Physics vs. Metaphysics

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Physics vs. Metaphysics

Physics vs. Metaphysics

[The ideas of relativity may seem, at first sight, to be giving us a new and metaphysical theory of [110]time and space. New, doubtless; but certainly the theory was meant by its author to be quite the opposite of metaphysical. Our actual perception of space is by measurement, real and imagined, of distances between objects, just as our actual perception of time is by measurement. Is it not less metaphysical to accept space and time as our measurements present them to us, than to invent hypotheses to force our perceptual space into an absolute space that is forever hidden from us?]182 [In order not to be metaphysical, we must eliminate our preconceived notions of space and time and motion, and focus our attention upon the indications of our instruments of observation, as affording the only objective manifestations of these qualities and therefore the only attributes which we can consider as functions of observed phenomena.]47 [Einstein has consistently followed the teachings of experience, and completely freed himself from metaphysics.]114 [That this is not always easy to do is clear, I think, if we will recall the highly metaphysical character often taken by the objections to action-at-a-distance theories and concepts; and if we will remind ourselves that it was on purely metaphysical grounds that Newton refused to countenance Huyghens’ wave theory of light. Whether, as in the one case, it leads us to valid conclusions, or, as in the other, to false ones, metaphysical reasoning is something to avoid. Einstein, I think, has avoided it about as thoroughly as anyone ever did.]*

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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