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)
Our old, accustomed concepts of time and space, which have grown
up through countless generations of our ancestors, and been handed
down to us in the form in which we are familiar with them, leave no
room for a condition where time intervals and space intervals are
not universally fixed and invariant. They leave no room for us to
say that]* [one cannot know the time until he knows where he is,
nor where he is until he knows the time,]220 [nor either time or
place until he knows something about velocity. But in this concise
formulation of the difference between what we have always believed
and what we have seen to be among the consequences of Einstein's
postulates of the universal relativity of uniform motion, we may
at once locate the assumption which, underlying all the old ideas,
is the root of all the trouble. The fact is we have always supposed
time and space to be absolutely distinct and independent entities.]*
[The concept of time has ever been one of the most absolute of all
the categories. It is true that there is much of the mysterious about
time; and philosophers have spent much effort trying to clear up
the mystery--with unsatisfactory results. However, to most persons
it has seemed possible to adopt an arbitrary measure or unit of
duration and to say that this is absolute, independent of the state
of the body or bodies on which it is used for practical purposes.]272
[Time has thus been regarded as something which of itself flows on
regularly and continuously, regardless of physical events concerning
matter.]150 [In other words, according to this view, time is not
affected by conditions or motions in space.]272 [We have deliberately
chosen to ignore the obvious fact that time can never appear to us,
be measured by us, or have the least significance for us, save as
a measure of something that is closely tied up with space and with
material space-dimensions. Not merely have we supposed that time and
space are separated in nature as in our easiest perceptions, but we
have supposed that they are of such fundamentally distinct character
that they can never be tied up together. In no way whatever, assumes
the Euclidean and Newtonian intellect, may space ever depend upon
time or time upon space. This is the assumption which we must remove
in order to attain universal relativity; and while it may come hard,
it will not come so hard as the alternative. For this alternative is
nothing other than to abandon universal relativity. This course would
leave us with logical contradictions and discrepancies that could not
be resolved by any revision of fundamental concepts or by any cleaning
out of the Augean stables of old assumptions; whereas the relativity
doctrine as built up by Einstein requires only such a cleaning out in
order to leave us with a strictly logical and consistent whole. The
rôle of Hercules is a very difficult one for us to play. Einstein
has played it for the race at large, but each of us must follow him
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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