Einstein's Dreams

“Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.”

This line from the 24 April 1905 dream expresses an idea that flows throughout the novel’s dreamworlds. Each version of time is true but not equally so. Human perception, and thus human bias, taints each world’s understanding of time. Einstein as the passive observer brings humanity’s emotions into his dreams, further diminishing truth.

“A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted.”

In this 28 April 1905 dreamworld, Einstein imagines that time is absolute and is perceived as such. In some of the dreamworlds, perception changes reality, but in this world, human perception and reality align. Thus, the absolute nature of time brings people comfort rather than dismay. In this world, God is knowable because humanity can perceive, understand, and appreciate time.

“It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.”

In this 3 May 1905 dreamworld, cause and effect aren’t linked in any perceptible way, and artists, emotions, heart, and the abstract rule human ambition and desire. Here, scientists are useless, and “mechanical” time is nonexistent. This world, which is at the extreme end of the art-science continuum, starkly contrasts with the 28 April 1905 dream, in which mechanical time is absolute.

“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”

This 4 May 1905 world is the opposite of the world in which people speed up in order to prolong time. Instead, people slow down because “time and the passage of time are linked,” meaning that if one moves slowly, they live longer. As with the sped-up motion in the opposing world, this dream is a commentary on how humans sacrifice quality for quantity in regard to time. In the speedy world, everyone’s in a hurry and is alone. In the slow world, everyone lags but is unfulfilled. The underlying message is that humans shouldn’t attempt to prolong time lest they waste it.

“I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One.”

Einstein, a self-proclaimed agnostic who disapproved of organized, monotheistic religion, uses the term Old One to refer to God. However, his concept of God doesn’t align with the traditional, Western understanding of a monotheistic deity (Mallove, Eugene. “Einstein’s Intoxication With the God of the Cosmos.” The Washington Post, 22 Dec. 1985).

“The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

In the world where time is sticky, neighborhoods and people are stuck in different times. For Einstein the humanist, this world’s drawback was that being stuck in time was a solitary activity. Each person and place could be stuck in any time, and thus people would be alone. Einstein wanted an understanding of time that meshed with his understanding of humanism.

“And so, in the place where time stands still, one sees parents clutching their children, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. The beautiful young daughter with blue eyes and blonde hair will never stop smiling the smile she smiles now, will never lose this soft pink glow on her cheeks, will never grow wrinkled or tired, will never get injured, will never unlearn what her parents have taught her, will never think thoughts that her parents don’t know, will never know evil, will never tell her parents that she does not love them, will never leave her room with the view of the ocean, will never stop touching her parents as she does now.”

This emotion-laden passage highlights how Lightman uses human nature, human emotion, and human complexity to describe the fundamentally different way time that interacts with humanity in each dreamworld. Although the passage is beautiful and hopeful, these impressions are tinged with sadness because it describes a world where everything eventually perishes. This highlights the paradox of bias inherent in studying time: In the waking world, humans can’t remove their perception of their own reality from their observation of other worlds.

“Some say it is better not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time there is no life.”

In every dreamworld, humanity lies at the center of the vignette. Time works differently in these worlds, but the focus is on the people. This quote beautifully highlights the necessity of time. Life can’t exist without time, and thus Lightman includes the human perspective in every vignette.

“For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.”

In the dreamworld where memory doesn’t exist, everyone lives in the present, and thus everything is exciting and new. To solve the problem of understanding their place in the world, each person has a Book of Life that describes their past. The book is new and exciting every day. This world shows how Lightman attempts to solve the paradox of each world with a human solution. With no memory, humans make records each day to aid their future selves.

“Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?”

In the world where people see glimpses of their future, every person must make a choice. This choice, like so many in the novel, is perception based. They can choose to act according to their future, to deny their future and fight determinism, or to wait for their future to arrive in their present. This choice is central to how humanity interacts with the laws of time. However, in this world, no choice exists; people have no free will, yet they have the perception of free will. Their future is set, whether they fight it, rush, or lag. Their future will come. Thus, in this world of glimpses into the future, humanity convinces itself that it’s free to choose.

“In this world of great speed, one fact has been only slowly appreciated. By logical tautology, the motional effect is all relative. Because when two people pass on the street, each perceives the other in motion, just as a man in a train perceives the trees to fly by his window.”

Einstein’s dreams influence his research as he works toward a theory of time that accounts for all aspects of the world’s laws. He dreams so that he can expand his mind, inviting imagination and creativity into the mechanical. In this world, Einstein plays with relativity. More importantly, he plays with how the population’s awareness of relativity might impact their actions.

“Besso sees Einstein now and wishes he could help, but of course Einstein does not need help. To Besso, Einstein is without pain. He seems oblivious to his body and the world.”

In the second Interlude, Besso again observes Einstein while he’s fixated on his work. Einstein himself stated that he struggled to tell if he was asleep or awake. Besso’s observation aligns with Einstein’s self-assessment, and he appears unaware of himself or his surroundings. Einstein’s mind inhabits a place between his world, his dreamworlds, and the physics he’s organizing during his waking days.

“In a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste, a sequence of episodes may be quick or may be slow, dim or intense, salty or sweet, causal or without cause, orderly or random, depending on the prior history of the viewer.”

Two worlds place time entirely in the “body time” category. These worlds are unique in that mechanical time, or a scientific understanding of time, doesn’t exist. In this world, people understand only the artistic, body time, and each person experiences time differently. In the other, fully artistic world, time is a quality rather than a quantity. These worlds starkly contrast with worlds where time is purely mechanical, lacking all artistry.

“Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past.”

In the world where people live forever, they have structured their society such that each new generation is beholden to the prior ones, creating a prison of obligation. This world, more than the others, highlights how human structures around time dictate time’s impact on the populous. Humankind fails to consider simple solutions, like each new generation moving to a different area, instead deciding to taint its gift of immortality with human-constructed ideas. This world is more of a commentary on human nature than on time, especially cosmic time.

“Some people attempt to quantify time, to parse time, to dissect time. They are turned to stone. Their bodies stand frozen on the street corners, cold, hard and heavy.”

In the world where time is a quality, quantifying time is impossible. Those who try die as a result of abandoning time as a quality. They challenge their reality and are destroyed by this challenge. In this world, Lightman comments on how one can’t change the cosmic order of things.

“Imagining the future is no more possible than seeing colors beyond violet: the senses cannot conceive what may lie past the visible end of the spectrum.”

In the world without a future, time is both a mechanical certainty (a constant that is unquestionable) and an inaccessible quality. Time in this world exists in the middle of the art-science spectrum. In addition, this world demonstrates another scenario in which time is evaluated from the perspective of duration. It pairs with the world where no past exists, offering a view of what lies at the other end of the duration continuum.

“In this world time is not continuous. In this world time is discontinuous. Time is a stretch of nerve fibers: seemingly continuous from a distance but disjointed close up, with microscopic gaps between fibers.”

Many of the worlds in Einstein’s Dreams explore time’s directionality. This world, in which time halts and then restarts with only microsecond lapses, explores a directionality that isn’t constant. This world pairs with the world where time flows backward and the world where time flows like a river that can be diverted and thus sends some people to the past or present. These explorations of directionality allow Einstein to theorize in his waking hours about the possibilities of time’s trajectory.

“They stand quietly, reading prayer books, holding their children. They stand quietly, but secretly they seethe with their anger. For they must watch measured that which should not be measured. They must watch the precise passage of minutes and decades. They have been trapped by their own inventiveness and audacity. And they must pay with their lives.”

In the world where people are forced to worship mechanical time, they’re miserable because they know they’ve gone too far toward the mechanical side of a continuum that should allow for awe, wonder, and creativity. More than any other world, this one offers a warning to Einstein in his calculations. He must not settle on a theory of time that doesn’t account for all aspects of the world: the laws of the cosmos and humanity.

“This is a world in which time is not fluid, parting to make way for events. Instead, time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past. Every action, every thought, every breath of wind, every flight of birds is completely determined, forever.”

This world explores the concept of predeterminism at the most extreme. In this world, free will doesn’t exist, and the population is aware of this. They can be tortured by this realization, or they can use it as an excuse for bad behavior. Because they have no free will, people are free to be without guilt or concern for their futures, which is a liberating phenomenon rather than a confining, stifling one. This world starkly contrasts with others that challenge the idea of free will in worlds where the future is known.

“For time is like the light between two mirrors. Time bounces back and forth, producing an infinite number of images, of melodies, of thoughts. It is a world of countless copies.”

In this dreamworld, Einstein is the unnamed human character who experiences countless images of himself and views his thoughts multiplied. His waking life leaps into his dreams, as his discontent in his marriage is a thought that repeats infinitely. Here, Einstein’s life invades his dream, whereas most often his dreams invade his waking life.

“But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just an illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought?”

Einstein’s dreamworlds can be broken into groups of similar worlds and analyzed together. In this world where the past can change, Einstein inspects the permanence of time. If the past can change, then it has no permanence and is altered by the environment. This world is similar to the world where time is like a river that sometimes is changed by outside forces, casting people into the future. They worry that they’ll change the future, suggesting again that the timeline is impermanent.

“Indeed, each man and each woman desired a bird. Because this flock of nightingales is time. Time flutters and fidgets and hops with these birds. Trap one of these nightingales beneath a bell jar and time stops.”

In this world, time is something that can be trapped. This world is similar to the worlds where time halts at the core, and people are free to freeze their lives at certain moments of beauty. These two worlds demonstrate how humans might want to alter time. These are the most extreme worlds that attempt to trap and preserve time, but this category also includes the world where people live on mountaintops to gain extra seconds and the world where people rush about because speed slows time.

“Einstein gives her his manuscript, his theory of time. It is six minutes past eight. He walks to the desk, glances at the stack of files, goes over to the bookshelf, and starts to remove one of the notebooks. He turns and walks back to the window.”

Einstein is aware of the mechanical time, the exact measurable, quantifiable moment that he submits his hard-fought thesis to the typist. However, he’s also aware of how time is passing as a quality. It lags and drags and feels heavy because Einstein feels heavy. His perception of time makes time move slower. This suggests that Einstein learned from his dreamworlds and during his waking hours thinks about the investigations that his dreams revealed.