On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 03:46:33 GMT, Sam Wormley wrote:

Are you trolling Greenfield? There is no edge--everywhere is the center.

I doubt he's trolling. This is a misunderstanding I've bumped into among
non-science people time and again when they're trying to understand
space-time.

My experience is that the "mental map" most people have of space-time isn't
too different from what Newton held, although (of course) nowhere near as
sophisticated. Most people are slaves to their mental images of reality; they
might know, but don't really accept, that space-time as a whole can't be
painted and doesn't "look" like any picture their minds can build. It takes a
non-trivial grasp of mathematics (well past the standard high school two years
of Algebra, one year of Geometry, and perhaps one of Trigonometry) before a
person has the mental tools to begin to understand just how strange the
universe is.

Isn't it wonderful? Not that so few people have those tools, but that at least
some do?



--
Catherine Hampton
Home Page * http://www.devsite.org/
The SpamBouncer * http://www.spambouncer.org/

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