I once wrote a 3 or 4 page primer on special relativity to better explain my position to a ThM student at my church after we had a discussion about God’s relationship to time. (OK, it was an argument, but a friendly one!) The paper was basically just a few paragraphs on the history of the measurement of the speed of light, a description of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the light clock thought experiment, and then a discussion of some of the implications. I kept it almost entirely math free. There was a right angle triangle in it, but that was about it. I haven’t been able to find the document, but I could recreate something similar if anyone would be interested. Einstein gets mentioned a lot in discussions on time, usually by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. That’s a shame because there are many concepts in special relativity that can be understood fairly intuitively. The math required for general relativity is way beyond my ken, but Pythagoras and Plato could have worked out most of special relativity if they’d had Michelson interferometers. I’m sure there are plenty of online resources that would explain it as well as I could, but I’d be willing to write about it if it should become relevant.
Sure! We’ll be getting into philosophy of time topics soon enough. Propose something when needed!
I personally prefer the Socratic style 🙂
But regardless of method, I truly appreciate the pace of these posts. It allows me to dissect and understand it much better than any of my previous philosophy classes.
It is possible also that I have more patience now than when I was younger, but doubt it.
Do you like this style of post—where I simply explain the text more or less uncritically, then raise a bunch of questions to answer? Or do you prefer me to share my views as I have done before?
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