Concerns about ontological interpetations of Theory of Relativity

Thread starter AnssiH
Start date Jan 30, 2006
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Relativity Theory Theory of relativity

In summary: This summary is about the following conversation:First of all, browsing this forum, I feel that the level of competence regarding theory of relativity is higher than on average science forums. It may not be much to say, but the only reason I want to post here is because I believe criticism and comments might actually come from people who KNOW what they are talking about.In summary, the author thinks that the level of understanding regarding theory of relativity is low, and that this may be due to people's misunderstanding of the relativity of simultaneity. They believe that this misunderstanding is due to poor choice of words by Einstein in his famous thought experiment involving a railway embankment and a moving train. However, the author argues that this

Feb 12, 2006

robphy

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AnssiH said:

This is very well understood. It has been under discussion in this thread a few times, even though I tried to make it clear in the first post that what is being discussed is the world behind our perceptions. The "now"-moment, if you will.

I.e. even though perceiving the world is one thing, we should not reject that there are events occurring out there even at moments when we haven't yet observed them.

There's a difference between
accepting the existence of such yet unobserved events and
assigning a grouping (e.g, what one calls "now") to some of those events.