Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time and space in the midst of the World Revolution. History may one day show that these scientific symbols were necessary for the emergence of human consciousness of globalisation as we know it (just as Newtonian science accompanied the displacement of divine monarchical government by parliamentary government in seventeenth-century England). Globalisation in a novel way demonstrates the universalist dimensions of the local and the particular, and the diverse particular, local impacts of universalist norms. Natural manifestations of space (such as continent or hemisphere) and time (such as day and night) for the first time in human history can no longer stop events in one part of the world from having almost instantaneous implications in another part. Single events may give rise to a variety of interpretations and ramifications across a multiplicity of communities.

‘September 11’ is a highly relevant demonstration of this global interconnection, as we have already noted.