The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought

by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

I think that we can without mathematics form a general idea of why Einstein found it necessary to amend Newton's law of gravitation. Let us return to the illustration of the pig, and imagine that we wish to discover the law governing the distribution of fat and lean in the animal. From the breakfast-table standpoint a plausible type of law would be that half of each rasher is fat and the other half lean; and if this turned out to be confirmed very approximately by observation we might well imagine that we had discovered the exact law of porcine structure. But the case is altered if we give up the breakfast-table standpoint and contemplate the animal in a more general way, remembering that he has not been designed with any particular reference to the series of rashers into which our grocer has chosen to slice him. We must now look for a different type of law altogether. Two possibilities may arise. We may find that our proposed law, although expressed in breakfast-table parlance, is nevertheless equivalent to a possible biological law; it may be immediately capable of translation into a more general statement which makes no reference to a particular stratification. But on the other hand, it may happen that the suggested law cannot be freed from this reference to a particular system of slicing. In that case we can only regard it as approximate, perhaps holding fairly well for the slices of which we have most experience but becoming less and less accurate in the more tortuous parts of the animal. Both these cases are illustrated in Einstein's modifications of classical theory. Newton's law of gravitation explicitly refers to a space-time frame and therefore to a world stratified into instantaneous states. It proves to be impossible to free it from this reference to a particular stratification without modifying it. In fact if the crucial astronomical observations had shown that Newton's law and not Einstein's was the exact law of gravitation, this would have been evidence of a real stratification of the structure of the world—a stratification revealed by no other phenomena. Einstein's law is the simpler law because it is consistent with what we now know of the general plan of world-structure; Newton's law could only be made possible by introducing a novel and specialized feature—a stratified arrangement of structure—which is not revealed in any other phenomena.

Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism afford an example of the other type. These, it is true, are stated as relating to the particular slices of the world of events, which are served up to us like rashers instant by instant. But they can be restated, without alteration of effect, in a form making no reference to slices. This is a very remarkable property of Maxwell's equations which was quite unknown at the time they were first put forward. It was brought to light much later by the researches of Larmor and Lorentz. In consequence of this Einstein is able to take over the whole classical theory of electromagnetism unaltered; he restates it so as to show how it applies generally and is not bound up with the purely terrestrial point of view, but he does not amend the laws. He metes out different treatment to the gravitational laws and electromagnetic laws, because he finds the latter already adapted to his scheme.

If I have succeeded in my object, you will have realized that the present revolution of scientific thought follows in natural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epochs in the history of science. Einstein's special theory of relativity, which explains the indeterminateness of the frame of space and time, crowns the work of Copernicus who first led us to give up our insistence on a geocentric outlook on nature; Einstein's general theory of relativity, which reveals the curvature or non-Euclidean geometry of space and time, carries forward the rudimentary thought of those earlier astronomers who first contemplated the possibility that their existence lay on something which was not flat. These earlier revolutions are still a source of perplexity in childhood, which we soon outgrow; and a time will come when Einstein's amazing revelations have likewise sunk into the commonplaces of educated thought.

To free our thought from the fetters of space and time is an aspiration of the poet and the mystic, viewed somewhat coldly by the scientist who has too good reason to fear the confusion of loose ideas likely to ensue. If others have had a suspicion of the end to be desired, it has been left to Einstein to show the way to rid ourselves of these 'terrestrial adhesions to thought'. And in removing our fetters he leaves us, not (as might have been feared) vague generalities for the ecstatic contemplation of the mystic, but a precise scheme of world-structure to engage the mathematical physicist.

[1]The only alternative is that (relatively to a solar observer) the velocity of light differs in different directions, at least in the region where the experiment is conducted. This would presumably be due to some influence of the moving earth on the propagation of light (convection of the ether). This explanation was at one time favoured, but it could not be reconciled with the observed phenomena of the aberration of light.

[2]The relativity theory does not suggest that there is such a thing in nature as a four-dimensional space. The whole object of the recognition of the four-dimensional world is to eliminate the harassing frame of space.

[3]The inclination must not exceed a certain limit. This limiting angle may be regarded as a fundamental constant of the world-structure, and owing to its fundamental character it appears in many kinds of phenomena; for example, it determines the velocity of propagation of light. The instant on the sun which is simultaneous with a given instant on the earth is indeterminate (varying according to the space and time frame employed) but only within a range of 16 minutes. Any event on the sun happening before this 16 minutes is absolutely in the past, all observers agreeing on this point; in fact it would be possible for us to have already received a wireless message announcing its occurrence. Events after the 16 minutes are in the absolute future. The neutral zone which is (absolutely) neither past nor future becomes proportionately wider as the distance increases; at the nearest fixed star it extends to 8 years, and at the most distant stars yet known it reaches 400,000 years.

[4]The three events must not be at the same place since that would give a time-line not a triangle. The clock must move so that the two events whose time-distance is to be determined both happen where it is, just as the scale must be directed so that the two points fall on it. You are not allowed to 'bend' the clock, i. e. apply force so as to make it move with other than uniform velocity, any more than you are allowed to bend the scale by applying force.

[5]Of course, it is not true that any two sides are less than the third side. A clock, unlike a scale, can only measure in one direction, viz. from past to future, so that the sides AB + BC and AC can be chosen in only one way.

[6]This involves only a comparatively trifling generalization of Euclidean geometry, not to be confused with the 'non-Euclidean' geometry introduced later in the lecture.