Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:49:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Alexander Friedmann & the dialectical Universe




Although various scholars questioned the validity of Newton's theory of a
static universe of infinite extent since his death in 1727,  his notion that
space and time were absolute was not seriously undermined until the
publication of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.    The
Special Theory was concerned with bodies in uniform motion,  and ten years
later Einstein published the General Theory dealing with bodies in
accelerated motion.    The cosmological consequences of the General Theory
were profound,  culminating a few years later in the work of Soviet
mathematician Alexander A Friedmann (1888-1925),  who discovered the
solution of Einstein's equations which predicted that the Universe was
expanding.

The decade following the publication of Einstein's General Theory embraces
many of the most remarkable features of astronomical history.    Although
the Special Theory of 1905 made a belief in the absolute nature of time and
space untenable,  it did not influence the conception that the Universe was
of infinite extent and that the velocities of the stars and other bodies in
the Universe were small compared with the velocity of light.    Einstein's
cosmological solution of the General Theory did not predict a static
universe,  and since he believed this to be essential,  he introduced an
arbitrary constant (the cosmological constant).    With a positive value of
this constant he found a solution to the equations specifying a universe
with uniform density of matter,  random velocities zero,  and with space so
curved that it was unbounded but finite.

These cosmological conclusions of Einstein were published in 1917.   Of
course,  the First World War,  the Russian Revolution and the blockade of
Soviet Russia had all but cut off the flow of scientific literature from the
West,  and it was some years before news of the General Theory of Relativity
reached Russian scientists.   When it did,  according to his biographers,
Friedmann was "overwhelmed with its broad scope,  its simple and clear
theoretical basis,  its elegant mathematical apparatus" (Eduard Tropp,
Viktor Frenkel and Arthur Chernin,  *Alexander A Friedmann: the man who made
the universe expand* [Cambridge, 1994: Cambridge University Press]).   

In 1922, Friedmann published the first study of general relativity to appear
in Russia.   In this he revealed that through thr basis of the General
Theory the structure of the Universe as a whole had for the first time
become the object of exact scientific study.    He explained how the nature
of time and space was linked,  in the new theory, with the distribution and
motion of gravitating masses in the Universe.    Friedmann himself became a
rising star in the lexicon of embryonic Soviet science,  and Lenin himself
was heard to remark that "we will soon understand these questions--Friedmann
has set out to master the theory of relativity".     Indeed,  within three
years,  Friedmann had discovered and published the class of general
solutions to Einstein's equations and had established the formal
mathematical basis for the expanding universe.  

Einstein himself was initially skeptical of his colleagues findings and said
so,  terming them "suspicious".   A year later,  convinced of the validity
of Friedmann's work,  he withdrew his criticism.    Indeed,  Friedmann's
solutions were correct; in particular,  his theoretical conclusions that the
Universe must be expanding were brilliantly verified within a few years when
Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) discovered the nature of the nebulae;  that there
was a cosmic expansion of the Universe at very high velocity and that this
velocity of expansion increased linearly with the distance of the galaxy.
Subsequently the solutions of Friedmann and the observations of Hubble
formed the basis of all cosmological investigations,  culminating today in
the almost unanimous belief of scientists that the Universe began as a big
bang some ten to fifteen billion years ago.    

Friedmann is known and honored in the West for his cosmological studies.
His reputation in the Soviet Union took a less positive turn after his death
in 1925,  though today *friedmon* is the name given by Soviet science to
that hypothetical fundamental particle that could explain the origin of mass
and the basic forces of nature.   By 1935,  ten years following his death,
the development of cosmology in the Soviet Union took an unfavorable course.
It first of all accumulated politically unpopular friends like Fredericks
and Bronshtein,  traditionalists in the fields of physics and cosmology
respectively.    They did not survive Stalin's purges.   Later supporters of
the expanding Universe theory were branded "Lemaltre's agents" after the
Belgian Jesuit priest  Georges Lemaltre whose theory of the primeval
atom--its disintegration was the beginning of the expansion of the
universe--was denounced as "idealist" and anti-dialectical by official
Soviet science.     

Friedmann's theories themselves did not fare well following Stalin's "Left
Turn" in 1928.   Boris Hessen,  whose seminal essay on Newton at the famed
1931 International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in
London (containing sections like "The Class Struggle During the English
Revolution and Newton's Philosophic Outlook"),  created a sensation in
England,  failed later to successfully convince his superiors at Moscow
University on the question of the Marxist status of Einstein's and
Friedmann's formulas.   Hessen simply vanished in 1934.    He is presumed to
have died in the Purges (P.G. Wersky,  "Introduction",  in Joseph Needham,
et al,  *Science at the Crossroads* [London,  1971: Frank Cass]).
Specifically,  Friedmann's linking of time and space with the distribution
and motion of gravitating masses was denounced as idealist and positivist in
1933.   And his explanations of Einstein's of space-time qualities
(dependent on the characteristic features of the movement of
matter--"slowing" of time, "curving" of space,  etc.) were criticized as
anti-dialectical and revisionist.    

The Friedmann episode speaks volumes about the state of dialectical thinking
that emerged from a country riven by famine,  revolution, civil war,
fearful interruptions from without and the ever present burden of bringing
an anti-scientific feudal empire into the modern age.   Only after the
defeat of Fascism and,  subsequently,  the death of Stalin in 1953,  did the
evolution of dialectical theory in Soviet Russia fully embrace Einstein's
theories of relativity and the pioneering work of A.A.  Friedmann,   who
contributed mightily to their fruition.

Louis Godena



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