Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/44

28 to the other; and there is nothing to help us to decide which is right.

I think that no one can contemplate these results without feeling that the whole strangeness must arise from something perverse and inappropriate in our ordinary point of view. Changes go on on a planet, all nicely balanced by adjustments of natural forces, in such a way that no one on the planet can possibly detect what is taking place. Can we seriously imagine that there is anything in the reality behind the phenomena, which reflects these changes? Is it not more probable that we ourselves introduce the complexity, because our method of description is not well-adapted to give a simple and natural statement of what is really occurring?

The search for a more appropriate apparatus of description leads us to the standpoint of relativity described in the next chapter. I draw a distinction between the principle and the standpoint of relativity. The principle of relativity is a statement of experimental fact, which may be right or wrong; the first part of it—the restricted principle—has already been enunciated. Its consequences can be deduced by mathematical reasoning, as in the case of any other scientific generalization. It postulates no particular mechanism of nature, and no particular view as to the meaning of time and space, though it may suggest theories on the subject. The only question is whether it is experimentally true or not.

The standpoint of relativity is of a different character. It asserts first that certain unproved hypotheses as to time and space have insensibly crept into current physical theories, and that these are the source of the difficulties described above. Now the most dangerous hypotheses are those which are tacit and unconscious. So the standpoint of relativity proposes tentatively to do without these hypotheses (not making any others in their place); and it discovers that they are quite unnecessary and are not supported by any known fact. This in itself appears to be sufficient justification for the standpoint. Even if at some future time facts should be discovered which confirm the rejected hypotheses, the relativist is not wrong in reserving them until they are required.

It is not our policy to take shelter in impregnable positions;