Page:The Foundations of Science (1913).djvu/246

228 the equations of mechanics may be as simple as possible. In other words, there is not one way of measuring time more true than another; that which is generally adopted is only more convenient. Of two watches, we have no right to say that the one goes true, the other wrong; we can only say that it is advantageous to conform to the indications of the first.

The difficulty which has just occupied us has been, as I have said, often pointed out; among the most recent works in which it is considered, I may mention, besides M. Calinon’s little book, the treatise on mechanics of Andrade.

The second difficulty has up to the present attracted much less attention; yet it is altogether analogous to the preceding; and even, logically, I should have spoken of it first.

Two psychological phenomena happen in two different consciousnesses; when I say they are simultaneous, what do I mean? When I say that a physical phenomenon, which happens outside of every consciousness, is before or after a psychological phenomenon, what do I mean?

In 1572, Tycho Brahe noticed in the heavens a new star. An immense conflagration had happened in some far distant heavenly body; but it had happened long before; at least two hundred years were necessary for the light from that star to reach our earth. This conflagration therefore happened before the discovery of America. Well, when I say that; when, considering this gigantic phenomenon, which perhaps had no witness, since the satellites of that star were perhaps uninhabited, I say this phenomenon is anterior to the formation of the visual image of the isle of Española in the consciousness of Christopher Columbus, what do I mean?

A little reflection is sufficient to understand that all these affirmations have by themselves no meaning. They can have one only as the outcome of a convention.

We should first ask ourselves how one could have had the idea of putting into the same frame so many worlds impenetrable to