Page:The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought.djvu/17

Rh have a great complication of description which has no counterpart in anything occurring in the external world; because the terms of our description refer to the irrelevant process of fitting into the selected frame of space and time. This elaborate Copernican scheme rather reminds one of the schemes of the White Knight—

We do not deny the subtlety and the remarkable efficiency of the plan; but we may be allowed to question whether it is the simplest interpretation of the drab monotony of the face of nature presented to us. The simple fact is that a terrestrial or Ptolemaic frame fits naturally the terrestrial phenomena, and a solar or Copernican frame fits the phenomena of the solar system; but we cannot make one frame serve for both without introducing irrelevant complications.

We go beyond Copernicus nowadays, and are not content with a visit to the sun. Why choose the sun rather than some other star in order to obtain an undistorted view of things? The astronomer now places himself so as to travel with the centre of gravity of the stellar universe, and is not even then quite satisfied. The physicist dreams of a land of Weissnichtwo, which shall be truly at rest in the ether. We realize the distortion imported into the world of nature by the parochial standpoint from which we observe it, and we try to place ourselves so as to eliminate this distortion—so as to observe that which actually is. But it is a vain pursuit. Wherever we pitch our camera, the photograph is necessarily a two-dimensional picture distorted according to the laws of perspective; it is never a true semblance of the building itself.