New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington.

  • Eddington, Arthur Stanley, Sir, 1882-1944.
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: New pathways in science / by Sir Arthur Eddington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the most part we give an intellectual assent to this conclusion without attempting to weave it into our famihar conception; but we can picture it if we try. In Rossetti’s poem the Blessed Damosel looked down from the golden balcony of Heaven across The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge. Looking from the abode of truth, perfect truth alone can enter her mind. She must see the earth as it really is—like a whirUng insect. But now let us try her with something fairly modem. In Einstein’s theory the earth, like other matter, is a curvamre of space-time, and what we commonly call the spin of the earth is the ratio of two of the components of curvature. What is the Blessed Damosel to make of that? I am afraid she will have to be a bit of a blue-stocking. Perhaps there is no great harm in that. I am not sure that I would think it derogatory to an angel to accuse him of understanding Einstein’s theory. My objection is more serious. If the Blessed Damosel sees the earth in the Ein- steinian way she will be seeing truly—I can feel little doubt as to that—but she will be missing the point. It is as though we took her to an art gallery, and she (with that painful truthfulness which cannot recognise anything that is not really there) saw ten square yards of yellow paint, five of crimson, and so on. So long as physics in tinkering with the familiar world was able to retain those aspects which appeal to the aesthetic side of our nature, it might with some show of reason make claim to cover the whole of experience; and those who claimed that there was another, rehgious aspect of our existence had to fight for their claim. But now that its picture omits so much that is obviously significant, there is no suggestion that it is the whole truth about experience. To make such a claim would bring protest not only from