Abstract
THERE is, as Mr. Browne points out, a lapsus calami in my quotation. The supposed velocity of the cannon-ball is, not a twenty-thousandth of, but less by about a twenty-thousandth than, the velocity of light. It is an often-quoted paradox, which I heard for the first time from M. Langevin in his address to the Philosophical Congress of Bologna in 1911, and the discussion of it occupies a large part of M. Bergson's book. With regard to the paradox itself, it is, as Mr. Browne very well points out, not a paradox for the relativist but an illustration of the consequence of rejecting the principle of relativity. In exactly the same way Zeno's paradoxes were not paradoxes for Zeno but arguments for his doctrine that nothing moves. The principle of relativity is that it is possible to pass to a completely different frame of reference without breach of continuity, provided that the space-time coefficients vary to maintain the ratio constant. The paradox shows the form which the breach of continuity will assume if with common-sense we suppose the change of the system of reference not to be compensated by a variation in the space-time co-ordinates. There are in fact, two alternatives. I may conceive my traveller retaining the dimensions of his old system in his new system, then he will become a kind of ephemeral insect or microbe in his new environment, for his proportions will be incommensurate with his old proportions; or, I may conceive him automatically shrinking or expanding in his dimensions proportionately to the change in his environment, then, however much the system changes, he can never become aware of it. This is what I referred to in my article as the relativity of magnitudes. The paradox disappears in the principle of relativity; it arises because common-sense is accustomed to the view that space and time are constant and invariable.
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CARR, H. Einstein's Paradox. Nature 110, 669 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/110669a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/110669a0
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