Most blogs have a recurrent feature, like a weekly post on music or a book review. On my old blog I used to post photos, but since I’m working for anonymity here, I’ve got to forgo that one. So I’m going to try out the “discussion post” trope, in part because it ironizes the quiet around here.
So.
I’m reading up on relativity for the diss. Mr. Wizard is helpful here partly because he understands and can teach basic physics, and partly because he can vet the book pile, leaving me with things that I have some hope of understanding. I’m not a bad feminist (i.e. “girls? they can’t do science!”), but I am cognizant of my personal limitations, one of which is an inability to grasp certain mathematical concepts. Example: remember number lines, those cardboard numbered strips they gave you in first grade to help you understand addition and subtraction? I never got the point of those. I could do the math in my head, but when I tried to use the number line, I screwed it up. I’ve got some obvious strengths, and I’ve got some obvious weaknesses. My dissertation topic demands that I dip into both pools of knowledge and skills, partly because I enjoy a good challenge.
This brings us to today’s topic for discussion. Wizard hooked me up with an introductory book on relativity called Relativity for the Million by Martin Gardner, published in 1962. Yes, it’s old, but the basics of the science haven’t changed much since then (so I’m told), this is an intro for general audiences (and so avoids the larger theoretical complications I can’t handle right now), and…there are pictures. I started reading last night, and so far, so good. But let me offer this quote from the intro for discussion:
I have resisted the temptation to add a final chapter on the philosophical consequences of relativity because I believe that, in the ordinary sense of the word ‘philosophical’, relativity has no consequences. For the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science it obviously has implications…. But so far as the great traditional topics of philosophy are concerned–God, immortality, free will, good and evil, and so on–relativity has absolutely nothing to say.
Emphases above are mine, marking what represents for me a nearly unsayable assertion. Partly because I am trained in postmodern theory, it would never occur to me to say that any theory has absolutely no consequences. Now, I’m not arguing that scientific relativity leads to moral relativity or some such thing. No no no. I’m not so concerned with what those consequences would be as I am with the fact that someone (a clearly very competent someone) would assume there would be none.
Thoughts? Discuss.
