While looking into the sky I have two kinds of reflections. One is the awareness of the enormous size and complexity of the universe, the other is quite the opposite. The feeling of knowing it all at once, the sense of togetherness that permeates all boundaries. Even the most sophisticated theory of the universe has to create a simple picture of it that holds together in my mind. It all has to be expressible by common language in a logical manner no matter how abstract mathematical ideas hide behind the full explanation of the physical phenomena. Surely the elements of simple explanation have to be accepted by faith in underlying mathematical content.
The reason for starting this blog was to explore the role of the common sense and logic in understanding the world around us. Modern science generally provides excellent description of reality and we see the effect of it every day. There are a few areas where science becomes controversial and one of those areas is Time.
As previously mentioned, there are claims resulting from Einstein theories which allow time travel. Relativity of time leads to paradoxes which are hard to explain. General picture emerges according to Einstein and his followers that: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"[1]. This is only because the properties of time after Einstein defy the common sense, while experimental evidence confirms predictions of Relativity Theory.
The common sense appears to be so bad when it comes to time that science educators invest serious resources do develop new methods to retrain the brains in order to fix innate human temporal logic to accept relativity of simultaneity. Scherr, Shaffer, and Vokos[2] report serious cognitive problems among students learning relativity - problems of a kind unheard of in other areas of science:
"Excerpts from taped interviews and classroom interactions help illustrate the intense cognitive conflict that students encounter as they are led to confront the incompatibility of their deeply held beliefs about simultaneity with the results of special relativity".
Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people, and can be reasonably expected of nearly all people without any need for debate [4]
Common sense reasoning is not much different than strict scientific reasoning. The difference lies in the level of knowledge, precision of available data. The rules of logic are the same. No statement about reality from the common sense perspective should contradict scientific view of the same unless the knowledge of fact is incomplete or incorrect or reasoning is simply flawed by human error. Common sense so criticised after Einstein is in fact the very foundation of relativity. One of the important rationale behind was an assumption that the laws of physics should at least be the same on two systems moving relatively with constant speed. That is the main postulate of Relativity Theory as presented by Einstein[5]:
"If,relative to K, K1 is a uniformly moving co-ordinate system devoid of rotation, then natural phenomena run their course with respect to K1 according to exactly the same general laws as with respect to K. This statement is called the principle of relativity (in the restricted sense)"
Common sense reasoning about time comes from direct experience. If somebody claims common sense reasoning about time is wrong, then there should be scientific proof to show where the error is.
After conducting my own study, the preliminary results presented there [3] let me to believe that the common sense in its temporal aspect is not bad at all. It appears there is a serious failure in scientific approach to understand the properties of time defined and used in Relativity Theory in the context of time perception in humans. As much as there is no need to question the Theory of Relativity, there is a reason to question interpretation of time as defined by Einstein in relation to time perceived by us and the temporal logic we use. Hopefully in the subsequent posts it will become clear that we do not need to re-train our brains to absorb new temporal logic as the one we posses is still adequate.
[5]A.Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (1916)
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