Heidegger and science

The great things about youtube is the occaisonal gem: one such is Martin Heidegger on physics.

There was an old canard about i the 50's that relativity was understood by only a handful of physicists.

In Heidegger's moth this becomes quiet different: it begins with his notion that the new way to thinking can be followed by only a few - but that is reaaly not so unusual.  To dispel the notion that this elete might result from mere obscurantism he offers his listener the case of the radio "Apparat" and the television "Apparat".  You will be surprised to learn that these both required relativity - and that the physics underlying both is under stood by only 5 or 6 physicists.

Perhaps he meant only 5 ot 6 philosophers.  Let's see: 1964 ... Hermann Weyl had died in 1955; Paul Valéry had dies in 1945; Einstein had dies in 1955; Cassirer had dies in 1955; Hans Reichenbach in 1953 - maybe Heidegger was right!  Death had taken them all!  But Russell of the ABC's lived until 1970 - and Grunbaum on space-time came out in '63 in English - and was fundamentally mistaken on the relativism of any space-time metric ... so that leaves Feynman, Bethe, Gell-Mann -- no, what about John Wheeler, 1962 - oops, in English.  Besides he may have meant physicists in Bavaria or even physicists known to have praised Heidegger's thought-experiments in the philosphy of time ...

What I really hope is that he heard it from Husserl who was only having some fun at Heidegger's expense.