It is impossible to represent to oneself empty space; all our efforts to imagine a pure space, whence should be excluded the changing images of material objects, can result only in a representation where vividly colored surfaces, for example, are replaced by lines of faint coloration, and we can not go to the very end in this way without all vanishing and terminating in nothingness. Thence comes the irreducible relativity of space.
Whoever speaks of absolute space uses a meaningless phrase. This is a truth long proclaimed by all who have reflected upon the matter, but which we are too often led to forget.
I am at a determinate point in Paris, place du Panthéon for instance, and I say: I shall come back _here_ to-morrow. If I be asked: Do you mean you will return to the same point of space, I shall be tempted to answer: yes; and yet I shall be wrong, since by to-morrow the earth will have journeyed hence, carrying with it the place du Panthéon, which will have traveled over more than two million kilometers. And if I tried to speak more precisely, I should gain nothing, since our globe has run over these two million kilometers in its motion with relation to the sun, while the sun in its turn is displaced with reference to the Milky Way, while the Milky Way itself is doubtless in motion without our being able to perceive its velocity. So that we are completely ignorant, and always shall be, of how much the place du Panthéon is displaced in a day.
In sum, I meant to say: To-morrow I shall see again the dome and the pediment of the Panthéon, and if there were no Panthéon my phrase would be meaningless and space would vanish.
This is one of the most commonplace forms of the principle of the relativity of space; but there is another, upon which Delbeuf has particularly insisted. Suppose that in the night all the dimensions of the universe become a thousand times greater: the world will have remained _similar_ to itself, giving to the word _similitude_ the same meaning as in Euclid, Book VI. Only what was a meter long will measure thenceforth a kilometer, what was a millimeter long will become a meter. The bed whereon I lie and my body itself will be enlarged in the same proportion.
When I awake to-morrow morning, what sensation shall I feel in presence of such an astounding transformation? Well, I shall perceive nothing at all. The most precise measurements will be incapable of revealing to me anything of this immense convulsion, since the measures I use will have varied precisely in the same proportion as the objects I seek to measure. In reality, this convulsion exists only for those who reason as if space were absolute. If I for a moment have reasoned as they do, it is the better to bring out that their way of seeing implies contradiction. In fact it would be better to say that, space being relative, nothing at all has happened, which is why we have perceived nothing.
Has one the right, therefore, to say he knows the distance between two points? No, since this distance could undergo enormous variations without our being able to perceive them, provided the other distances have varied in the same proportion. We have just seen that when I say: I shall be here to-morrow, this does not mean: To-morrow I shall be at the same point of space where I am to-day, but rather: To-morrow I shall be at the same distance from the Panthéon as to-day. And we see that this statement is no longer sufficient and that I should say: To-morrow and to-day my distance from the Panthéon will be equal to the same number of times the height of my body.
But this is not all; I have supposed the dimensions of the world to vary, but that at least the world remained always similar to itself. We might go much further, and one of the most astonishing theories of modern physics furnishes us the occasion.
According to Lorentz and Fitzgerald, all the bodies borne along in the motion of the earth undergo a deformation.
This deformation is, in reality, very slight, since all dimensions parallel to the movement of the earth diminish by a hundred millionth, while the dimensions perpendicular to this movement are unchanged. But it matters little that it is slight, that it exists suffices for the conclusion I am about to draw. And besides, I have said it was slight, but in reality I know nothing about it; I have myself been victim of the tenacious illusion which makes us believe we conceive an absolute space; I have thought of the motion of the earth in its elliptic orbit around the sun, and I have allowed thirty kilometers as its velocity. But its real velocity (I mean, this time, not its absolute velocity, which is meaningless, but its velocity with relation to the ether), I do not know that, and have no means of knowing it: it is perhaps, 10, 100 times greater, and then the deformation will be 100, 10,000 times more.
Can we show this deformation? Evidently not; here is a cube with edge one meter; in consequence of the earth's displacement it is deformed, one of its edges, that parallel to the motion, becomes smaller, the others do not change. If I wish to assure myself of it by aid of a meter measure, I shall measure first one of the edges perpendicular to the motion and shall find that my standard meter fits this edge exactly; and in fact neither of these two lengths is changed, since both are perpendicular to the motion. Then I wish to measure the other edge, that parallel to the motion; to do this I displace my meter and turn it so as to apply it to the edge. But the meter, having changed orientation and become parallel to the motion, has undergone, in its turn, the deformation, so that though the edge be not a meter long, it will fit exactly, I shall find out nothing.
You ask then of what use is the hypothesis of Lorentz and of Fitzgerald if no experiment can permit of its verification? It is my exposition that has been incomplete; I have spoken only of measurements that can be made with a meter; but we can also measure a length by the time it takes light to traverse it, on condition we suppose the velocity of light constant and independent of direction. Lorentz could have accounted for the facts by supposing the velocity of light greater in the direction of the earth's motion than in the perpendicular direction. He preferred to suppose that the velocity is the same in these different directions but that the bodies are smaller in the one than in the other. If the wave surfaces of light had undergone the same deformations as the material bodies we should never have perceived the Lorentz-Fitzgerald deformation.
In either case, it is not a question of absolute magnitude, but of the measure of this magnitude by means of some instrument; this instrument may be a meter, or the path traversed by light; it is only the relation of the magnitude to the instrument that we measure; and if this relation is altered, we have no way of knowing whether it is the magnitude or the instrument which has changed.
But what I wish to bring out is, that in this deformation the world has not remained similar to itself; squares have become rectangles, circles ellipses, spheres ellipsoids. And yet we have no way of knowing whether this deformation be real.
Evidently one could go much further: in place of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald deformation, whose laws are particularly simple, we could imagine any deformation whatsoever. Bodies could be deformed according to any laws, as complicated as we might wish, we never should notice it provided all bodies without exception were deformed according to the same laws. In saying, all bodies without exception, I include of course our own body and the light rays emanating from different objects.
If we look at the world in one of those mirrors of complicated shape which deform objects in a bizarre way, the mutual relations of the different parts of this world would not be altered; if, in fact two real objects touch, their images likewise seem to touch. Of course when we look in such a mirror we see indeed the deformation, but this is because the real world subsists alongside of its deformed image; and then even were this real world hidden from us, something there is could not be hidden, ourself; we could not cease to see, or at least to feel, our body and our limbs which have not been deformed and which continue to serve us as instruments of measure.
But if we imagine our body itself deformed in the same way as if seen in the mirror, these instruments of measure in their turn will fail us and the deformation will no longer be ascertainable.
Consider in the same way two worlds images of one another; to each object _P_ of the world _A_ corresponds in the world _B_ an object _P'_, its image; the coordinates of this image _P'_ are determinate functions of those of the object _P_; moreover these functions may be any whatsoever; I only suppose them chosen once for all. Between the position of _P_ and that of _P'_ there is a constant relation; what this relation is, matters not; enough that it be constant.
Well, these two worlds will be indistinguishable one from the other. I mean the first will be for its inhabitants what the second is for its. And so it will be as long as the two worlds remain strangers to each other. Suppose we lived in world _A_, we shall have constructed our science and in particular our geometry; during this time the inhabitants of world _B_ will have constructed a science, and as their world is the image of ours, their geometry will also be the image of ours or, better, it will be the same. But if for us some day a window is opened upon world _B_, how we shall pity them: "Poor things," we shall say, "they think they have made a geometry, but what they call so is only a grotesque image of ours; their straights are all twisted, their circles are humped, their spheres have capricious inequalities." And we shall never suspect they say the same of us, and one never will know who is right.
We see in how broad a sense should be understood the relativity of space; space is in reality amorphous and the things which are therein alone give it a form. What then should be thought of that direct intuition we should have of the straight or of distance? So little have we intuition of distance in itself that in the night, as we have said, a distance might become a thousand times greater without our being able to perceive it, if all other distances had undergone the same alteration. And even in a night the world _B_ might be substituted for the world _A_ without our having any way of knowing it, and then the straight lines of yesterday would have ceased to be straight and we should never notice.
One part of space is not by itself and in the absolute sense of the word equal to another part of space; because if so it is for us, it would not be for the dwellers in world _B_; and these have just as much right to reject our opinion as we to condemn theirs.
I have elsewhere shown what are the consequences of these facts from the viewpoint of the idea we should form of non-Euclidean geometry and other analogous geometries; to that I do not care to return; and to-day I shall take a somewhat different point of view.
