100 years ago today, the New York Times announced the death of rationalism.pic.twitter.com/0z9rqicWfB
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100 years ago today, the New York Times announced the death of rationalism.pic.twitter.com/0z9rqicWfB
The NYT reported Eddington’s announcement that a measurement of the deflection of starlight by the gravitational field of the sun had confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment …pic.twitter.com/v2aDN8Myl3
Retroactively, after decades of difficult work by top philosophers, we understand this test of relativity as a triumph of the scientific worldview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity …pic.twitter.com/nazVLAd7F3
For decades, general relativity was popularly felt as a disastrous disconfirmation of the scientific worldview. Rationalism collapsed as a source of certainty, and never fully recovered. One could date the first crack of postmodernity to 100 years ago today.pic.twitter.com/ZoJFigDCCz
It is now difficult to comprehend how completely and shockingly relativity shattered rationalism. For millennia, Euclid’s _Elements_ was *the* eternal source of absolute, unquestionable Truth about the fundamental nature of reality. Relativity showed it was just false.pic.twitter.com/x7N0RpeXS3
Cultural historians take Newtonian physics as the foundation of the European Enlightenment. It provided a complete understanding of the material world, with perfect certainty. Modernity consists of extending that paradigm to all realms of meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment …pic.twitter.com/QYkw7dV9Hf
In the 1920s, intellectuals of all stripes tried to assimilate the disproof of Newton into some new version of modernity that would take relativity into account. This was entirely unsuccessful.pic.twitter.com/3cvH7nVCyI
Meanwhile, popular faith in rationality, in modernity, in the world making sense, had already been profoundly shaken by the Great War, just ended. “Lights all askew in the heavens” was understood as more of the same: confirmation of cosmic senselessness. https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown …pic.twitter.com/RSFHNMSceK
Funnily enough, I have a tattoo of the "stars not where they seem" section of that announcement.
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