Abstract
Following Lenin’s critique of Mach in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, the name of the Austrian philosopher was often used in the Soviet Union to discredit philosophical positions, theories, or individuals, because of the assumed influence he had on them. This is what we define as the “Mach argument”, a matter of rhetoric that usually did not require any additional explanations and suited the political discourse required by the Soviet regime. This chapter aims to study its use by the Soviet physicist Vladimir Fock, to better understand the modalities of his scientific discourse. It highlights the complex situation he faced, as his need to defend modern theories of physics against unjustified ideological attacks in the Soviet Union was in some way at odds with his own belief that their interpretations needed revision. In response, Fock elaborated a strategy that required a form of politicization of his professional culture. Nevertheless, we argue that the scientist showed a great capacity for adaptation as it did not mean in any way an abandonment of his traditional scientific values and principles.
The present chapter stems from PhD research on Vladimir Fock defended in 2017 at the University Paris Diderot.
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Notes
- 1.
Vladimir I. Lenin, Materializm i Empiriokrititsizm, Moscow: Zveno 1909.
- 2.
Fock started University in 1916 at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. Graduated in 1922, he made all his career at Leningrad University, where he became full Professor in 1932.
- 3.
Regarding Fock and relativity, see the very informative paper by Gennady Gorelik, “Vladimir Fock: Philosophy of Gravity and Gravity of Philosophy”, in: John Earman, Michael Janssen, John D. Norton (Eds.), The attraction of gravitation: new studies in the history of general relativity, Boston: Birkhäuser 1993, pp. 308–331.
- 4.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Sur le mouvement des masses finies d’après la théorie de gravitation einsteinienne”, in: Journal of Physics (Moscow), 1/2, 1939, pp. 81–116.
- 5.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Three Lectures on Relativity Theory”, in: Review of Modern Physics, 29, 1957, p.326 (325–333).
- 6.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Les principes physiques de la théorie de la gravitation d’Einstein”, in: Annales de l’I.H.P., section A, 5/3, 1966, p.212 (205–215).
- 7.
Fock’s conception of Einstein’s theory definitely requires a more detailed account. The interested reader is referred to the paper of Gorelik, “Vladimir Fock: Philosophy of Gravity and Gravity of Philosophy”, op.cit.
- 8.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Polveka velikogo otkrytiya. O teorii otnositel’nosti Аl’berta Eynshteyna”, in: Pravda, 106, April 15, 1956.
- 9.
The present article does not intend to question that influence. It has been already well developed in the literature, and must be considered as an established fact. See, among others, Vladimir Vizgin, “The Role Played by Mach’s Ideas in the Genesis of the General Theory of Relativity”, in: Yuri Balashov/Vladimir Vizgin (Eds.), Einstein Studies in Russia, Boston: Birkhäuser 2002, pp. 45–89, or John Stachel, “Einstein and the Rigidly Rotating Disc.”, in: General Relativity and Gravitation, 1, 1979, pp. 30–45. Einstein himself recognized the role played by Mach in the development of his ideas concerning General Relativity. See, for instance, his autobiographical notes: Albert Einstein, Autobiographical notes: A Centennial edition, Schilpp P. A. (trans. and ed.), La Salle, Illinois: Open Court 1979.
- 10.
Slightly revised versions of former articles, and translations, have been excluded.
- 11.
That exception can be easily justified. It is the article “Relativity Theory” of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Vladimir A. Fock, “Otnositel’nosti teoriya”, in: Vvedenskiy B. A., Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 31, 1956, pp. 405–411). Fock wrote the technical part. But even if he decided there to discuss Einstein’s interpretation he could not go further in a philosophical criticism as a second article by Aleksandr D. Aleksandrov was devoted to the “epistemological value” of the theory (Aleksander D. Aleksandrov, “Otnositel’nosti teoriya (teoretiko- poznavatel’noye znacheniye)”, in: Vvedenskiy B. A., Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 31, 1955, pp. 411–416).
- 12.
The other documents dealing with General Relativity were simply summaries of technical points presented during conferences and articles criticizing another Soviet physicist, F. I. Frankl.
- 13.
Vladimir A. Fock, Teoriya prostranstva, vremeni i tyagoteniya, Moscou: Gostekhizdat 1955.
- 14.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Ponyatiya odnorodnosti, kovariantnosti i otnositel’nosti v teorii prostranstva i vremeni.”, in: Voprosy filosofii, 4, 1955, pp. 131–135; Vladimir A. Fock, “Sovremennaya teoriya prostranstva i vremeni.”, in: Priroda, 12, 1953, pp. 13–26.
- 15.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Zamechaniya k tvorcheskoy avtobiografii Аl’berta Eynshteyna.”, Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 59/1, 1956, pp. 107–117.
- 16.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Protiv nevezhestvennoy kritiki sovremennykh fizicheskikh teoriy”, Voprosy filosofii, 1, 1953, pp. 168–174.
- 17.
Fock, “Polveka velikogo otkrytiya. O teorii otnositel’nosti Аl’berta Eynshteyna”, op.cit.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Vladimir A. Fock, The theory of space, time, and gravitation, 2nd rev. ed., translated from the Russian by N. Kemmer, New York: Macmillan 1964, p.4.
- 20.
It has to be underlined that while Newton was guided by religious convictions in building his absolute conception of space and time, Fock was an atheist who rejected any arguments of that type. In his approach to General Relativity, he put the emphasis on the necessity for physical content in scientific explanations and was working in a materialist perspective.
- 21.
Fock, “Zamechaniya k tvorcheskoy avtobiografii Аl’berta Eynshteyna.”, op.cit, p.110.
- 22.
See Vladimir A. Fock, “Les systèmes de Ptolémée et de Copernic à la lumière de la théorie Générale de la relativité”, in: Questions philosophiques, 1, 1952, p.150 (147–154).
- 23.
About Mach and the “geometrical absolutism”, see Vizgin, “The Role Played by Mach’s Ideas in the Genesis of the General Theory of Relativity”, op.cit., pp. 50–52.
- 24.
Ibid., pp. 54–58.
- 25.
Fock, “Sovremennaya teoriya prostranstva i vremeni.”, op.cit., p.26.
- 26.
See Vizgin V., “The Role Played by Mach’s Ideas in the Genesis of the General Theory of Relativity”, op.cit., pp. 65–70.
- 27.
Fock, The theory of space, time, and gravitation, op.cit., p.8.
- 28.
Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997.
- 29.
Ibid., p.6.
- 30.
Ibid., p.53. For more on the “Politicization of Professional Culture” during the 1930s see pp. 45–53.
- 31.
Alexei B. Kojevnikov, Stalin’s Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists, London: Imperial College Press 2004, pp. 197–203.
- 32.
Krementsov, Stalinist Science, op. cit., p.222. More on “‘Politically Correct’ Science” and the Zhdanovshchina on pp. 215–225.
- 33.
Konstantin V. Nikol’skiy., “Otvet V. A. Foku”, in: Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, 17/4, 1937, p.555 (554–560).
- 34.
More on the reception of Einstein’s ideas in the Soviet Union in Alexander S. Vucinich, Einstein and Soviet Ideology, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2001. See also Kojevnikov’s review of this book: Alexei B. Kojevnikov, “Einstein and Soviet Dogma; An elusive Relationship”, in: Physics Today, 55/9, 2002, pp. 59–60.
- 35.
Fock, “Polveka velikogo otkrytiya. O teorii otnositel’nosti Аl’berta Eynshteyna”, op.cit.
- 36.
Alexander A. Maksimov et al. (eds.), Filosofskie voprosy sovremennoi fiziki, Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1952.
- 37.
Fock, “Protiv nevezhestvennoy kritiki sovremennykh fizicheskikh teoriy”, op.cit.
- 38.
For more on that episode, and particularly the way Fock obtained the help of part of the scientific community which intervened directly with the authorities to publish his article, see Vladimir Vizgin, “The nuclear shield in the ‘thirty-year war’ of physicists against ignorant criticism of modern physical theories”, in: Physics-Uspekhi, 42, 1999, pp. 1259–1283. As indicate by its title, this article is particularly rich to what concerns all the attacks on modern physics in the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s.
- 39.
Igor Tamm was a Soviet theoretical physicist working in Moscow, a Nobel laureate in 1958 with Ilya Frank and Pavel Cherenkov for their discovery and interpretation of Cherenkov radiation.
- 40.
Fock, “Polveka velikogo otkrytiya. O teorii otnositel’nosti Аl’berta Eynshteyna”, op.cit.
- 41.
Letter from Fock to Tamm, November 17, 1955. Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburg, 1034-3-160.
- 42.
Vladimir A. Fock, “Kritika vzglyadov Bora na kvantovuyu mekhaniku”, in: Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 45/1, 1951, pp. 3–14.
- 43.
See Vizgin, “The nuclear shield in the ‘thirty-year war’ of physicists against ignorant criticism of modern physical theories”, op.cit.
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Martinez, JP. (2019). The “Mach Argument” and its Use by Vladimir Fock to Criticize Einstein in the Soviet Union. In: Stadler, F. (eds) Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04378-0_20
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