Einstein, asking questions about light, was however forced to stop looking at the world before him, or to stop looking at it with his eyes. When you look at the world you are of course examining it through subjective windows. Not only is what you see affected by your personal ideological world view, it is also affected by what you perceive the world to be like. You are always in your own frame of reference, and so how do you know that other frames exist?

“The arguments by which Einstein developed relativity are not mathematically difficult, but in order to follow them one must follow logic even when it seems to contradict common sense.....Good thinking usually moves forward on two legs, with logic and intuition, both playing their part. “

(Robert H. March Physics for Poets)

So Einstein hopped. And in hopping discovered relativity. And by hopping explained the world, not by seeing with his eyes, but with his mind. Theoretical trains spun from this mind, travelling out at almost light speed and changing the tracks of Science forever (or until they are disproved.) And so we have it.

Why is he right and Newton wrong? Why should we believe in a world that is not what we see? Why should a big car fit in a small garage? Why should we believe some crazy haired German who was really a patent examiner not a scientist? And so the questions keep coming. Why did we think they would not?

“So isn’t it obvious how general relativity supplanted Newton’s theory of gravitation? General relativity explained one old anomaly, the excess precession of Mercury’s orbit, and it successfully predicted a striking new effect, the deflection of light by the sun. What more need be said?”

(Steven Weinberg Dreams Of A Final Theory.)

And so he answered questions. The imaginings of this hopping (though not hopping mad) man answered questions. And the questions had answers that did not contradict our eyes.

And so to more questions, or rather to my questions. What is common sense? My answer is; it is the sense that is most common. Which is to say that most people have this sense. In a sense it is something that masquerades as logic, but is not logic, or when logic contradicts this common sense we throw it out (and if our German friend had done so we would not know why Mercury is out of time with the dancing of the planets.) Common sense is what we call the things that we think. We all have that in common, we like to think we think sense. So it is common sense that as there are more poor than rich, theoretically they have the power to overthrow their dictators. Of course this is a nonsense but so is much common sense. The problem with this piece of common sense is that it is idealised and unobservant of human nature: the poor don’t know or care about all that, they are to busy trying to get by.

And so to the point. Or this point. Or the point relevant to relativity. To our frame of reference. Common sense says that something cannot be one length to one person and another length to another person, one person must be wrong (mustn't they?). Common sense says that clocks can’t run at different times, especially not good, scientific ones (we’re not talking the digital ones which even if you set them at the same time and stay still, still, it seems to me, run at different speeds. Maybe this is because I buy £5 watches.) Common sense says a car cannot fit inside a closed garage if it is bigger than the garage. Common sense says that a watched pot must boil (and so we see that anyone who is impatient is half way to relativity, my clock runs slower than other peoples all the time).

Another question (why not?). Why is relativity counter-intuitive? One we have touched on before (Question: Is this essay well planned. Answer: I think he planned it this way [didn’t he?]) The answer: Because it goes against what your intuition says. A less smart Alec answer: Because what we see is not what is real, it is what we see, and so our intuition (a concept we invented to explain reality away without having to confront it) must be ignored if we are to look at the world through Einstein's gedanken experimenten. An answer with more academic weight:

“This is the very essence of relativity: we never see remote objects as they are now, only as they were some time ago. If they are moving, one must correct for this motion, and there is no one unique correct way to do this. The “slice in time” - an extended region of space all at the same instant in time - is a fiction, a construct of the human mind that does not correspond exactly to the way we actually experience reality.”

(Robert H. March Physics for Poets.)

And so shock horror. And so outrage. Another fiction joins the petty fictions we construct for our lives: Justice is fair, Humans are noble, all men are equal under god, I never loved her really, our frame of reference isn’t the same as that person speeding past in a space time train. This fiction is a true science fiction (in that it is fictional science) but in earth fiction terms it is a harmless fiction as the world pretty much corresponds to how we see it. If I get a train to London after synchronising (though relativity shows us that synchronisation is a fiction) my watch with a Londoner who cares if they are no longer the same time, both watches still read 5.45pm. Nanoseconds can’t really harm you. No one is ever penalised for being 10 nanoseconds late for a meeting. No one ever has to use the excuse: “Sorry I forgot that moving clocks run slow, next time I’ll leave 10 nanoseconds earlier.” And so why bother? Well we’re fine for now maybe, but what of when we are all travelling to Andromeda on the space-time bus in 3001? Science must try to deal with reality and not fiction or how can we progress? And anyway scientists love relativity - do we really want to deprive them of there complicated sums and space ships just to preserve a fiction?

“What Einstein is saying is that we can go on using this fiction, but must recognise it for what it is, and allow that different observers may construct it differently.”

(Robert H. March Physics for Poets.)

And have science fictions existed before? In ancient times the world was flat (or so common sense suggested.) And without the ability to travel far did it matter that we believed it to be so? No, but if we had not eventually believed those hopping dissenters who spoke of spheres would we have discovered America? (I bet the Indians are happy we finally moved with the times.) And so to ancient Greece. And so to Aristotle. And what goes around comes around. A man like Einstein, rejecting the obvious visual world for a world of complicated answers. A round world where we look not just at straight lines but at curves (later curves in space time, much later.) And so to Aristotle who believed in elements over atoms and set back the world of science no end. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so to Plato who because of Aristotle's spheres gave us ridiculous (to us) deferents and epicyles to make his theories fit. And so its more complicated than we thought. And so Kepler and elliptical orbits. And so to Newton who filled in Kepler’s blanks with gravitation. And so to Einstein who shows us Newton got it wrong, or nearly got it right, and Newton's laws are changed (though still intact.) And so to Minkowkski who filled in Einstein’s blanks with the fourth dimension. And so on to the top of Everest (but that comes later). And so on till finally the laws can’t be changed (or the universe ends, or begins again, or begins.)

And so to question number three (Is it time to phone a friend? Has anyone got Einstein's number?) Can your common sense be educated? And so again back to basics. Justice is fair (by its nature, it’s common sense) but when moving through the world and observing its ways education produces the new premise: Justice is blind (though my educated common sense tells me that both are lies). Observation will make us realise that the watched pot never boils (though perhaps we should have believed our sense the first time.) My common sense has been educated by learning of relativity. Another question: is there such a thing as common sense or are there just questions? Maybe we use common sense to rationalise our wish not to move with the times (William Hague still believes the world to be flat, at least before he quaffs his fictional ales, when he is still thinking in common sense [ The Sun is big on common sense].)

Or to put it another way, surely it's common sense to question everything, and always be suspicious of your own eyes. How often do we jump into the deep end when common sense tells us we will drown because our eyes don’t appreciate the depth of the pool? Maybe what we call common sense must be educated away (distilled) to real common sense. And so once more back to this frame of reference: In order to understand relativity we must educate our common sense, as some people do understand it, it must therefore be possible to do this. Even my common sense has reached a basic grasp of the principles.

...for
this
is
not
the
end...

...and so to Drawings Of Relativity

                                                
				Sometimes
				All I have
				Ever done
				Feels like
				Only
				Drawings
				Of
				Her.

				When you move
				You don’t move.
				Travelling distance
				Is only travelling
				Through time.
				You stay still
				The world moves.
				It’s all to do
				With frames
				Of Reference.

				In my frame
				Looking back,
				For ever
				Lost.
				Only
				Drawings
				Of
				Her.

				Call and response
				Which came first?
				Travelling so fast
				Can’t see behind,
				Past time.
				I don’t remember
				Calling you.
				It’s all to do
				With ways
				Of forgetting.

				Suddenly
				It came to me,
				Moving backwards
				Without looking
				Back:
				Romance
				Is
				Dead.

				Silently
				It occurred to me
				I never want,
				Want to go
				Back:
				My Romance
				Is
				Dead.

				But still,
				My thoughts,
				Moving backwards
				Forwards become
				The back.
				It’s all
				Turned
				On its head.

				All I am:
				Only
				Drawings
				Of
				Her.
				Only Drawings.
				Only Her.
				Only Drawings Of Her.

and so for normality to continue.... where is the point? And so why poetry? And so maybe (though when I wrote it I had never thought of it) perhaps we are all drawings of her. And so maybe the her is not my past love but relativity itself. And so cut the bullshit and say what you mean.

The question(s) are about how we see the world. About how relativity is not what we see but what is (or so they say.) And the point? Can a car (a super relativity car) be both bigger than and fit into a garage simultaneously (is the garage paradox a strangely unscientific term?) We have two drawings and we know that both are correct. Is this reality?