from The Collected Works
Absolute Space and Relativity
–Part 1
Mathematical Physics and Ontology
The loss of the concrete is substantially a spiritual disease. With the thinning out of faith into a reverential attitude toward symbols, the meaning of the symbols themselves is thinned out to propositions the truth of which has to be demonstrated by reason.
As a residuum of reality there remains only the structure and content of consciousness, that is, of a self no longer open toward transcendental reality. This general pneumo-pathological state, which in itself may occur and has occurred in other periods of history, receives its specific coloration as a result of the coincident rise of mathematical physics.
A new world-filling reality, emerging from Galilean and Cartesian physics and systematized in Newtonian mechanics, is ready to substitute for God and his creation. The new science, on principle, is a science only of phenomenal nature; that the edifice of science could assume ontological functions is a result of the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness."
This fallacy becomes the vehicle of the trend toward materialism in the sense of a worldview wherein all realms of being are reduced to the one and true reality of matter. The pathos of this view, insofar as it is carried by the new science itself, is expressed in the anecdote of Napoleon and Laplace: when questioned by Napoleon whether, indeed, he had not mentioned God in his Mécanique céleste, Laplace answered proudly, "I have no use for this hypothesis!" The mechanism of matter extends infinitely, and God has been squeezed out of his world.
When the issue is stated in such bald language, it seems almost unbelievable that the movement of enlightened scientism could have the strength and duration that it actually had and still has, and that it should have taken the work of generations of thinkers to dissolve such crude mistakes of thought. We do not intend to diminish this impression. Reading the literature of this movement is an ordeal to the infidel and causes him the same exasperation as the reading of Marxist or National Socialist literature.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the authors are particularly deficient in intellectual capacity. Their inability to handle elementary speculative problems rather illustrates that there is no limit to intellectual disorder once the nosos of the spirit has corroded the personality of the thinker.
The One Serious Theoretical Problem
Nevertheless, the situation is not quite as bad as it looks at first sight.
There is one real and very serious theoretical problem involved in the position of enlightened scientism. Even though this problem was too peripheral to be of great concern to spiritualist thinkers, as long as it remained unsolved it greatly strengthened the position of those who for other reasons were inclined toward adopting the scientistic creed.
We are speaking of the problem of absolute space that was built into the foundations of modern science through Newton's Principia and that has found its full and satisfactory solution only through Einstein's theory of relativity.
We must discuss this problem for two reasons. In the first place, it was Berkeley's starting point for his recovery of the concrete. Beyond this restricted importance in the English quest for the concrete, however, it has an importance for understanding the impact of enlightened scientism on the Western scene that can hardly be exaggerated.
The Newtonian theory of absolute space lent a semblance of justification to the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Without this piece of Newtonian doctrine scientistic materialism, with its ramifications in the Encyclopedist movement, in utilitarianism and positivism, in the sociology of Comte and Mill, in Marxism, and so forth, would have had little ground to stand on.
The belief that science is the key to the understanding of nature in an ontological sense has entered as a decisive ingredient into every one of our political mass movements—liberalism, Progressivism, Darwinism, Communism, and National Socialism. The historical root of this belief is the Newtonian theory of space.
Relativity from Copernicus and Bruno to Leibniz
The problem of absolute and relative space does not begin with Newton. It begins with Copernicus and his assumption that the sun is at the center of our planetary system. In the theory of Copernicus we could discern a tendency toward making the sun the ontologically real center of the system, but the predominant motivation was still the simplification of the mathematical description of planetary movements.
The problems of scientific description and of ontology were clearly distinguished. We have seen in an earlier part of this study that the issue was well understood in the sixteenth century and that it was carried to its systematic solution before the century's end.43
Copernicus justified the revolutionary shift of his system of coordinates from the earth to the sun by explaining the relativity of movement. He made it clear that the "real" movement of two bodies that are moved relative to each other is in no way affected by the assumption that one or the other is the origin of the coordinates that are used for the description of the movement. Bodin, in his late work, saw the point with equal clearness and drew the conclusion that one might as well shift the coordinates back to the earth. Astronomers might prefer the sun as a center because the assumption allowed for a simpler mathematical description. He, as a philosopher of politics and nature, preferred the earth as a center for reasons of his own.
Relativity must be taken seriously. If the theory of space as an absolute extension around the earth is a fallacy, the theory of space as an absolute extension around the sun is no less a fallacy.
Giordano Bruno's Solution
Giordano Bruno had given the systematic elaboration of the problem. Space is phenomenally infinite because this infinity is a projection of the form of the human mind. Ontologically; in the mind of God, the universe is One and the celestial worlds are embraced by this Oneness. The celestial worlds are not embraced as by a space, but they in their turn embrace this Oneness as every part of the soul embraces the soul.
The empirical analysis of space, as well as the transcendental analysis in the Kantian sense, touches only certain aspects of the total problem. Cosmological speculation is the theoretical instrument for its complete formulation. This solution of Bruno needs elaboration and reformulation, but in principle it can hardly be improved.
On the level of empirical science it has been carried out and confirmed by the theory of relativity through the assumption of an unbounded, curved space that runs back into itself.44 As far as the Copernican problem is concerned, Bruno drew the conclusion that an infinitely closed space has no absolute center. Its center is everywhere and nowhere, and the choice of the place for the origin of coordinates is arbitrary.
Leibniz and the Logic of Physics
The correctness of the relativistic formulation impressed itself on the contemporaries of Newton. Leibniz developed the problem perhaps furthest in the course of his phoronomic studies. Geometry as the logic of mathematics should be supplemented by phoronomy, a general theory of motion, as the logic of physics.
The first principle of motion, however, is that the movement of a body can be observed only in relation to another body, which is assumed to be resting. Movement is a mutual and inevitable shift of position of material parts. In any system of bodies in relative movement with respect to each other we can chose one of the bodies as being at rest and refer the movement of the other to the coordinates originating in the "resting" body.
Such choice of a resting body for the purpose of description Leibniz calls a "hypothesis." One of these hypotheses may render a simpler description than the other, but its simplicity does not make the hypothesis "truer." On principle, all such hypotheses are "equivalent." The "general law of equivalence" is Leibniz's formulation of the problem of relativity.45
The meaning Leibniz attached to this principle may be gathered from the fact that he wrote a memorandum on this question with the intention of inducing the Curia to admit the Copernican system. He argued that from the point of view of logic there is no opposition between the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems. The choice of heliocentric or geocentric coordinates is equivalent, and the greater descriptive simplicity of the Copernican system does not imply the proposition that the movements as described by it are real in an ontological sense.46
Galileo and the Inquisition
At the time the trend toward a theory of relativity, however, could not fully unfold because the various aspects of the problem were not yet sufficiently clarified by philosophical analysis.
These various aspects are (1) the objectivity of science, its "truth" that is rooted in its method; (2) the empirical view of the world that results from the application of the method to the partial phenomena of the external world; and (3) the speculative interpretation of the cosmos that expresses the relation of man to the totality of his world experience.
In the physics of the seventeenth century these elements still formed an undifferentiated compound. The speculative element was not yet completely eliminated from the method, and, as a consequence, the empirical results carried implications that properly belonged to the speculative sphere.
This historically inevitable, but nevertheless unfortunate, transitional state of the problem led to the much misunderstood conflict of Galileo with the Inquisition. The crucial question concerned the kind of "truth" that should be attributed to the Copernican system.
Cardinal Bellarmine suggested a solution to Galileo that substantially was the solution that Leibniz advanced in the previously mentioned memorandum. Galileo admitted that it was not the same thing to show that with the Copernican hypothesis phenomenal problems could be solved, and to prove that the hypothesis was true in nature. Nevertheless, he continues, a system is false if it does not account for all the phenomena, and a system is true if it accounts for them in the most satisfactory manner. "For one cannot and must not search for a higher truth in a proposition of science than that it accounts for all the particular phenomena."47
The situation is both fascinating and revealing: the representative of the Inquisition is willing to settle for relativity, but the physicist has absolutist hesitations.
The reasons of Galileo's hesitation are clear. They are contained in his formulation that one must not look for a higher truth in a proposition than its adequacy for the interpretation of phenomena. He has understood that the truth of science rests in the objectivity of its method. The Copernican interpretation is, therefore, "true" because it accounts for the phenomena in the most satisfactory manner.
Moreover, he is quite right in his enunciation that one must not look for a higher truth in a scientific proposition. The adequacy of interpretation is all the truth there is in science, and hence the Copernican theory is true, while the Ptolemaic is false.
What he is apparently not able to grasp (and in this respect he is the forerunner of generations of physicists) is the possibility that the interpretation of nature cannot be exhausted by a science of phenomena.
The Finite Scope of Empirical Science
While, indeed, there is no more truth in science than he can find in it, there is plenty of truth beyond the science of phenomena. The view of nature that emerges from the application of scientific methods to phenomena certainly is true, but it is the correlate of the methods that have been applied and no more than that.
The problem of the absoluteness of space is not a problem in empirical science, so that the methodical and empirical truth of the Copernican system does not so much as touch it.
Hence the curious distribution of roles in the conflict. Cardinal Bellarmine apparently understood that the absoluteness that was his concern had nothing to do with empirical science; any theory in science was bearable as long as it did not raise claims that would pull the earth from under the feet of man who, indeed, is the center of the world of the religious and metaphysical symbols that he creates.
The interest the church had in the Ptolomaic system did not fundamentally concern its validity as a scientific theory of the planetary world. The religious interest touched the validity of a symbolism that originates in the experience of the human soul and its spiritual destiny as the center of the cosmic drama. Since souls are embodied and the bodies are located on the earth, the cosmos has its symbolic center in the scene of its climactic drama.
The shift of the spatial center becomes an attack on the experience of the spiritual drama if the shift is construed as the displacement of the "real" center in the symbolic sense. While Bellarmine's instinct in these matters was sure, his analysis of the problem did not go far enough to convince Galileo.
His suggestion of a settlement in terms of two hypotheses neither of which would have a bearing on reality reduces the problems of speculation and of science to the same level. It does not differentiate between the realms of religious symbolization and metaphysical speculation on the one side, and the realm of empirical science on the other side.
That the beautiful Copernican theory should be no more than a "hypothesis" could hardly be made palatable to an enthusiastic scientist unless it could be made clear to him at the same time that the function of science for the interpretation of the world is in principle limited.
Galileo in his turn did not differentiate the components of the problem any better than Bellarmine, and, moreover, he was at a disadvantage because he did not even have the cardinal's instinct for the problem. His enthusiasm for the new science, which unfolded its potentialities under his hands and those of his contemporaries, sustained his indulgence in the belief that now a "true" system of the world had been found, and it was destined to supersede the old one.
In this respect again, Galileo is the forerunner of generations of physicists who indulged in the fallacy that the advancement of science could affect the truth of metaphysics and religious symbolization. The error of Galileo, which stands at the beginning of the scientistic movement, is the same error that lies at the bottom of the evolutionist creed movement in the wake of Darwin. 
This is part 1 of a six part excerpt. Part 2 may be read HERE.
NOTES
43. See vol. V, Religion and the Rise of Modernity, chap. 5.
44. See Albert Einstein, Ueber die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, 3d enl. ed. (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1918), §§ 30-32. English edition: Relativity: The Special and General Theory, trans.Robert W. Lawson (New York: Holt, 1920).
45. See Leibniz's letter to Huyghens of June 12/22 1694, in G. W. Leibniz, Haupt-schriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie, ed. Ernst Cassirer, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Meiner,1903-1915), 1:243 ff. See, in the same volume, Cassirer's introduction to the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke, 108 ff.
46. For Leibniz's intention in writing the memorandum see his letter to Huyghens of September 4/14, 1696, in ibid., 244 f. The memorandum itself is published in Leibnizens mathematische Schriften, ed. C. L. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1848-1863), 6:144 ff. For comment on the question see Cassirer's previously quoted introduction to the Leibniz-Clarke controversy in Haupschriften,109.
47. " 'È vero che non è istesso il nostrare che con la mobilità della terra e stabilità del sole si salvano 1'apparenze, e il dimostrare che tali ipotesi in natura sien real-mente vere, ma è ben altrotanto e più vero, che se con 1'altro sistema communemente ricevuto non si può rendere ragione di tali apparenze quello è indubitamente falso, siccome è chiaro che questo che si accommoda benissimo può esser vero, nè altra maggior verità si può e si deve ricercar in una posizione che il risponder a tutte le particolari apparenze"
(It is true that it is not the same to demonstrate that with the earth's mobility and sun's stability appearances can be saved, and to demonstrate that such hypotheses are really true in nature;however, it is even truer, that since it is impossible to explain such appearances with [the aid of] the commonly received system, that system is unquestionably false; since it is clear that, because this one which accommodates itself very well [to appearances] may be true, no other major truth can and must be sought in a position that can respond to all the particular appearances).
Galileo's letter in Berti, Capernico e le vicende del sistema copernicano in Italia (Rome, 1876), 130; quoted in Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 3d ed., 3 vols. (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1922), 1:410. With regard to the historical materials I am following Cassirer in this question; I cannot agree with him, however, with regard to their interpretation.
Revolution and the New Science
History of Political Ideas, Volume VI (CW Vol 24 )
Chapter 3 "The English Quest for the Concrete"
§3. Absolute Space and Relativity
pp 183-189
A number of similar excerpts can be found HERE.
