ABSTRACT
The philosophical consequences of relativity are neither so great nor so startling as is sometimes thought. It throws very little light on time-honoured controversies, such as that between realism and idealism. Some people think that it supports Kant’s view that space and time are ‘subjective’ and are ‘forms of intuition’. I think such people have been misled by the way in which writers on relativity speak of ‘the observer’. It is natural to suppose that the observer is a human being, or at least a mind; but it is just as likely to be a photographic plate or a clock. That is to say, the odd results as to the difference between one ‘point of view’ and another are concerned with ‘point of view’ in a sense applicable to physical instruments just as much as to people with perceptions. The ‘subjectivity’ concerned in the theory of relativity is a physical subjectivity, which would exist equally if there were no such things as minds or sense in the world.
