Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/168

CHAPTER X

TOWARDS INFINITY

The geometer of to-day knows nothing about the nature of actually existing space at an infinite distance; he knows nothing about the properties of this present space in a past or a future eternity. He knows, indeed, that the laws assumed by Euclid are true with an accuracy that no direct experiment can approach, not only in this place where we are, but in places at a distance from us that no astronomer has conceived; but he knows this as of Here and Now; beyond his range is a There and Then of which he knows nothing at present, but may ultimately come to know more.

W. K. Clifford (1873).

The great stumbling-block for a philosophy which denies absolute space is the experimental detection of absolute rotation. The belief that the earth rotates on its axis was suggested by the diurnal motions of the heavenly bodies; this observation is essentially one of relative rotation, and, if the matter rested there, no difficulty would be felt. But we can detect the same rotation, or a rotation very closely equal to it, by methods which do not seem to bring the heavenly bodies into consideration; and such a rotation is apparently absolute. The planet Jupiter is covered with cloud, so that an inhabitant would probably be unaware of the existence of bodies outside; yet he could quite well measure the rotation of Jupiter. By the gyro-compass he would fix two points on the planet the north and south poles. Then by Foucault's experiment on the change of the plane of motion of a freely suspended pendulum, he would determine an angular velocity about the poles. Thus there is certainly a definite physical constant, an angular velocity about an axis, which has a fundamental importance for the inhabitants of Jupiter; the only question is whether we are right in giving it the name absolute rotation.

Contrast this with absolute translation. Here it is not a question of giving the right name to a physical constant; the inhabitants of Jupiter would find no constant to name. We see at once that a relativity theory of translation is on a different footing from a relativity theory of rotation. The duty of the