“Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live”*…
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What is space? Three contenders for the theory of everything converge on a single very big idea– that our universe was born in the instant when nothing and nowhere were joined.
Read more at “Goodbye big bang, hello big silence” (summary; full text requires subscription).
* Albert Einstein
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As we ruminate on relativity, we might spare a thought for Thomas Samuel Kuhn; he died on this date in 1996. A physicist, historian, and philosopher of science , Kuhn believed that scientific knowledge didn’t advance in a linear, continuous way, but via periodic “paradigm shifts.” Karl Popper had approached the same territory in his development of the principle of “falsification” (to paraphrase, a theory isn’t false until it’s proven true; it’s true until it’s proven false). But while Popper worked as a logician, Kuhn worked as a historian. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions made his case; and while he had– and has— his detractors, Kuhn’s work has been deeply influential in both academic and popular circles (indeed, the phrase “paradigm shift” has become an English-language staple).
