Time and Space in a Single Package

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. Time and Space in a Single Package

Time and Space in a Single Package

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 [99]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 [100]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 in playing it for himself.

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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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