Physics, and the technology based on it (and indeed our civilisation), has flourished by being prepared to set aside the common sense that tells us that the earth must be flat otherwise people will fall off it, that a small object will always fall slower than a big one, and that the state of rest and motion in a straight line are fundamentally different. But we should not conclude from this that the mathematical portrait of the world is the last word on what is really there, or that everyday experience of lived space is in some profound sense defective or even wrong.
This sounds a bit like the fallacy of reification, regarding something abstract as if it were concrete.
No comments:
Post a Comment