Page:The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought.djvu/31

Rh to any particular locality. We might equally well start our flat map with its centre in Greenland; then it would be found that journeys there were quite normal, and that the activities of the demon were disturbing travellers in Europe. We now recognize that the true explanation is that the earth's surface is curved; and the demoniacal complications appeared because we were forcing the earth's surface into an inappropriate flat frame which distorts the simplicity of things.

What has happened in the case of the earth has happened also in the case of the world, and a similar revolution of thought is needed. An observer, say at the centre of the earth, finds that there is a frame of space and time—a flat or Euclidean frame—in which he can locate things happening in his neighbourhood without distorting their natural simplicity. There is no gravitation, no tendency of bodies to fall, so long as the observer confines his observations to his immediate neighbourhood. He extends this frame of space and time to greater distances, and ultimately to the earth's surface where he encounters the phenomenon of falling apples. This new phenomenon must be accounted for, so he invents a deus ex machina which he calls gravitation to whose activities the disturbance is attributed. But we have seen that we may just as well start with the falling apple. It has a flat frame of space and time into which phenomena in its neighbourhood fit without distortion; and from its point of view bodies near it do not undergo any acceleration. But when it extends this frame farther afield, the simplicity is lost; and it too has to postulate the demon force of gravitation existing in distant parts, and for example causing undisturbed objects at the centre of the earth to fall towards it. As we change from one observer to another—from one flat space-time frame to another—so we have to change the