Relativistic Space

A summary of:
Wertheim, M. (1999). The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. Virago Press: London.
Chapter 4 - Relativistic Space

The next paradigm shifting discovery explored in the book is Einstein's realization that, despite what we had always thought, space and time are not absolute; they are individual! - "everyone occupied his or her own private space and time" (168). This means, startlingly, that we play a more crucial role in the very nature of our reality than we were previously aware. Rather than passively moving through space and time, "In Einstein's picture, space is transformed from a neutral arena to an active participant in the great cosmological drama" (170).

Another revelation of Einstein's relativity is that it exposes the fact that the "universe has an overall architecture," quite different from Newton's cosmos which was "devoid of form" (172).

And even further bubble-shattering, General Relativity showed that the "galaxies of our universe are not hurtling away from one another into an already existing space; rather as the space itself expands its reach, it takes the galaxies with it. Space, in a sense, becomes like a living thing - a continually swelling cosmic fruit" (173). It boggles the mind to think of the rate of this expansion: growing by a billion billion cubic light years every single day (173).

Wertheim pauses to take stock of the implications of the shift this all represents:

For Aristotle, space was but a minor and rather unimportant category of reality. Newton, by contrast, made space the formal background of his universe, the absolute frame of all action. Yet Newtonian space possessed no intrinsic qualities of its own, being just a formless and featureless void. As such, says physicist Andre Linde, in the Newtonian scheme space 'continued to play a secondary, subservient role,' serving merely 'as a backdrop' for the action of matter. With general relativity, however, space becomes for the first time a primary active category of reality. According to relativity, you cannot have material objects without a supporting membrane of space. Space thus becomes in Einstien's vision a major pillar of the modern scientific world picture (175).

And once we realized the destructive nature of black holes, thanks to Hawking, space takes on entirely foreign characteristics still: "in the relativistic vision, space has become literally monstrous" (177).

An existential crisis of sorts emerged from our dawning realization of our relative insignificance. Even our universe is just a puny "island universe" among innumerable other islands. "We find ourselves, then, in a paradoxical situation, for while we are the first culture in human history to have a detailed map of the entire physical cosmos, we are, in effect, lost in space" (184). While Wertheim here most likely means we are lost in the intellectual or indeed physical sense; but clearly she would not disagree that this is metaphorically accurate as well. In other words, where are we in the universe? - where do we belong? - and subsequently, this compells us to wonder why we exist at all, given how small our impact could possibly be. Wertheim asks, "is it any wonder we have turned to the stars seeking friendship and meaning? Is it any wonder that we long to be part of some intergalactic community imbued with purpose and direction" (184).

The particularly disorienting thing about modern cosmological space is that it is directionless (184). Whereas in Dante's cosmology, one sought God by going upwards (this was a directed journey), everywhere in space, and every direction in space, is equally likely to contain meaning. Space is now homogenous (185). This means (to paraphrase the fictional superhero Dashielle Parr of the Pixar film The Incredibles), if everything is special, then nothing is. Or another way of understanding this: we have infinite freedom now, but freedom to what? - to roam aimlessly?

The other effect of homogenization is that it boxes our thinking:

Yet while we in the West have been developing an ever more detailed and adventure-filled vision of our physical cosmos, we have negated the very idea of other planes of reality, other 'spaces' of being. By homogenizing space and reducing 'place' to a strict mathematical formalism, we have robbed our universe of meaning and taken away any sense of intrinsic directionality. The flip side of our cosmological democracy is thus an existential anarchy: With no place more special than any other, there is no place ultimately to aim for - no goal, no destination, no end. The cosmological principle that once rescued us from the gutter of the universe has left us, in the final analysis, with no place to go (185-6).

And yet it seems that the tendency is to keep walking down this dark alley, as we have found some promising breadcrumbs thus far on our journey. Math has revealed some quite remarkable things, so we continue to follow this line of thinking; and meanwhile the further we go, the colder, darker, and scarier it all seems to get for humans. This raises the question of whether 'truths' can or should be subject to a heirarchy; or perhaps whether if they must, we might want to have a bit of a reshuffle. We think that mathematical or scientific thinking is more 'true' than metaphorical or poetic thinking; but which makes us happier? Which satisfies us as humans more? And isn't geometrical figuring of the universe simply an interpretation of the ineffable, as is any painting or poem???

My dad sent me a quote today in an email. It says, "What makes me saddest of all things in the world is this: the vast majority of the time the right thing to do morally is the right thing to do in terms of broad self-interest, and yet we don't believe that and we do the wrong thing, thinking we must, thinking that we're making the 'hard decisions.'" I do wonder if the same can be applied here to this obsessive mathematical quest (continued in the next chapter through to the discovery of 11 dimensions), as it may be to our technological innovation. Is it not perhaps wiser, at least in the case of the latter, if we hop onto a different track entirely, one that leads to light, rather than alienation and darkness? I recognize this is hyperbole, but the point remains: inertia is not justification in itself for persisting along the same lines of thinking. And as Einstein himself famously said, "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them."