Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Philosophy
Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000
Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Relativity (Physics)
[From what we have said of the reality of observations it follows that
we must support that school of psychology, and the parallel school
of philosophy, which hold that concepts originate in perceptions. But
this does not impose so strong a restriction upon conceptions as might
appear. The elements of all our concepts do come to us from outside;
we manufacture nothing out of whole cloth. But when perception
has supplied a sufficient volume of raw material, we may group its
elements in ways foreign to actual occurrence in the perceptual world,
and in so doing get conceptual results so entirely different from
what we have consciously perceived that we are strongly tempted to
look upon them as having certainly been manufactured in our minds
without reference to the externals. Of even more significance is our
ability to abstract from concrete objects and concrete incidents the
essential features which make them alike and different. But unlike
the Greeks, we see that our concept of coldness is not something with
which we were endowed from the beginning, but merely an abstraction
from concrete experiences with concrete objects that have been cold.
THE CONCEPTS OF SPACE AND TIME
When we have formed the abstract ideas of coldness and warmth, and
have had experience indicating that the occurrence of these properties
varies in degree, we are in a position to form the secondary abstract
notion covered by the word "temperature." When we have formed the
abstract ideas of size and position and separation, we are similarly
in a position to form a secondary abstraction to which we give the name
"space." Not quite so easy to trace to its definite source but none the
less clearly an abstraction based on experience, is our idea of what
we call "time." None of us are deceived as to the reality of these
abstractions.]* [We do not regard space as real in the sense that
we regard a chair as real; it is merely an abstract idea convenient
for the location of material objects like the chair.]198 [Nor do we
regard time as real in this sense. Things occupy space, events occupy
time; space and time themselves we realize are immaterial and unreal;
space does not exist and time does not happen in the same sense that
material objects exist and events occur. But we find it absolutely
necessary to have, among the mental machinery mentioned above as
the apparatus by aid of which we keep track of the external world,
these vessels for that world to exist in and move in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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