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Feb 3, 2013 · Is everything relative? We know that things like taste in food and matters of etiquette are relative. But what about things like truth, knowledge, and morality? Are there absolute normative truths? John and Ken are joined by Paul Boghossian to tackle the question of moral relativism vs. moral absolutism in this episode of Philosophy Talk.
- John Locke
In America, the 17 th century British philosopher, John...
- Is It All Just Relative
Clearly some things are relative. Tastes in food or matters...
- John Locke
- Overview
- Transcript
Understand Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, about what is absolute and not relative
Description of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity as a theory about what is absolute and not relative.
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•Understand Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, about what is absolute and not relative
•Know about Albert Einstein's idea on why light is a particle
•Know about the application of gravitational waves in science and in everyday life
Relativity-- the idea that everything is relative, right? Relative to your perspective, your upbringing, your age, your place, and orientation in space and time, except that plenty of things-- in fact, perhaps most things-- aren't relative. For example, George Washington was the first president of the United States. World War I happened before the movie, Star Wars, was made. This picture shows three apples, and so on.
It is true that certain things are relative to one's perspective. Is the apple on your left or my right? Is 50 degrees Fahrenheit hot or cold? Is a car fast or slow? Big or small? And the fact that they're relative is precisely what makes these concepts less interesting to scientists.
In physics and in most science, anything that changes if you change perspective can't be a fundamental property of the universe. Only things that are absolute are considered physical or real. And for a long time, physicists thought that distances in space and intervals of time were absolute fundamental properties in the universe. The special theory of relativity, first described by Albert Einstein, was merely a statement of the realization that we were wrong-- distances in space and time are actually relative. They change depending on how fast you're moving.
But more importantly, Einstein also described several quantities related to space and time, which are absolute-- the distance between two events in space time, the energy momentum of an object, and of course the speed of light. Similarly, the general theory of relativity was essentially the recognition that, in fact, neither the acceleration nor the gravitational field experienced by an object are absolute quantities. Accelerations can transform into gravitational fields and vice versa, depending on your perspective and the path you take through space time.
The more fundamental absolute quantity is the curvature of space time, which you can think of as a kind of underlying or absolute gravity. Special and general relativity are at their core not about what's relative. They're about what's real irrespective of perspective. If everything were relative, then there could be no science, no laws, no justice-- just opinion.
Science exists, because it turns out there are absolutes in the universe-- truths which are the same regardless of your perspective. You might even say that science is simply about finding the truths that will still be true if you remove the scientist. So goodbye.
- 2 min
Mar 5, 2015 · Everything is moving relative to everything else, hence Einstein's theory of relativity . It is known as special relativity because it applies only to special cases: frames of...
One of the most common viewpoints held by today’s college students is the belief that “everything is relative.” Generally speaking, what is meant by this is not that there aren’t any absolute truths in the world, but rather that in the realm of morality, ethics, and religion, there is no truth with a capital “T”.
Mar 17, 2012 · “The statement that everything is relative is as meaningful as the statement that everything is bigger. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, if everything were relative there would be nothing for it to be relative to. “The name relativity is misleading.
It's perfectly true that the truth of 1+1=2 is relative to the axioms and definitions of the framework that gives that statement meaning. One can come up with perfectly reasonable mathematical systems in which using well-motivated definitions of the symbols results in 1+1=1, for example.
Alethic relativism (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism).
