During one of those great, wide-ranging talks with a friend this morning the subject of the speed of light and and its relation to the theory of relativity came up. When I came home I saw this explanation of relativity in a Jon Carroll classic from 1996:
"Then came Einstein. He said that space and time were the same thing. You're not really late for dinner, you're just in the wrong place -- see how easy that is? Einstein's idea received plaudits and kudos, back when a kudos was worth something." [emphasis mine throughout]
Better than Bertrand Russell, right?
The best (both good and short) explanation that I've seen of the speed of light/relativity business is in Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man on pages 245-256 -- good illustrations, too. The book was published as an accompaniment to Bronowski's superb multipart television series of the same name. (Boston: Little Brown, c1973).
We also covered science vs. belief, so I mentioned books by John Allen Paulos, a mathematician who writes for non-mathematicians. One of his techniques: good analogies and references to things the reader already understands.
Here's a quote from his Innumeracy , the section on probability (p. 51): "Consider the statement: 'Whatever God wills, happens.' People may be able to take solace from it, but it's clear that the statement is not falsifiable and hence, as the English philosopher Karl Popper has insisted, not part of science." (New York: Hill and Wang, c1988)
And here, from p. 234 of my pers. favorite, his Beyond Numeracy , the first paragraph of the article on Symmetry and Invariance brings it back home: "From the Greeks' preoccupation with balance, harmony and order to Einstein's insistence that the laws of physics should remain invariant for all observers , these ideas have vivified much of the best work in mathematics and mathematical physics." (New York: Knopf, 1991)
Ah! a really good little warmup. Now I'm ready to start my day.
12:08:14 PM 
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