Everything is relative....
_There seems to be very little doubt about that statement. We can’t
just “move”; we must move in relation to something else. This brings
us to the question of “relativity” and Einstein. And in the matter of
gravitation. It is very likely that no one will ever know what it is.
Acceleration may increase our apparent weight; inertia may do the same,
but neither is gravitation. But let Dr. Breuer talk for himself. Unless
we very much miss our guess, “The Gostak and the Doshes” is going to
create a lot of “distimming.” But be sure to read the story when your
mind is thoroughly clear and rested. There will be a marked difference
in your reaction._
Let the reader suppose that somebody states: _“The gostak distims the
doshes.”_ You do not know what this means, nor do I. But if we assume
that it is English, we know that the _doshes_ are _distimmed_ by the
_gostak_. We know that one _distimmer_ of the _doshes_ is a _gostak_.
If, moreover, doshes are galloons, we know that some galloons are
distimmed by the gostak. And so we may go on, and so we often do go
on.--Unknown writer quoted by Ogden and Richards, in THE MEANING OF
MEANING, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1923; also by Walter N. Polakov in MAN
AND HIS AFFAIRS, Williams & Wilkins, 1925.
“Why! That is lifting yourself by your own bootstraps!” I exclaimed in
amazed incredulity. “It’s absurd.” Woleshensky smiled indulgently. He
towered in his chair as though in the infinite kindness of his vast
mind there were room to understand and overlook all the foolish little
foibles of all the weak little beings that called themselves men. A
mathematical physicist lives in vast spaces where a light-year is a
footstep, where universes are being born and blotted out, where space
unrolls along a fourth dimension on a surface distended from a fifth.
To him, human beings and their affairs do not loom very important.
“Relativity,” he explained. In his voice there was a patient
forbearance for my slowness of comprehension. “Merely relativity. It
doesn’t take much physical effort to make the moon move through the
treetops, does it? Just enough to walk down the garden path.”