Black box

In the 19th century, it was perfectly rational to posit the existence of a "luminiferous aether", the substance through which light waves propagated. For of course there must exist some medium for those disturbances in electromagnetic field to travel through. The aether (or "ether") was also the absolutely still frame of reference, which in some minds kept the whole of the universe on a tether: something from which we may judge all other frames of reference. Of course, along came the 20th century; along came Einstein and cut the moorings of the aether. Suddenly everything was caught up in a mind-fuck of non-simultaneity; suddenly space and time were spacetime: one and the same, in fact.

I'd just like to point out that this is not some sort of philosophical coup. Every postmodernist ever has to stop creaming themselves with "relativity". Light and the universe behaved in exactly the same way in 1969 as in 1867. It was a coup in terms of how we think about space and time and absolutes and so on; but only in terms of physics. What implications does the invariance of c in all reference frames have to do with ethics or politics or literary theory? Fuck you, that's what! Politics has always been a grab fore resources: too many hands partitioning too small a pie. It has never been a "celebration of diversity", or a "self-evident harbinger of heterogeneity". You want to help the working class? Help them get resources. Out of resources, diversity flows. Not the other way. And base your arguments on at least semi-solid or semi-rigorous ideas, not "language games".

Sound bite: relativity has nothing to do with relativism.

Consider: "the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."