Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Part I Einstein's revolution
- Part II Philosophical progress
- Part III Frontiers
- 17 Faster than light: was Einstein wrong?
- 18 The Big Bang: how did the universe begin?
- 19 Black holes: trapdoors to nowhere
- 20 Why haven't aliens come visiting?
- 21 The inflationary and accelerating universe
- 22 Should we believe the physicists?
- Appendix A Spacetime diagrams
- Appendix B Symmetry and Lorentz's minority interpretation
- Appendix C Simple formulas for special relativity
- Appendix D Websites
- Appendix E Guide to further reading
- Index
22 - Should we believe the physicists?
from Part III - Frontiers
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Part I Einstein's revolution
- Part II Philosophical progress
- Part III Frontiers
- 17 Faster than light: was Einstein wrong?
- 18 The Big Bang: how did the universe begin?
- 19 Black holes: trapdoors to nowhere
- 20 Why haven't aliens come visiting?
- 21 The inflationary and accelerating universe
- 22 Should we believe the physicists?
- Appendix A Spacetime diagrams
- Appendix B Symmetry and Lorentz's minority interpretation
- Appendix C Simple formulas for special relativity
- Appendix D Websites
- Appendix E Guide to further reading
- Index
Summary
It must have been around 1950. I was accompanying Einstein on a walk from The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to his home, when he suddenly stopped, turned to me, and asked me if I really believed that the moon exists only if I look at it. The nature of our discussion was not particularly metaphysical. Rather, we were discussing the quantum theory …
(Abraham Pais, 1982)There is an old debate in philosophy about whether the world outside our minds exists at all. In the early-seventeenth century, Descartes pioneered the new mechanical and geometrical view of material reality in which every event was determined. But he also believed that we each had a soul and that our will was free. Thus he had to insist that matter and the soul were entirely different: the mind-body split was born. Descartes's critics soon pointed out that a soul confined within the “veil of perception” had no direct evidence that its perceptions were true. Perhaps they were mere illusions or some sort of cinematic film projected by God? Bishop Berkeley went so far as to suggest that there are no bodies outside the mind, and that perceptions were the only reality: “to be is to be perceived”. Samuel Johnson thought this was all twaddle. He famously rebutted Berkeley by kicking a stone, as if to say that its reality was painfully obvious.
During the past 30 years, there has been a resurgence of these sorts of questions.
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- Space, Time and EinsteinAn Introduction, pp. 202 - 206Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2002