Relativity
Last night’s discussion on Relativity Theory was rousing and wide ranging. It is remarkable that a group of fourteen adults, each with an individual history, different levels and types of education, and widely varied interests– would have the ability to discuss Einstein’s great work, with substantial understanding. It is also remarkable that differences in view point are managed without sliding into emotive and violent language. Perhaps that is the greatest accomplishment of the evening.
A comment was made by a participant that one variant of the theory, I do not remember whether the reference was to special relativity or to general relativity,—boiled down to common sense. I was shocked by the comment, and chose not to say anything in response. To my mind the insights entailed in Einstein’s work is anything but common sense. I think the two part theory shatters the common sensical view of reality. Reality is dancing around us, and our view point is a non absolute freeze frame of the dance. The solid table surface upon which my computer rests, is almost entirely an empty field space, occupied by electrons and nuclei creating the illusion of solidity by their opposing forces. Certainly I will never regard this as common sense.
I came upon this statement about common sense in the book I am now reading.
Common Sense
is a self-deceptive apologia
for thoughtlessness
and vulgarity,
a collection of
dead metaphors.
Truths are the skeletons
which remain
after the capacity
to arouse the senses
has been rubbed off
by familiarity and long usage.
After the scales
are rubbed off a butterfly’s wing,
you have transparency
but not beauty.
Ideas so clear and distinct
you can look right through them.
—Richard Rorty
excerpt, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
4 thoughts on “Relativity”
Actually I don’t believe in common sense since if there was such a thing we would all think alike. But understanding the meaning of the term I would speculate if one understand relativity theory it would be common sense to that person.
Common sense is a word that we all use. I do not think it applies well at all to Einstein’s work and that of Bohr in Quantum Mechanics. Even those who get the math, have confessed that it’s not common sense.
The world is flat! A true WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Now that’s common sense based on the perspective of a viewer stuck in one spot as most of civilization was for millennia. A flat world made perfect sense and there would be no reason why that person would ever want to think anything else? What difference would a round world have made to that person’s agrarian life? (Hint – Zilch is the correct answer).
Common to the widest sensibility that rises from the reigning zeitgeist of the time. Many of us are little different than our ancestors in that regard. What they believed, we believe. I think that one never dispenses with common sense. One just adds ancillary paradigms. Your mind comes to resemble a Swiss Army Knife.