sometimes have the moral right to act – that is, people ought not to prevent us from acting – in ways which are undoubtedly morally wrong…I have the moral right to do what I please (within the law) with my own money; nonetheless it’s morally wrong of me to give none of it to charity.

    But surely that definition of a moral right to act – that people ought not to prevent us from acting – can’t apply to falsification of history or other scholarship, because in fact people ought to and do prevent us from acting in that way. They do it via peer review. That is, surely, exactly the point of peer review: to prevent both mistakes and falsifications. Not every scholarly book gets peer reviewed, but a lot do, and if falsifications are detected, they are prevented – and they ought to be prevented. So if that is what a moral right is, then falsification of scholarship appears not to be a moral right. (And even without that, I take it to be a different kind of moral right from the moral right not to give money to charity. That seems to me to be almost definitional – almost inherent in the meaning of the words. ‘Falsification’ carries with it a meaning of wrongness; ‘charity’ carries with it the meaning that it is voluntary rather than coerced; so surely the wrongness of falsification is considerably less debatable than the wrongness of not giving money to charity.)

    Even if the institution of peer review didn’t exist – suppose X knew that Y’s manuscript was full of falsifications, and told Y’s prospective publisher so, with documentation, and Y’s publisher dropped the book. Would it be wrong of X to prevent Y from publishing the book in that way? I say no; on the contrary. (Of course it might be unkind, in a sense disloyal, and so on, if the two are friends – but loyalty often conflicts with responsibility or public duty; that’s not news.) It shouldn’t be a police matter, but it should be a publisher matter. The police shouldn’t (and generally don’t) do the preventing, but someone should. In the same way – if any colleagues had known Jayson Blair was faking his reporting, they would have prevented him, by telling his editors. Did he have a moral right to fake his reporting, would it have been true at the time that the colleagues ought not to prevent him? Again, I say no. Newspapers don’t (to the best of my knowledge) have a moral right to tell lies, and neither (to the best of my knowledge) do reporters. So I don’t see how falisification can be that kind of moral right. In fact the more I think about it the less I can see it.

  • Handling evidence in history: the case of Einstein’s wife

    Here is a good story: a 26-year-old patent clerk, having
    studied theoretical physics largely on his own,
    publishes in a single year four extraordinary papers
    that revolutionise physics. Most of us believe, for
    many reasons, that this story is true. We say that in
    1905 it actually happened that it is history.

    Still, we know that it is unlikely that a single
    person in a single year can be so successful in physics.
    Accordingly, some people have formulated hypotheses
    to explain Albert Einstein’s productivity. Recently, some have argued that he worked with a secret collaborator, his first wife Mileva Marić. It
    would be an extraordinary story. Famous physicist
    steals credit from his modest wife. Such a story, if
    true, would be of great interest to social historians,
    and it would serve as a vehicle for reaffirming the
    rights of women and for encouraging female students
    to study physics. In that sense, it’s a good story. But
    is it true?

    Like many extraordinary stories, it might be
    tempting to simply disbelieve it, to dismiss it as
    fiction. But if you are a teacher, you may soon find
    that some of your students ask you ‘Is it true that
    Einstein’s wife co-authored his famous theories?     ’
    Because, there are currently several books and many
    Internet websites that ascribe to Mileva Marić a
    contributing role in the creation of Einstein’s works.

    In 2003, television stations in the United States and other countries began to broadcast a documentary
    called Einstein’s Wife (see end-note 1). It overviewed
    Marić’s life and highlighted the idea that perhaps she
    contributed to Einstein’s scientific works. The
    programme was accompanied by a PBS Internet
    website (including various errors) on Marić’s life. It
    features an online poll on whether she collaborated
    with Einstein. It asks: ‘Was it really possible for Albert
    alone to produce all the phenomenal physics
    generated during 1905?’     Currently, 75 per cent of the
    people polled responded that Marić indeed
    collaborated with Einstein.The website beckons: ‘Did
    Mileva Marić collaborate with Einstein? You Decide!
    Take our online poll.’     As if history were a matter of
    democratic votes.

    Carl Sagan used to say: ‘extraordinary claims
    require extraordinary evidence     ’. So let’s analyse some
    of the ‘evidence’ that the proponents of Marić have
    highlighted. By doing so, teachers and laypersons can
    increasingly distinguish the various degrees to which
    misinformation can be misconstrued as history.

    Evidence in context

    In the 1980s, old letters between Einstein and Marić
    were made public by members of their family. In some
    of those letters, written around 1900, Einstein briefly
    alluded to projects on which the two seem to have
    collaborated. He used expressions such as ‘our
    research’, ‘our paper ’     and, most interesting, ‘our work
    on relative motion’     (Renn and Schulmann, 1992: 41,
    39). Specialists in history of physics were fascinated
    but concluded that such letters are just too vague, and
    do not establish that Marić contributed in any of
    Einstein’s publications. Still, plenty of non-specialists
    also began to ponder roles that Marić conceivably
    could have played.

    Consider an example. Christopher Jon Bjerknes,
    author of Albert Einstein: the incorrigible plagiarist
    (2002), claimed that ‘We have direct evidence from
    Albert’s own pen that the work on relativity theory
    was a collaboration between Mileva and him’
    (p. 201). He cited the suggestive letter. Translated, the sentence
    in question reads: ‘How happy and proud will I be,
    when we both together have brought our work on the
    relative motion victoriously to its end!’     (Stachel, 1987:
    282, trans. AM.). Non-specialists might hastily conclude
    that this letter refers to the theory of relativity.
    But it does not. One important point that Bjerknes
    omits is that the letter was written in 1901. By no
    means did Einstein have the theory of relativity in
    1901.At that time, he believed in the ether and sought
    ways to detect its relative motion experimentally. This
    problem of ‘the relative motion’ was a widespread
    concern; many people aimed to solve it. Einstein
    attempted many approaches until he abruptly devised
    his theory in 1905.

    Nevertheless, the letter constitutes evidence that
    Einstein shared the aspiration with Marić, at least at a
    time midway through the ten-year process during
    which he pondered questions on relative motion. It is
    well known that his obstinacy carried him through.
    But what about her? We know that she failed college
    examinations twice. She then abandoned her plan to
    obtain the teaching degree. We also know that she
    abandoned her efforts to do a PhD thesis (for more
    on Marić, see Stachel, 1996).

    Charitable exaggerations

    One writer, Dord Krstic (1991), claimed that ‘From
    the spring of 1898 until the fall of 1911,Mileva worked
    daily at the same table with Albert – quietly, modestly,
    and never in public view     ’ (p. 98). This is a speculative
    exaggeration. The two could not work ‘daily at the
    same table’     because, of course, they were not always
    at the same place. For example, from mid-1900 until
    December 1902 they lived mostly in different cities,
    even in different countries. Moreover, the two did not
    leave any written evidence that they regularly worked
    together on physics once they reunited in Bern,
    Switzerland.

    Regardless, Krstic wrote: ‘Almost simultaneously,
    Marie Curie opened the door into the world of
    radiophysics and radiochemistry and Mileva Einstein
    bravely began to explore the secrets of quantum and
    relativity – the fields that even today we call modern
    physics    ’ (p. 85). Does it sound like a good story?

    What role did Mileva play once she lived with
    Einstein in Bern? It is well known that Einstein and
    two friends,Moritz Solovine and Conrad Habicht, had
    a discussion group that they called ‘the Olympia
    Academy’. Their readings and discussions were very
    influential in Einstein’s development. Nowadays,
    some writers claim that Marić too was an active
    participant. In the television programme, Einstein’s
    Wife    , the narrator says:

    Maurice Solovine writes: Mileva would sit in
    the corner during our meetings listening
    attentively. She occasionally joined in. I found
    her reserved, but intelligent, and clearly more
    interested in physics than in housework.

    Where did the producers of the show get this
    information? The source can be traced to the book
    Einstein in love , where Dennis Overbye wrote:

    Marriage had made Mileva a de facto member
    of the Olympia Academy, and Solovine later
    recalled her sitting quietly in the corner during
    the meetings at their apartment, following the
    arguments but rarely contributing. He found her
    reserved but intelligent, and clearly more
    interested in physics than in housework.
    (Overbye, 2000: 110)

    This passage sounds plausible. Since Albert and
    Mileva now lived together, it is easy to imagine that
    Mileva now participated to some extent in the
    meetings of the Academy. But what is the evidence?
    What Solovine actually wrote was only that once
    Einstein and Marić married:

    That event did not effect any changes in our
    meetings. Mileva, intelligent and reserved,
    listened to us attentively, but never intervened in
    our discussions.
    (Solovine, 1956: xii, trans. A. M.)

    Compare this passage to the derivative accounts.
    Writers have skewed the history. Solovine did not
    write that Marić ‘occasionally’ or ‘ rarely’ contributed,
    nor that she was ‘clearly more interested in physics
    than in housework     ’. There is no evidence that she was
    an active participant. In none of the correspondence
    between Einstein, Habicht, and Solovine, does Marić
    appear as a ‘member ’ of the Academy, nor even in
    Marić’s own letters.

    So readers beware. Moreover, errors lurk even in
    reliable places. For example, the Collected papers of
    Albert Einstein     (Klein,Kox and Schulmann, 1993: 617)
    state that the Academy began in Easter of 1903. But
    that is a mistake. The meetings began in the Spring of
    1902, months before Mileva lived in Bern (see, for
    example, Solovine, 1956: vi).

    Einstein had lively discussions with Solovine and
    Habicht. He also greatly enjoyed discussing his
    research with his close friend Michele Besso, whose
    help he acknowledged in his first paper on relativity.
    What about discussions with Marić? Consider a
    statement that her proponents never cite. Philipp
    Frank, a colleague and friend who interviewed
    Einstein for a biography, noted that Marić ‘was
    taciturn and reticent     ’ and that ‘When he [Einstein]
    wanted to tell her, as a fellow specialist, his ideas,
    which overflowed from him, her reaction was so scant
    and faint, that often he just did not know whether she
    was interested or not     ’ (Frank, 1949: 39, 44, trans.
    A.M.).

    Checking the sources

    In her book, In the shadow of Albert Einstein: the
    tragic life of Mileva Einstein-Marić     , Desanka
    Trbuhovic-Gjuric (1969/1993: 79) claimed that the
    Russian physicist Abram Joffe, in his article ‘In
    remembrance of Albert Einstein’, pointed out that the
    1905 papers were originally signed ‘Einstein-Marić’.

    Following Trbuhovic-Gjuric, Evan Harris Walker
    wrote a letter to Physics Today , published in 1991,
    reiterating the claim. Walker claimed that, regarding
    the 1905 papers, Joffe noted that ‘Their author was
    Einstein-Mariti    ’ (Walker, 1991: 123). That phrase is
    Walker’s translation from an article of 1955 in
    Russian. Furthermore, Michele Zackheim, in her book
    Einstein’s daughter (1999: 19), stated that ‘Abram F.
    Joffe, a Russian scientist, wrote in     Meetings with
    Physicists: my reminiscences of foreign physicists,
    that three original manuscripts, including the one
    describing the Special Theory of Relativity, were
    signed “Einstein-Marity    ” .’ Likewise, Bjerknes (2002:
    195) stated that ‘Joffe (Ioffe) recounts that the paper
    was signed “Einstein-Marity” .’     Furthermore, in 2003
    the claim that Joffe cited Marić’s name on the 1905
    manuscripts was aired in the television programme,
    Einstein’s Wife. And, the companion website (see endnote
    1) claims that ‘there is at least one printed report
    in which Joffe declared that he personally saw the
    names of two authors on the 1905 papers: Einstein
    and Marity’    .

    To add credibility to their claims, writers who
    ascribe such words to Joffe often add that he was a
    successful and respected physicist. Hence they attempt
    to argue by appeals to authority along with allusions
    to purported evidence. But what did Joffe actually
    write?

    First, Zackheim and others are wrong in claiming
    that in his book Meetings with physicists Joffe claimed
    anything about how the 1905 manuscripts were
    signed. He did not even claim to have ever seen them.
    As for the article ‘In remembrance of Albert Einstein’,
    published in 1955, it was an obituary for Einstein.
    Literally translated, it reads:

    In the year 1905, in Annals of Physics , there
    appeared three articles, thereupon beginning
    three most important, relevant directions in the
    physics of the 20th century. Those were: the
    theory of Brownian motion, the photon theory of
    light and the theory of relativity. Their author –
    unknown until that time, a bureaucrat at the
    Patent Office in Bern, Einstein-Marity (Marity
    – the last name of his wife, which by Swiss
    custom is added to the last name of the
    husband). (Joffe, 1955: 187, trans. A. M.)

    This passage shows that, for example, Walker’s
    ‘translation’ is a gross misrepresentation: ‘Their
    author was “Einstein-Mariti”.’     Likewise, a few other
    writers have distorted Joffe’s words to make it seem
    as though he made a controversial claim. It is unusual
    that Joffe this one time happened to refer to Einstein
    by the name ‘Einstein-Marity’. But that simple
    peculiarity does not entail that he ascribed any
    authorship to Einstein’s wife. It is clear that Joffe
    meant that the author was one person, a male
    employee at the patent office, namely Albert Einstein.

    Still, proponents of Marić have tried to make
    something out of the fact that Joffe happened to write
    ‘Marity’ instead of ‘Marić’. For example, Walker
    claimed that Joffe just had to have seen an original
    paper, with the name Marity on it, because otherwise
    he would not have known the alternative spelling of
    Marić, since it ‘apparently is not found in any of the
    Einstein biographies     ’ (Walker, 1991: 123). Again,
    Walker was wrong. The name ‘Marity’ appears, for
    example, in Carl Seelig’s well-known biography of
    Einstein published in 1954 (p. 29). Moreover, when
    Joffe first sought to meet Einstein in Switzerland, he
    happened to meet Marić (Joffe, 1967: 889). At the
    time, she used the name Einstein-Marity.

    The key point remains the same. Joffe did not
    claim that Marić co-authored or collaborated in any
    of Einstein’s papers. And he did not claim that her
    name was on the original manuscripts or that he ever
    saw any such manuscripts. In multiple places throughout
    his career, like anyone else, Joffe acknowledged
    Einstein for having authored the famous works of
    1905.

    In a particularly careless confusion, the producers
    of Einstein’s Wife and the companion website pictured
    a fragment of a page that reads that the articles were
    ‘signed Einstein-Marity’, purportedly written by Joffe.
    But the page pictured is instead from a popular science
    book from 1962, by a Russian writer, Daniil
    Semenovich Danin, who, again, did not even claim
    to have ever seen the original manuscripts or to have
    known anyone who had (Danin, 1962: 57).

    Suppose, imagine, that some credible individual
    actually had claimed to have seen manuscripts that
    listed Marić as co-author. Would that constitute
    evidence? It would only constitute the testimony of
    an alleged witness. Further evidence would be
    required to substantiate the claim. Likewise, imagine
    that a famous scientist, or perhaps a wealthy writer,
    gets divorced. And suppose that then the ex-spouse
    claims to actually have been the true author of some
    works. Such allegation, by itself, would not constitute
    authorship. We might reply: ‘That is a serious
    allegation.What evidence do you have to support it? ’

    Lacking evidence, some writers cultivate rampant
    speculations. For example, Bjerknes (2002) claims
    that Einstein probably stole the credit from Marić and
    that she, in turn, probably plagiarised the ideas from
    other writers.

    Who really said what?

    In her book, Zackheim (1999) claims that ‘Mileva and
    Albert’s son Hans Albert told Peter Michelmore, an
    Einstein biographer, that Mileva helped Albert “solve
    Certain mathematical problems” .’     (p. 19). Is Zackheim
    claiming that Marić spoke with Michelmore? We must
    reject that impression because Michelmore never met
    Marić. Better syntax would be: ‘Hans Albert Einstein,
    son of Mileva and Albert, told Peter Michelmore …’    .

    Michelmore (1962) wrote that, while Einstein
    struggled to solve puzzles of relative motion in
    electrodynamics, ‘Mileva helped him solve certain
    mathematical problems, but nobody could assist with
    the creative work, the flow of fresh ideas’    (p. 45) .

    But is it true that Hans Albert really told that to
    Michelmore? We do not know. It is conceivable that
    he did. But strictly speaking, the historical evidence
    does not certify the claim. We know what Michelmore
    published. We do not know for certain what parts of
    it were really told to him by Hans Albert. He visited
    and interviewed Hans Albert for two days in February
    of 1962, in California. In his book, Michelmore
    admitted that Hans Albert never saw or proofread the
    manuscript for the book:

    he answered all my questions, and waited while
    I wrote down the answers. He did not ask to
    check my notes, or edit my book. He trusted me.
    It was the sort of naiveté his father had. Thank
    God for all naive people, and I use the word in
    its noblest sense. (p. vii)

    Unfortunately, when interviewees do not check
    writer’s accounts, errors and inaccuracies often
    increase.

    Alongside correct and verifiable statements,
    Michelmore’s book also includes incorrect information.
    For example, he mentioned that while Einstein
    studied at the Polytechnic in Zurich he befriended
    ‘Maurice Solovine, a Frenchman taking the physics
    course     ’ (p. 36). But actually, Moritz Solovine was
    Romanian, born and educated in Romania, until he
    moved, not to Zurich, but to Bern, where he met and
    befriended Einstein in 1902, almost two years after
    Einstein had graduated at Zurich. Michelmore also
    wrote that once Mileva fell in love with Einstein, by
    their final year of college, ‘Her personal ambition
    had faded    ’ (p. 36). But we know from letters that she
    remained interested in a career at least until mid-1901.
    Such inaccuracies detract from the credibility of an
    author’s words.

    Years ago, John Stachel, editor of the Collected
    papers of Albert Einstein    , enquired whether Michelmore’s
    family happened to posses Michelmore’s
    manuscript or ideally the notes from the interview
    with Hans Albert. The answer was negative. If we
    had the notes from the interview, then perhaps we
    might know what Hans Albert apparently told
    Michelmore.

    Faced with such ambiguities, each historian must
    decide whether to believe, disregard, or at least
    incorporate, a given passage into a historical
    reconstruction. Personally, in a manuscript that I am
    finishing on the origins of special relativity, I chose
    to incorporate Michelmore’s suggestive words about
    Mileva. But I hope that readers will realise that the
    sentence in question is not necessarily a photograph
    of the events that happened. It is but a passing claim
    that appears in a popular biography written by an
    author who only interviewed a son of the individuals
    in question, a biography that was not proofread by
    the individuals discussed in it or by the interviewee.
    It was written and published almost 60 years after the
    event in question. Hans Albert himself could not
    possibly testify to such an event, since he was a one-year-
    old baby in the spring of 1905. Hence, if he
    actually spoke such words in 1962, he was merely
    voicing a conjecture or echoing words voiced by
    someone else. The point is to distinguish this kind of
    indirect claim from evidence from the historical
    moment.

    Several documents shed light on Marić around
    1905. For example, Krstic provided this translation
    of a letter from Marić to her friend Helene Savic,
    written after the 1905 papers were published (see endnote
    2):

    My husband spends all of his free time at home,
    often playing with the boy; but … I would like to
    remark that this, together with his official job, is
    not the only work he does – he is writing a great
    number of scientific papers. (Krstic, 1991: 94)

    As usual in her letters to her intimate friend, Mileva
    made no claim of working on science herself, ever
    since she left college. Now notice the ellipsis in the
    quotation above. What did Krstic omit? An uncut
    translation of the original letter was published later
    by a grandson of Helene Savic (see end-note 3). It
    reads:

    My husband often spends his leisure time at
    home playing with the little boy, but to give him
    his due, I must note that it is not his only
    occupation aside from his official activities; the
    papers he has written are already mounting
    quite high. (Popovic, 2003: 88)

    So we see that Krstic chose to omit a phrase in which
    Marić herself further acknowledged Einstein’s
    labours; she gave him his due credit.

    Likewise, on 3 September 1909, when Einstein
    was receiving much recognition from physicists,
    Marić wrote to her friend ‘I am very happy for his
    success, because he really does deserve it     ’ (Popovic,
    2003: 98).

    Scale of likely reliability for
    information sources

    • 1 Original notes and drafts of the scientist’s
      labours and ruminations
    • 2 Contemporary private diaries of the scientist,
      peers, or friends
    • 3 Contemporary documents such as letters to
      friends
    • 4 Contemporary accounts of statements
      among scientists and peers
    • 5 Manuscripts, the original scientific work

    • 6 Early retrospective accounts by the scientist
    • 7 Early interviews of the scientist, proofread by
      the scientist
    • 8 Later retrospective accounts by the scientist
    • 9 Later interviews of the scientist, proofread by
      the scientist
    • 10 Systematic interviews by historians,
      psychologists, or other specialists
    • 11 Informal interviews of the scientist
    • 12 Recollections that exist only in an indirect
      form, such as a transcribed lecture
    • 13 Retrospective accounts that exist only in a
      doubly indirect form
    • 14 Late recollections by an intimate
      acquaintance
    • 15 Biography based on interviews, approved by
      the scientist and interviewees
    • 16 Account based on multiple interviews but not
      proofread by the interviewees
    • 17 Account of interviews with a close relative or
      peer, proofread by that person
    • 18 Material based partly on interviews from a
      relative, peer, or acquaintance
    • 19 Rough translations of biographies or sources
    • 20 Hearsay, late indirect accounts of what
      someone allegedly told someone else

    Distinguishing among sources

    Students and laypersons may lack a clear understanding
    of the extent to which different sources
    warrant different degrees of credibility. Therefore, it
    seems useful to illustrate such differences. Historians
    sometimes disagree on what weight to attribute to any
    one document, but I can at least sketch my own
    outlook.

    The list in Box 1 describes some of the different
    kinds of information that may exist pertaining to the
    genesis of a scientific work. To distinguish them, I
    have ranked them in order of proximity to the
    historical event, the instance of scientific creativity.
    The greater the number of an item, the less credibility
    I would tend to ascribe to it as a likely source of precise
    information about that moment in time.

    This list is not exhaustive. My aim is only to
    distinguish among some different kinds of information.
    The line following item 5 sets a boundary
    between evidence generated during the production of
    the scientific work and various kinds of hindsight and
    conjecture.

    In this scale, the biography written by Michelmore
    falls on level 18. In contradistinction, a letter by
    Einstein to his friend Conrad Habicht, written in May
    of 1905, while he was drafting the paper on relativity,
    counts as evidence of level 4. That letter, which historians
    cite often, is a precious though narrow window
    to the creative moment. There are many different kinds
    of information between the two, to which we ascribe
    various degrees of reliability.

    For example, in 1922 Einstein delivered a lecture
    in Kyoto, Japan, titled ‘How I created the theory of
    relativity’. He delivered it in German without having
    written it down, and, as he spoke, it was translated
    into Japanese. The translator kept notes that were soon
    published in Japanese. In my scale, I would rank this
    Japanese rendition of the lecture as being of level 13.
    It is ‘doubly indirect’ in the sense that Einstein did
    not write it, and that we only have the version in
    Japanese. It is not a very late document in Einstein’s
    life, so that we may imagine that forgetfulness perhaps
    did not distort his account very much. But still, the
    transcript was not proofread by Einstein. Less
    credible, for instance, might be a document placed in
    level 14. Consider one such example: a letter written
    in 1948 by Michele Besso. At 74 years of age, he
    asked whether Einstein’s early reading of a book by
    Ernst Mach, following Besso’s suggestion, had been
    at the root of Einstein’s thoughts about clocks and
    measuring rods when conceiving the theory of
    relativity ( Besso and Einstein, 1972: 386 ) . Einstein
    replied in the negative. He acknowledged a great
    influence of Mach on his intellectual development in
    general. But he noted that his reading of DavidHume,
    which he discussed with Solovine and Habicht, had
    been of greater importance (Besso and Einstein, 1972:
    391).

    Readers can identify how the different claims
    about Marić fall at various levels in the list above.
    Any document, even a document from level 1, can
    include errors, omissions, inaccuracies or even lies.
    Likewise, information of all kinds can include truthful
    claims, of course. The important point is to realise
    that the further a document stands away from the
    period it purportedly describes, the more layers of
    potential inaccuracy. Inaccuracies can exist in the
    translation, rewording, interpolation, and so forth. A
    letter written, even decades later, by a participant in
    the events in question, can still be very informative,
    even though placed at level 14, though we should still
    be careful with its contents. More so, an even later
    account, by someone who was not present at the events
    in question, involves greater uncertainties.
    Unfortunately, we cannot always confirm or refute
    all such uncertainties. But we should at least
    acknowledge them.

    Teachers should carefully grant different degrees
    of trust to various sources. Most readers do not usually
    have the time or opportunity to research and examine
    the validity of a given source of information.
    Nevertheless, one should cultivate a moderate
    scepticism, especially against outstanding stories that
    resonate with what we would personally like to
    believe. We can teach students that historical claims
    should be inspected carefully, as when testing
    hypotheses in science. Too often, writers enamoured
    with a sensational conjecture tend to misread
    evidence. Too often, they seek not to test a hypothesis,
    but to confirm it. But what makes a good story, or
    plausible fiction, is not necessarily what makes good
    history.

    This article was first published in School Science Review and is republished here by permission.

    Copyright 2005, Alberto A. Martínez and
    School Science Review.

    End-notes

    1 Einstein’s Wife was produced by an Australian company, Melsa Films, in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Oregon Public Broadcasting in the United States.

    2 Krstic (1991: 94) dated this letter as being from ‘the very beginning of 1906’.

    3 Popovic (2003:88) dated this letter as being from December 1906, apparently following notes by Julka Savic, see p. xi. The historians who edited The collected papers of Albert Einstein Vol. 5 (Klein, Kox and Schulmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) also dated the letter as being from December 1906, owing to its contents (see p. 45). Popovic’s translation is a literal rendering of the original in German (copy at the Einstein Archive, item 70-724; someone wrote ‘juli 1906’ on the letter itself).

    References

    Besso, M. and Einstein, A. (1972) Correspondance 1903–
    1955    , with notes and translations by P. Speziali. Paris:
    Hermann.

    Bjerknes, C. J. (2002) Albert Einstein: the incorrigible
    plagiarist    . Downers Grove, Illinois: XTX Inc.

    Danin, D. S. (1962) Neizbezhnost strannogo mira. Moscow:
    Molodaia Gvardia, Gosudarstvenaaja Biblioteka SSSR.

    Frank, P. (1949) Einstein, sein leben und seine zeit. Reprint
    (1979) Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn.

    Joffe, A. F. (1955) Pamiati Alberta Einsteina. Uspekhi
    fizicheskikh nauk    . 57 (2), 187.

    Joffe, A. F. (1967) 2nd edn. Begegnungen mit Physikern.
    Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Translation from the original
    (1962) Vstrechi s fizikami moi vospominaniia o
    zarubezhnykh fizikah    . Moskow: Gosudarstvenoye Idatelstvo
    Fiziko-Matematitsheskoi Literatury.

    Klein, M. J., Kox, A. J. and Schulmann, R. (1993) The
    collected papers of Albert Einstein    , Vol. 5. Princeton:
    Princeton University Press.

    Krstic, D. (1991) Mileva Einstein-Marić. In Hans Albert
    Einstein: reminiscences of his life and our life together    .
    Einstein, E. R. Appendix A, pp. 85–99. Iowa City, Iowa:
    Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research.

    Michelmore, P. (1962) Einstein: profile of the man. New
    York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

    Overbye, D. (2000) Einstein in love: a scientific romance,
    New York: Penguin Books.

    Popovic, M. ed. (2003) In Albert’s shadow: the life and
    letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s first wife    . Baltimore,
    Maryland / London, England: Johns Hopkins University
    Press.

    Renn, J. and Schulmann, R. ed. (1992) The love letters.
    Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Letters of Albert
    Einstein to Mileva Marić, 4 April 1901 and 27 March 1901,
    respectively, trans. Shawn Smith.)

    Seelig, C. (1954) Albert Einstein, eine dokumentarische
    Biographie    . Zurich/Stuttgart/Wien: Europa Verlag.

    Solovine, M. and Einstein, A. (1956) Lettres à Maurice
    Solovine    . Paris: Gauthier-Villars.

    Stachel, J. ed. (1987) The collected papers of Albert Einstein,
    Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Stachel, J. (1996) Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić: a
    collaboration that failed to develop. Reprinted in Stachel, J.
    (2002) Einstein from B to Z. pp. 39–55. Boston/Basel/
    Berlin, Birkhauser.

    Trbuhovic-Gjuric, D. (1993) Im Schatten Albert Einsteins,
    das tragische Leben der Mileva Einstein-Marić    . Bern/
    Stuttgart/Wien: Paul Haupt. Translation from the original
    (1969) U senci Alberta Ajnstajna. Krusevac: Bagdala.

    Walker, E. H. (1991) Letter: Mileva Marić’s relativistic role.
    Physics Today, 44(2), 123.

    Zackheim, M. (1999) Einstein’s daughter: the Search for
    Lieserl    . New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin Putnam.

  • South Park Dukes it Out With Scientology

    Tom Cruise says he never said what somebody said he said.

  • Sussex University Drops Chemistry

    Scientists react angrily; university plans to concentrate on other areas, such as media.

  • What About Restoring the Dignity of Atheism?

    Respect for others’ beliefs as the highest value leaves two choices: patronizing or relativizing.

  • Neoclassical Economics Sidelined Psychology

    In actual humans, we find not logic but all manner of irrational, self-sabotaging, even altruistic behavior.

  • Sue Blackmore on Selfish Gene’s 30th

    ‘If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it.’

  • Dragged Away Kicking and Screaming

    Enough of all this pallid nerdy arguing and wondering and marching back and forth. I have been persuaded. much against my better judgment, that what I really want is a very long walk on a mountain trail. I don’t think it is, I think I’ll cry and whine and ask to be carried and say my foot hurts and ask for ice cream and say my face is cold and ask for a cookie and say why aren’t we there yet and ask for brandy and say I want to go home right now. But I have acquiesced, despite the insufficiently theorized nature of this proposed very long walk and the absence of coffee houses and bookshops on this much-advertised trail thingy. I have acquiesced, I have bowed, I have given in, I have said oh all right. I’m told we will see eagles and lions and orcas and lyre birds and stoats and wildebeest, and I must say I do like the sound of that. Not as much as cookies and brandy and coffee, but enough.

  • Moral Philosophy

    Eve Garrard comments at Normblog on this whole incompletely theorized thing we have going here (though not in those terms, which I have only just this second dragged in). Her comment is interesting, and it helpfully omits the part about being puzzled as to why I keep etc etc (yes, I am having fun with that, why do you ask?) – but it still isn’t quite what I’m talking about, at least I think it isn’t.

    It’s very hard to see why we would think that Holocaust-denial ought to be legally permissible unless we think that there’s a moral right in play, that people have a moral right to speak their minds, even if what their minds contain is false and indeed disgusting. But this is what Ophelia jibs at – given that Holocaust-denial involves lies and falsifications, why should we think we have a moral right to engage in it? How can we have a moral right to lie, falsify the evidence, play fast and loose with the truth?

    That isn’t exactly what I jib at. Because I don’t think Holocaust denial does necessarily involve lies and falsifications. It can involve error, self-deception, misinterpretation. It can also involve, no doubt, transient lies in speech rather than in print, and it can involve minor infrequent lies in print – lies that are unsystematic enough to fall short of unmistakable deception and falsification. But I take systematic falsification to be a different matter – and, again, I think it is telling that people mostly don’t defend Irving’s right to engage in systematic falsification; at the very least I wonder why that is, and if it doesn’t hint at something.

    This is not an unreasonable question. Lies and falsifications are generally (and certainly in the case of Holocaust-denial) morally wrong. And it does seem puzzling, even paradoxical, to say that we can have a moral right to do that which is morally wrong. Nonetheless it’s true that we do: we sometimes have the moral right to act – that is, people ought not to prevent us from acting – in ways which are undoubtedly morally wrong.

    Hmm. Which people and in what sense of ‘prevent us’ I wonder. In the examples Eve gives, I’m not sure it’s true that people close to us ought not to try to prevent us by persuasion, for instance. But no doubt she means forcibly prevent, which is another matter. Anyway, this is Eve’s field, and it’s certainly not mine, so I’ll take her word for it. It’s like that comment Jon Pike made in reviewing Honderich in Democratiya – ‘there is a standard, ordinary language distinction between having a right to do X and X being the right thing to do.’ I’ve been keeping it in mind throughout this discussion. But I don’t think it applies to falsification on the scale Irving practiced it – or at least I’m not convinced that it does. I’m just not convinced that he does have a moral right to deliberately falsify the evidence on the scale he did (remember what Lipstadt said: every single footnote had something wrong with it). I don’t think it should be a police matter, I don’t think it should be an imprisonable offence, but I’m still not convinced it’s a free speech right or a moral right. I think it’s something in between those (something not fully theorized, perhaps).

  • Oh So That’s What That Is

    I’m going to do a Cool Hand Luke on you. What we have here is an incompletely theorized agreement.

    From ‘Incompletely Theorized Agreements,’ chapter 2 of Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict by Cass Sunstein, pp 35-37.

    Hence the pervasive legal and political phenomenon of an agreement on a general principle alongside disagreement about particular cases. The agreement is incompletely theorized in the sense that it is incompletely specified. Much of the key work must be done by others, often through casuistical judgments at the point of application.

    Well there you go. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not so odd – and in fact it happens all the time. That’s what Sunstein means by referring to a ‘pervasive legal and political phenomenon’ – that you see a lot of it. It’s all over the place. It’s not rare. It’s not astonishing or peculiar or inexplicable; it’s pervasive. Pervasive, I tell you! So all these people knitting their brows in puzzlement and surprise and puzzlement at my persistence in seeing problems and ambiguities where they see simplicity and everything being settled, are puzzled at the unpuzzling. In fact, I should be the one who is puzzled at their puzzlement. I’ll do that: I’ll be puzzled. ‘What ho,’ I’ll say, ‘have they never read Cass Sunstein? Whence comes all this perturbation and surprise? This sort of thing is the merest commonplace; it is pervasive.’ Then I’ll polish off that glass of whiskey and demand another, and a pizza while you’re at it.

    Abstract provisions protect ‘freedom of speech,’ religious liberty,’ and ‘equality under the law,’ and citizens agree on those abstractions in the midst of sharp disputes about what those provisions really entail.

    Don’t we though. That’s all I’m saying. We agree on the abstractions and then immediately proceed to have sharp disputes about what those provisions really entail – disputes which aren’t always and necessarily easily resolved or settled. Disputes which one party can declare settled but which the other party (or parties) can still, however unaccountably and puzzlingly and brow-knittingly, obstinately declare not settled, still open, still unresolved, in fact perhaps of their nature not resolvable to the satisfaction of all people (even all reasonable people, sensible people, paying attention people). The other party remains at liberty (freedom of speech!) to say no, not settled, there are still tensions and competing goods, and I’m not going to say there aren’t, not if it was ever so.

    I’m not even being inconsistent. Incoherent, no doubt, unclear, as one reader mentioned, but not inconsistent. I’ve always said I’m not a free speech absolutist; I think it’s a very great good, and certainly a much greater good than the protection of notions such as the holy, the sacred, blasphemy, heresy, orthodoxy, taboo; but I don’t think it trumps everything; there are some cases about which I’m simply ambivalent, I’m uncertain, I’m torn. I’m incompletely theorized.

  • Judith Shklar on Putting Cruelty First

    ‘To put cruelty first, therefore, is to be at odds with both religion and politics.’

  • ‘Lumières!’ Next to ‘Torah, Bible, Koran’

    Enlightenment values again under threat from fundamentalism, terrorism, concentration of media power.

  • Fear not of the Unknown but of the All Too Familiar

    ‘Our own history makes us only too familiar with the dogmatism and fanaticism we see in Islam.’

  • Hijab Occupies Women’s Lives Even When Off

    Their behaviour is ‘veiled’: they must not laugh or speak loudly, nor move freely.

  • Heritage Piously Declared Legacy of All Humanity

    But possessive jealousies of particular claimants pose huge obstacles to our common inheritance.

  • Night Waves on Religion

    Dennett, Armstrong, Williams, Ruthven discuss.

  • Not Barking in the Night

    Some more house-circling, since Jonathan asked me a question, which seems eccentric after wondering why I keep talking, but never mind.

    Jonathan points out that Norm does mention the point about falsifying the evidence; true; a fair cop; I should have looked harder and qualified what I said. But, he only mentions it, he doesn’t address it, and since it’s most of what I’ve been wondering about, I still say he’s been talking past me rather than ‘settl[ing] things pretty definitively’.

    Ophelia also stands by her view that Holocaust denial shouldn’t be a criminal offence – from which the inference is surely unavoidable that this is a liberty right that she not merely notes as a legal fact but also endorses. Yet she resists the conclusion that Holocaust denial, falsifying the evidence and so on, is then covered – as she appeared originally to deny, or at least to question – as protected free speech (this, of course, provided it does not breach laws against incitement).

    But my whole point has been that Holocaust denial and falsifying the evidence are two separate things, not more or less the same thing along with ‘so on’. Or at least, in the questions I’m asking, they are. I did say that, after all.

    But on the other hand, that still leaves out what I’ve been wondering about, which is the fact that Irving did more than just write and publish that the Holocaust did not happen or that it has been exaggerated – he also falsified the evidence…

    And (er) so on, for the rest of the paragraph. So Norm mentioned falsifying the evidence, but he didn’t address it, which is what I said in the latest post: ‘Well, he’s no doubt settled what he was talking about, but he hasn’t settled what I’ve been talking about, because he’s barely mentioned it, and he hasn’t addressed it.’ The ‘barely mentioned’ referred to the mention that Jonathan quoted, and the ‘hasn’t addressed it’ referred to just that. I separated the two, for instance by saying that Irving did more than just deny the Holocaust, he falsified the evidence. So a mention of the falsification that runs it together with denial and with so on is just what I’m taking issue with.

    Now that I’ve started I’ll just say a little more, since I was meaning perhaps to comment on Norm’s post (not really answer, since I think he’s said all he wants to) anyway. The comment is what I’ve said: I think mere denial is one thing and falsification is another. I don’t think denial should be a crime (although I think it tentatively, and I don’t therefore think Germany and Austria shouldn’t make it a crime – I suspend judgment on that – because they have understandable reasons to do so), but it doesn’t follow that I think falsification of evidence shouldn’t be a crime. I don’t know what I think about that; but I do think they are separate questions. I mentioned that commenters mostly don’t mention the falsification aspect. You get people saying Irving shouldn’t go to jail for an opinion, however offensive it is; you don’t get (so much) people saying Irving shouldn’t go to jail for lying and falsifying evidence. Why is that? One reason, I’m guessing, is that it’s pretty hard to think of any situation in which saying something ‘offensive’ is against the law (except the UK’s blasphemy law – ?) but it is not hard to think of situations when lying is against the law. Vendors can’t lie, you can’t lie in a contract, perjury is against the law; there are all sorts of situations in which falsifying records would be obstruction of justice or fraud and be against the law. So – it’s not self-evidently absurd to think that there is an issue here. Have I been clear enough about it this time? I’m saying that falsification of evidence is not identical or equivalent to saying or writing an offensive opinion.

    Jonathan asked:

    Perhaps Ophelia might explain what the salient difference is between denying that the Holocaust took place, which is what Norm has been talking about in all his posts, and “falsifying the evidence” about it?

    Denial can be a mere opinion, an intepretation of the evidence; it doesn’t entail lying; it needn’t involve perjury. Falsification does entail lying. That’s why millions of dollars were spent on examining Irving’s books – to find evidence that he had falsified, and thus lied, rather than merely been mistaken. That’s what the 2000 trial showed about Irving: he wasn’t just wrong, he wasn’t just wrong and malevolent; he falsified the evidence, and that was not ‘free speech’, it wasn’t protected. That’s the salient difference. I’m not saying therefore he should be in the slammer, I’m just saying there’s an issue. I can’t help suspecting that the reason we don’t hear people defend his right to lie all that much is that they don’t entirely believe in such a right. I don’t entirely believe in it myself – I have grave doubts about it.

  • Because I Just Got a Real Estate License, That’s Why

    Hmm. I had moved on to other things for the moment, while still planning to say another word or two later if I got around to it. But I’ll say another word or two now, out of irritation. There’s nothing like irritation to cause one to say a word now rather than later. (See, this is where misanthropy comes in. Lycanthropy too, if you argue with wolves. That’s a swell movie with Kevin Bacon – Argues With Wolves.) I’ll tell you why, since you ask.

    I’ve been following with some interest the discussion between Norman Geras and Ophelia Benson about David Irving’s imprisonment. Norm’s most recent post seemed to me to settle things pretty definitively…The best sense I can make of Ophelia’s position, which she has reiterated in a further reply to Norm, is that she thinks that Irving deserves all the moral opprobrium, short of legal sanction (which she says she disapproves of), that comes his way…But that doesn’t touch Norm’s point, as he makes clear here. Which is why it seems odd to me that Ophelia should have chosen to go round the houses again – especially as the clearest bit of the new post just restates Norm’s view for him.

    Because it’s my Notes and Comment, that’s why (at least, unless and until its owner closes it down, it is). Because I can go around any dang houses I want to go around; because I can bore up one side and down the other if I want to; because I can talk about dust, or shopping lists, or plumbing, or philately, or Akron, or macadam, or laundry, or weeds, or nail clippings, or bus schedules, or any boring thing I think of, that’s why. Because nobody has to read it, that’s why. Because I like going around houses, and around and around and around, and anyone who doesn’t like going around houses doesn’t have to go, so why bother complaining if I like to? Hah?

    And since I’m irritated, I’ll point out that in fact some of the things I’ve been talking about have still been left unaddressed and unmentioned by Norm’s definitive posts, and that I’ve mentioned them again, and that this last most definitive post still didn’t mention them. So I’m not so sure things have been settled pretty definitively. Not the things I was talking about anyway…crooning and mumbling away to myself while I went wandering blamelessly and innocently around all these tiresome houses. The main thing that still hasn’t been addressed, that seems to be an elephant in the living room, is the fact that Irving lied and falsified the evidence. I’ve only said that about four times now, but that aspect keeps getting left out so I trudge around the houses again only to have the point about lying and falsification (oh look, it’s not four times, it’s six) left out yet again. And then I get chastised for going around the houses yet again when Norm has definitively settled the matter. Well, he’s no doubt settled what he was talking about, but he hasn’t settled what I’ve been talking about, because he’s barely mentioned it, and he hasn’t addressed it.

    And I am not convinced. All right? That’s the reason for all the house-traipsing; I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced people actually think Irving has a right, whether a liberty right or a moral right or a natural right or an inalienable right, to lie and falsify the evidence. And if people do actually think that, I find it odd that they don’t say it more often. That’s where all this started. I wondered why commenters – in newspapers and the like – who talked of Irving and free speech didn’t mention the lying and falsification question. I still wonder. I suspect it’s because they’re not convinced Irving or anyone has such a right any more than I am, but they’re also not sure what they think about that or how to address it, so they don’t, they just cover it up, instead, and talk about the much easier issue, of what is ‘offensive’ or outrageous or the like in what Irving says. Except Lipstadt and Evans, of course. They’re sharply aware of that aspect, and don’t leave it out, but other people do.

    So. That is a house that remains insufficiently explored, let alone settled, as far as I’m concerned, and I might go around it yet again at any time, so consider yourselves warned. If you don’t want to go around the houses again, then don’t join the tour.

  • Yes Yes and Black is White and Gray is Red

    John Gray is naughty. He’s not Leon Wieseltier, he’s not Steve Fuller, but he’s doing the same strawmannish kind of arguing. Why do people do that? It’s odd. Why do they attack things people don’t claim? If the claims haven’t been made, what is the point of attacking them? I mean, what do they get out of it? What is their aim? Wouldn’t you think the point would be to say what is wrong with what the person did actually say, so as to alert readers to that and persuade them of what’s wrong with it? What’s the point of saying what is wrong with things the person didn’t say? It just seems like a waste of time and effort.

    Typically, philosophers take it for granted that religions are systems of belief, and condemn them for failing to meet standards of proof that are applied in other areas of human life, above all in science.

    That’s just wrong, and crudely wrong. It’s not a matter of ‘standards of proof,’ it’s a matter of evidence. Gray must know that; it’s very basic. So why does he get it wrong? What’s the point? And philosophers don’t typically take it for granted that religions are systems of belief, they typically point out that that is what they are, giving evidence (not proof, evidence) to show that that is true. So right from the start we have Gray misdescribing two central issues. That doesn’t bode well.

    One cannot make a sharp distinction between natural processes and supernatural agents unless one presupposes a view of the world something like that presented in the biblical creation story, and the distinction is not found in most of the world’s religions. For example, in animism – which must rank as the oldest and most universal religion – spirits are seen as part of the natural world.

    Huh? Why can’t one presuppose a view of the world not at all like that presented in the biblical creation story, and not see ‘spirits’ as part of the natural world because there is no evidence for them?

    More fundamentally, it is a mistake to assume that belief is the core of religion. This may seem self-evident to many philosophers, but in fact belief is not very important in most religions…For the majority of humankind, religion has always been about practice rather than belief. In fixating on the belief-content of religion, Dennett emulates Christianity at its most rationalistic and dogmatic.

    Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t ‘believe’ that. I can believe that religion has always been about practice as well as belief, but not rather than. Not around these here monotheistic parts, anyway – and monotheism does take in a fair bit of the planet. Godbotherers do have beliefs about that god. Gray should ask some one of these days.

    Wolpert interprets religion as a type of adaptive behaviour in which our beliefs are shaped by our practical needs. Like Dennett, he seems ignorant of the vast range of religious traditions in which belief is peripheral. Again, he thinks of religion as having to do with supernatural phenomena, writing naively: “Religion is concerned with the supernatural, and this involves forces and causes beyond our normal experience of nature.”

    Naïvely. What planet does Gray live on? I’d be quite happy to live there too, it sounds much safer than this one, but I have no idea where it is. (Naïve of me, no doubt.)

    [I]t is not supernatural belief that is hard-wired in humans: it is the need for myth, and it fuels secular belief as much as traditional religion…Myths are not primitive scientific theories that belong in the infancy of the species. They are symbolic narratives that give meaning to the lives of those who accept them. The chief difference between religious and secular believers is that, while the former have long known their myths to be extremely questionable, the latter imagine their own to be literally true.

    Oh, come on. The Iliad is a symbolic narrative that gives meaning, so is Hamlet, so is Wuthering Heights. Religion is something else, and the people who ‘accept’ religion – and there are a good few of them around – do not in the least know their myths to be extremely questionable, which is why they’re always whanging the rest of us over the head with them. This whole silly trope ‘religion is myth is narrative is questionable and tentative and not believed and it is atheism or ‘secular belief’ that is the real religion and that is truly certain and dogmatic and believed without question’ – is false, and endlessly triumphantly smugly recycled as if it were both true and original. How irritating it is. I said Gray isn’t Wieseltier or Fuller, but he does border on arguing in their style here. Very tiresome.