"What makes writing relativity so tricky is this: Built into ordinary language — in its use of tenses, for example — are many implicit assumptions about the nature of temporal relations that we now know to be false. Most importantly, we have known since 1905 that when you say that two events in different places happen at the same time you are not referring to anything inherent in the events themselves. You are merely adopting a conventional way of locating them that can differ from other equally valid conventional assignments of temporal order which do not have the events happening at the same time."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
N. David Mermin, "Writing Physics" (1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Theory of relativity
34 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Theory of relativity →
Related Quotes
"Riemann has shewn that as there are different kinds of lines and surfaces, so there are different kinds of space of t…"
"I hold in fact (1) That small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which …"
"No mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mech…"
"We may... be treating merely as physical variations effects which are really due to changes in the curvature of our s…"
"The modern theory of relativity, on its mathematical side, is merely an elaboration of Riemann's analysis."
"It is the reciprocity of these appearances—that each party should think the other has contracted—that is so difficult…"
"...The present revolution of scientific thought follows in natural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epoch…"
"If you don't take my words too seriously, I would say this: If we assume that all matter would disappear from the wor…"
"Another topic deserving discussion is Einstein’s modification of Newton’s law of gravitation. In spite of all the exc…"
"[T]he program which Immanuel Kant proposed back in the 1760s... was this: our knowledge of the outside world depends …"