The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. On Einstein's Theory of Relativity — Thinking That is Out of Touch with Reality

[ 1 ] Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone come up with any ideas for today?

[ 2 ] Mr. Burle asks a question about the theory of relativity—what the current state of affairs is; people used to read so much about it, especially in the past. Now it may already have been forgotten; at least we don’t hear as much about it as we used to.

[ 3 ] Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, the theory of relativity is a difficult subject, and you’ll probably have to pay very close attention today—and in the end, even if you do pay close attention, you’ll have to admit that you don’t really understand it. But that’s the case with many people who talk about the theory of relativity today. They talk about it in such a way that they often praise it as the greatest achievement of our time, but they don’t understand it. I’ll try to explain it as simply as possible. As I said, it will be difficult today, but next time we’ll move on to more interesting topics.

[ 4 ] Einstein's theory applies to movements performed by any object. As you know, objects move by changing their position in space. So when we want to describe a movement, we say: An object is at a location a and moves toward another location b. If you see a train passing by while you’re standing outside somewhere, at first you’ll have no doubt at all that the train is rushing past you, moving, and that you’re standing still. But you can easily begin to doubt this—at that moment, of course, only if you don’t think about it more deeply—if you’re sitting somewhere in a train compartment, fall asleep at first, then wake up and look out the window: There goes a train. You have the distinct feeling that a train is passing by. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, however; before you fell asleep, your train was stationary, and while you were asleep, your train itself began to move. You didn’t notice while you were asleep that your train had started moving, and the other train appears to be passing by. If you look more closely, the train standing outside is completely at rest, while your train is moving. So you believe that while you are moving, you are at rest, and the other train—which is actually at rest—is the one moving. You know it can also happen that you look out the window and believe you are sitting still inside the train you’re currently in, while the entire train is moving in the opposite direction. That’s how it looks to the eye. So you can see that what we humans say about motion isn’t always correct. You wake up and form the judgment: “The train out there is moving.” Immediately afterward, you have to correct yourself: “That’s not true at all—it’s standing still; I’m the one moving!”

[ 5 ] Such a correction of a prevailing view has occurred once—or even more often—in a major way in world history. We need only go back six or seven centuries, when everyone believed that the Earth stood firmly still in space and that the entire starry sky moved past it. This view, as you may have heard, was corrected in the 16th century. Copernicus came along and said: None of that is true; the Sun and the fixed stars are actually stationary, and we, along with our Earth, are flying through space at breakneck speed. We believe we are at rest on Earth—just as one person used to believe he was at rest in a railroad car while the train was moving—and we have now corrected that. Copernicus corrected the entire field of astronomy, saying, “It is not true that the stars move; they stand still. But the Earth, along with the people on it, is hurtling through space at tremendous speed.”

[ 6 ] This immediately raises the possibility that, based on what we see, we cannot immediately determine what is actually correct with regard to motion: whether we ourselves are at rest and a body moving past us is truly in motion, or whether we ourselves are in motion and a body that we believe is whizzing past us is at rest.

[ 7 ] Isn't it true that when you think about it, you'll say to yourself: Yes, a correction may indeed be necessary in everything we recognize as a movement. - Just take this one example: how long it took for all of humanity to come to the point of correcting its judgment regarding the Earth. That took millennia, after all. When you’re sitting on a train, it might take only a few seconds for you to correct your judgment. So the time it takes to correct such a judgment varies.

[ 8 ] This has led people like Einstein to say: We cannot possibly know whether what we see as moving is actually in motion, or whether we, who are standing still, are somehow mysteriously in motion while the other is at rest. So let’s draw the final conclusion from this uncertainty.

[ 9 ] Well then, gentlemen, it could be like this: Let’s suppose there’s a car here (it is drawn). In that car, one drives from Hansi’s house up to the Goetheanum. But who can say for certain that the car is actually driving uphill? Who can say that with certainty? The car could just as easily be standing completely still; only the wheels might be turning, and the entire Goetheanum, which one is heading toward, could be moving downward in the opposite direction. It would only take something like this to happen—just as it did for the Earth with Copernicus! (Laughter.)

[ 10 ] Einstein took such things into account; he said: One is actually never certain whether one body or the other is moving. One only ever knows that they move in relation to one another, that they change their distances from one another; that is the only thing one knows. — Of course, you know that when you’re driving to the Goetheanum, because you’re getting closer to it; but whether the Goetheanum is coming toward you or you’re moving toward it, you can’t know that. Now, you see, whatever can be said to be in true rest or in true motion—that is absolute. So what is absolute stillness or absolute motion? It would be a stillness or motion of which one could say: In the cosmos, the body stands still, or the body is moving. But that is, of course, always a problematic matter; for in Copernicus’s time, people still believed that the Sun stood still and the Earth revolved around it. With regard to the Earth, this is correct, but with regard to the Sun, it is not correct, for the Sun is moving very quickly, hurtling at tremendous speed toward a region of interstellar space located in the constellation Hercules—and we, of course, are all along for the ride. On the one hand, we revolve around the Sun, but as we revolve around the Sun, we hurtle through space along with it. So it cannot be said of the Sun either that it stands at absolute rest in space. And so Einstein and those who held this view said: One cannot say of anything at all whether it is at absolute rest or in motion, but can only speak of things being at relative rest—relative, that is, with respect to one another—it appears to us to be at rest or in motion.

[ 11 ] You see, gentlemen, once, during a course held in Stuttgart, someone believed that we anthroposophists didn’t know anything proper about the theory of relativity, and so—because he was, or is, a fanatical adherent of the theory of relativity—he wanted to explain to people in a very simple way how the theory of relativity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, really works. What did he do? He took a matchbox and said: “Here I have a match. Now I’ll hold the box completely still and move the match toward it. It catches fire. But now I’ll do a second experiment. Now I’ll hold the match completely still and move the box toward me. It catches fire again.” The same thing happens. What happened is that a fire was ignited. But the motion I performed in the process is not absolute; it is entirely relative. In one instance, with the matchbox over there and the match over here, I move the match toward it; in the other instance, I move the matchbox. It doesn’t matter at all, for a fire to start, whether the box or the match moves; what matters is only whether they move relative to each other, in relation to each other.

[ 12 ] But this can be applied to the entire world. One can say of the entire world: The fact is that one does not know whether one or the other is moving, or whether one is moving faster or slower, or whether the other is moving faster or slower. All you ever know is how they move in relation to one another—whether they’re getting closer or farther apart; that’s all you know. And you don’t know whether one object is moving faster or slower. Suppose you’re riding in an express train whizzing by at a tremendous speed, and a local train is passing by outside; you look out the window. You can’t form a judgment about what’s actually happening, because at the very moment you’re traveling that way in the express train and the local train is coming toward you, you have the feeling that your express train is moving much more slowly than it used to. Just try it once. At that moment, you have the feeling that the train is suddenly moving slowly. In your perception, the fast train loses as much of its speed as the one coming toward it. So you form a completely false judgment about the speed of the movement in your own train. If, on the other hand, another train is moving more slowly alongside you, you have the feeling that your train is moving faster. So when you see two movements, you never form a judgment about how they actually relate to each other; rather, you always form a judgment only about how the two bodies relate to each other in terms of their distances from one another.

[ 13 ] Now one could stop here and say: Wow, Einstein was a smart guy—he finally figured out that in the universe, we can’t speak of absolute motion at all, but only of relative motion. — That’s certainly clever, and, as you can see, it’s true in many cases. For no one can say, when they see something—let’s say a star—at rest, that it is a star at rest. If you’re moving at a certain speed, the star appears to be moving in the opposite direction; but it could just as easily be moving toward you. So you simply cannot conclude, based on what you see, that the star is at rest or in motion. It is essential to know this; for now that we finally know this today, we would have to change the entire way of expressing ourselves that we use in certain sciences. I will show you this with an example.

[ 14 ] How does one even acquire knowledge of the stars? You see, one cannot gain knowledge of the stars if one holds the view that the prince once had when he went to the observatory, where the astronomer—naturally, since he was the prince of the realm—had to show him the observations he had made of the stars. Well, the astronomer also let the prince look through the telescope, and they observed a star. When you point the telescope in a certain direction, at first you see nothing. Then you wait a little while; then the star enters the field of view, as they say, and then it exits on the other side. The prince watched this. Then he said: “Yes, now I understand quite well that you know something about the stars, that you know where the stars are and how they move—I can see that quite clearly now. But how you, when you’re so far away, figure out what the stars are called—I still can’t grasp that.” — Of course, you can’t practice astronomy with views like that. But what actually happens when you observe stars? You have the telescope; the astronomer sits there—looking in from above—and there’s a crosshair here; and when the star seems to move this way, you don’t see anything yet, and when it’s here, you see the star. When it’s visible right where the lines cross, that’s how you determine the star’s position.

[ 15 ] In the past, when people observed the sky, they used to believe they could say: Either the Earth has moved, or you have moved the telescope forward and adjusted the objective lens—that’s the name for the lens that’s far away; the lens that’s close by is called the eyepiece—moved far enough away that you can now see the stationary star within it. In the past, people believed the star was moving. Today, one must say: We know nothing about whether the star is stationary or moving. One can only say: In my field of view, the crosshairs of my telescope coincide with the image of the star; the two overlap. One can say nothing more than what one sees directly before one’s eyes. This would leave one uncertain about the entire world.

[ 16 ] This has far-reaching implications. It is important for our understanding of the motion not only of celestial bodies, but even of bodies on our Earth. And the conclusions that Einstein and those who think like him drew from this are very far-reaching. They said, for example: Yes, if motion is merely relative—if it is not absolute—then one cannot make any real statements about anything at all, not even about simultaneity or different times. For example, if I have a clock in Dornach and a clock in Zurich and they show the same time, I am still by no means certain that, because they are separated from one another, what we are actually observing is not merely an erroneous observation; perhaps there is no such thing as simultaneity at all!

[ 17 ] So you see, the most far-reaching conclusions have been drawn from this matter. And the question arises: Are we really unable to find a way out of this at all? Can we really say nothing at all today about the things themselves when they are in motion? That is the important question. It is certainly true that one cannot say anything based solely on the appearance of these movements. And in the broadest sense, the following is also true: If I drive up toward the Goetheanum in my car, it may just as well be that the Goetheanum is coming toward me.

[ 18 ] Yes, but one thing, gentlemen, does come up. Even this example with the matchbox that I gave you isn’t quite right. You see, I would have liked to call out to the gentleman who made it so nicely: “Why don’t you nail the matchbox to the table and then try to move it back and forth!” You’d have to exert at least a great deal of force if you had to move the entire table back and forth. — So there’s a catch somewhere.

[ 19 ] You can notice this catch if you just look at the matter closely. Suppose you’re driving from Dornach to Basel, and now you might say: It’s not true that the car is moving; rather, the car stays still, just turning its wheels, and Basel is coming toward it. — Fine. But there’s one thing that speaks against that: The car will fall apart after a few years. And the fact that the car falls apart can only be attributed to the fact that it is not the road that moves, but the car that moves—and it falls apart because of what happens internally within it. So if you don’t just look at the motion, but look within the body itself to see what the motion does, you’ll realize that you can’t quite hold on to Einstein’s conclusion. So you can see that the car does indeed wear out—it’s not just the wheels that wear out because they’re turning. Now someone might say: Yes, of course they’d turn if the mountain were coming toward you or Basel were coming toward you; otherwise, the parts would wear out. But you can still say: Perhaps that’s how it is after all. With inanimate objects, the matter can’t be decided at all, and for inanimate objects, one can only say that it’s uncertain how much one or the other is moving. But consider a living organism! Imagine you’re walking into Basel yourself, while someone else remains standing here in Dornach—standing there for the entire two hours while you walk into Basel. Now, if you hadn’t moved toward Basel, but Basel had come toward you, you would have done almost nothing different from the person who stayed standing. But you have grown tired; a change has taken place within you. From this change taking place within yourself, you can perceive that you have moved. And with living bodies, one can, to a certain extent, determine from the change taking place within them whether they are truly in motion or merely in apparent motion—that is, at rest.

[ 20 ] But that is also what must lead us to recognize that we cannot form a theory based on an external observation of the world—not even from something as clear as motion—but rather we must form our theory from the internal changes. Well, here again we have the fact that even with the theory of relativity, one must say to oneself: Anyone who considers only the external aspect of the matter will get nowhere at all. One must look at the inner reality. It is precisely this theory of relativity that leads one to at least make a start on Spiritual Science, on anthroposophy, because anthroposophy constantly directs one’s attention to the inner reality.

[ 21 ] Einstein’s theory has led to extraordinarily strange consequences. For example, things get particularly interesting when Einstein presents his examples. He gave one example in which he sought to demonstrate that a change in position has absolutely no significance. Since, to the naked eye, it is impossible to determine whether a body has changed its position or not, a change in position cannot have any significance. That is why Einstein says: If I hurl a clock—which has a specific hand position—out into outer space so that it flies out at the speed of light and then turns around and comes back, this motion has had no significance for the interior of the clock. The clock returns unchanged. —This is how Einstein constructs his examples: Whether a body is moving or not, we cannot determine it. The clock is the same whether it is at rest or in motion; it makes no difference to it. — Yes, but, gentlemen, one would only have to invite you to look at a clock that flies out into outer space at the speed of light and comes back again! The clock—yes, you won’t see a thing of it at all. It will have been pulverized to such an extent that you won’t be able to see it anymore.

[ 22 ] But what does that mean? It means you can’t think that way at all. You end up with thoughts that are thoughtless. And so, on the one hand, you find that Einstein is a terribly clever man, and that he draws conclusions and makes judgments that are terribly captivating to people. Isn’t that right? Ordinary people, who aren’t very good at math, don’t really understand much about Einstein’s theory; and then they start reading about it in some popular book—they read the first page, and by the end they’re yawning; they get halfway through the second page, and then they stop. And then they say: “That must be something terribly clever.” Because if it weren’t something incredibly clever, then I’d have to understand it. Besides, a lot of people say it’s something incredibly clever. —That’s where the judgment about the theory of relativity comes from. But there are also people who do understand it. And it is among those who understand it that Einstein finds his following, and that following is growing every day. It’s not as Mr. Burle thinks—that it’s been forgotten again. A few years ago, if you spoke with university professors, they didn’t want to hear anything about Einstein’s theory. Today, the academic world is completely focused on Einstein’s theory of relativity.

[ 23 ] But people also end up forming some very strange views in the process. For example, I once had a debate with university professors about Einstein’s theory. Yes, you see, as long as one stays within the realm that I have already explained to you, Einstein’s theory of relativity is correct; there’s nothing to be done about it: it applies to the train, to the solar system, to the movements of the entire world. To that extent, it’s entirely correct. But now these gentlemen extend it to everything and say, for example: A person’s height is also relative; they have no absolute height, only a relative one. It only seems to me that they are that tall. They are that tall in relation—well, if we’re here—in relation to the chairs or in relation to the trees, but one cannot speak of an absolute height. — You see, that’s true as long as you remain a mathematician, as long as you’re dealing solely with geometry. The moment you stop dealing with geometry, when you enter real life, that’s when the fun stops—it takes on a whole different tone! You see, if someone has no sense of proportion, they can carve a head out of wood that’s a hundred times as big as your head. Then they’ve got it. Yes, because someone who has a sense of proportion would never do that, since they know that the size of a human head isn’t relative—it’s determined by the entire universe. It may be slightly larger or slightly smaller, but if someone is a dwarf, that is simply a disease; if someone becomes a giant, that is also a disease. This is not merely relative—the absolute is already evident here. Within certain limits, human size naturally varies. But within the universe, human beings are quite definitely destined for a certain size. So one cannot speak of relativity in this context either. One can only say that human beings determine their own size through their relationship to the universe. There was only one member of the faculty with whom I had this debate who admitted this. The others were already so twisted in their thinking by the theory of relativity that they said even human size is only relative because that is how we view it.

[ 24 ] Isn't that right? You know, if you have a picture there, it can be large; as you walk away, it gets smaller and smaller due to perspective. The size of this picture that you see is relative. Thus, proponents of the theory of relativity believe that human size is only what it is because it is viewed against a background everywhere. But that is nonsense. Human size has something absolute about it, and a person cannot be much larger or much smaller than what is predestined for them.

[ 25 ] Well, people come up with all this because they don’t even form an opinion about what is involved in a process or in a thing that happens on Earth in our surroundings. From everything I have already told you, you will be able to deduce the following: There is the Earth; on the Earth there is a human being. But you know that human beings are not merely dependent on the forces of the Earth; they are also dependent on the forces that act upon them from the universe. Our head, for example, reflects the entire universe. We’ve already discussed that. If it didn’t matter how tall a person is, what would have to be there? Suppose Mr. Burle’s head, Mr. Erbsmehl’s head, and Mr. Müller’s head were formed from the universe. Yes, gentlemen, if these heads differ from one another by a factor of three or four, there would have to be a separate universe for each one. But since there is only one universe—one that does not expand or contract in size because of individual human beings, but is always there and remains the same—the heads of human beings can only be approximately alike. It is only because people do not know that we live in a shared world, one that also operates spiritually, that they can believe it does not matter how large a person’s head is—that it is merely relative. It is not relative, but rather depends on the absolute size of the universe.

[ 26 ] So we find ourselves once again having to say: It is precisely when one thinks correctly with regard to the theory of relativity that one enters the realm of Spiritual Science, not that of materialistic science.

[ 27 ] And if you take a closer look at people, you’ll see that everywhere, people who think like Einstein run out of ideas when they come to the living or the spiritual. You see, when I was still a boy, I was able to take part in the lively debates that took place about gravity. Gravity—when a body falls toward the Earth, we say it is heavy. It falls because it has weight, because it is heavy. But this gravitational force acts everywhere in the universe. Bodies attract one another. If there is the Earth and there is the Moon (see drawing), then the Earth attracts the Moon, and the Moon does not simply fly away, but moves in a circle around the Earth, because whenever it tries to fly away, the Earth always pulls it back toward itself. Back then, when I was a boy, there was a lot of debate about what this gravity is actually based on.

[ 28 ] The English physicist Newton, whom I have mentioned to you before, simply said: “Bodies attract one another, one body the other”—that is not really a materialistic view, for in a mental image one imagines that a person is supposed to simply grasp something and pull it toward them, all sorts of things besides matter are necessary for that. If, then, the Earth is supposed to attract the Moon, this cannot be easily reconciled with a materialistic view. But materialism was flourishing precisely during my youth. One could also say it dried people up, it withered them, but one could also say it flourished. People said: That’s not true; the Earth can’t attract the Moon, because it doesn’t have any hands to pull it toward itself. That’s impossible. So they said: The world ether is everywhere (see drawing). So what I’m now drawing in red is the world ether; it, too, consists entirely of tiny little grains, minuscule little grains. And these minuscule little grains collide here, collide here, but they collide more strongly there than they do in the middle. Now, if there are two bodies—the Earth and the Moon—and the external force is stronger than the internal one, it is as if they were attracting each other. Thus, the force of attraction—gravity—has been explained by external impacts.

[ 29 ] I can’t even begin to tell you how much mental anguish this once caused me. From the age of twelve to eighteen, I really wrestled with the question of whether the Earth attracts the Moon, or whether the Moon is pushed toward the Earth. Because, you see, the arguments put forward aren’t usually stupid—they’re actually quite clever. But there’s already a certain theory of relativity hidden within them. One wonders: Is there anything absolute in this, or is everything relative? Is it perhaps really irrelevant to say that the Earth attracts the Moon, or that the Moon is propelled toward the Earth? Perhaps one cannot decide anything at all on this matter. — Well, you see, people have thought a great deal about this. And what I actually want to say is: Back then, they at least came to the conclusion that, in addition to visible matter, there is also an ether. They needed the ether, because what else could be pushing if not the particles of the ether! When Einstein first established his theory of relativity, everyone still believed that the ether had to exist. And Einstein then conceived of everything he described as relative motion as taking place within a space filled with the ether. Then it occurred to him: Good heavens! If motion is merely relative, it isn’t at all necessary for the ether to exist. Nothing needs to push, nothing needs to pull. We can’t make any judgments about any of that. So space can also be empty.

[ 30 ] And so, over time, there have actually been two Einsteinian theories. These are, of course, united in one person. The earlier Einstein described everything in his books as if the entire space of the world were filled with ether. Then his theory of relativity led him to say: Space is empty. But in the theory of relativity, it doesn’t matter whether we say anything about the ether, because we don’t even know if it exists. The examples he gives sometimes become quite grotesque. For example, Einstein says: If there’s the Earth, and there’s some tree, I climb up it; here I slip, fall down—that’s a phenomenon you’ve probably experienced yourself; at least as a boy I experienced it very often when I climbed a tree, slipping and falling down—and then one says: Well, the Earth is pulling me down. I have weight. That comes from gravity; otherwise, I would have remained in the air, otherwise I would be fluttering about if the Earth weren’t pulling me down. — But Einstein argues that you can’t say any of that, because consider the following: There’s the Earth again, and now I’m up here on top of a tower, standing there; but I’m not standing in such a way that there’s open space all around me—instead, I’m standing inside a box, and the box is suspended from above. If I fall out of the box from the tower, my relationship to the walls always remains the same. I don’t notice any movement; the walls move with me. Well, goodness gracious, now I can’t tell at all whether, from up there, the rope from which my box—the one I’m in—is suspended is being lowered, and I’m arriving at the bottom in the box because someone is lowering me from above, or whether I might arrive because the box is slipping due to the Earth’s gravitational pull. I can’t tell. I don’t know if I’m being lowered or if the Earth is pulling me down.

[ 31 ] But this example that Einstein chooses is exactly the same as that other comparison that always comes up in schools. There, children are taught how a planetary system forms: first there is a nebula, and from this nebula the planets separate. The sun remains in the center. People say: It’s easy to prove that this is how it happens. You take a small drop of oil floating on water, a sheet of paper with a pin stuck through the center, put it in the water, and start spinning it. Then tiny droplets break off from the large one, and a minuscule planetary system is formed. That’s how it must be out there, too. Once there was a nebula; the planets broke off, and the sun remained in the center. Who could possibly disagree when you can still see this happening with the oil droplet today! — Yes, but one small detail has been forgotten, gentlemen: that I have to stand there and spin it when I’m the teacher in front of the children and demonstrating this! If I don’t spin it: nothing forms from a tiny fat planetary system! So—the teacher would have to tell the children—there must be a big teacher, a gigantic teacher out there, who spun the whole thing once. Only then is the example complete. And so Einstein, if he were to think entirely in accordance with reality—if he even gets around to formulating such a thought—would indeed have to assume that there’s someone up there guiding the rope. That’s absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you can’t say: It’s the same whether I come down because someone lets me down or because I tumble; there has to be someone up there. So if Einstein were to carry out this example, he would immediately have to ask himself: Who is it, then, who is holding the rope? He does not do this because the materialism of our time forbids it. That is why he devises examples that have no basis in reality, that one cannot even conceive of, that are impossible to conceive.

[ 32 ] And there’s something else connected with this. Just imagine, gentlemen, there’s a mountain here. There’s Freiburg im Breisgau. I set up a cannon on the mountain so that, for my sake, you can still hear the shot in Offenburg. But you’ll hear the shot later. If someone notes on their watch when they heard the shot in Freiburg and when someone else heard it in Offenburg, they’ll find a difference in the time on their watches. The sound took a while to travel from Freiburg to Offenburg.

[ 33 ] Well, you see, this story has also been used to illustrate the so-called theory of relativity. For people say: Let’s assume that I’m not standing in Offenburg listening to when the sound arrives, but that I’m standing in Freiburg to begin with. There, I hear the sound at the very moment it is produced. Now I’m riding on a train heading from Freiburg toward Offenburg. Because I’m moving forward, a little way away from Freiburg, I hear the sound slightly later than when it is produced. A little farther toward Offenburg, again a little later; a little farther still, again a little later.

[ 34 ] But that only lasts as long as you’re driving slower than the speed of sound. If you’re driving exactly as fast as the speed of sound from Freiburg to Offenburg, what happens then? If you’re traveling at exactly the same speed as sound—at the speed of sound—you’ll arrive in Offenburg, and there it will have already passed you by; you still won’t hear it. If you’re traveling at exactly the same speed, you’ll never hear it, because it will have already passed you by by the time you’re supposed to hear it. You’re supposed to hear it, but by then it’s already gone. Now people say: Good grief, that’s right—you can’t hear the sound anymore if you’re moving just as fast as the sound itself! And if you move even faster than the sound, what happens then? If you move more slowly, you hear it later; if you move just as fast, you don’t hear it at all. If you move faster, you hear it before it even reaches you! People say that’s perfectly natural—that’s exactly how it works. So if you hear the sound in Offenburg two seconds later—when you’re moving slower than the sound—you won’t hear it at all if you’re moving at the same speed as the sound. But if you’re moving faster than the sound, then you’ll hear it two seconds earlier than when it’s released in Freiburg! I’d just like to invite you to listen—to really listen to the sound—before it’s released in Freiburg! You can see for yourself whether you hear it sooner, no matter how fast you’re zooming along.

[ 35 ] The other objection is that I would then like to ask you what you look like when you move that fast—or even faster than the speed of sound!

[ 36 ] What follows from this? It follows that one can imagine anything, as long as one does not stick to reality. Ultimately, this theory of relativity leads one to conclude that one hears the sound before the shot is fired! (Laughter.) One can easily imagine that, but it cannot actually happen. And that, you see, is the difference! People who do science today want mainly to think logically; and Einstein thinks wonderfully logically. But what is logical is not yet real. One must possess two qualities in one’s thinking: First, things must already be logical, but second, they must correspond to reality. One must be able to live within reality. Then one doesn’t imagine this box being pulled up and down on a rope. Then one doesn’t imagine the clock flying out into outer space at the speed of light and back again. Nor would one imagine that guy over there who moves faster than the speed of sound and therefore hears the sound before the shot is fired. Much of what you read in books today, gentlemen, in the form of such speculations, is very beautifully conceived, but none of it has any basis in reality.

[ 37 ] And so one can say: Einstein’s theory of relativity is clever, and it also applies to a certain part of the world, but it’s of no use when you look at reality. For the theory of relativity can never explain why a person gets so terribly tired when walking to Basel, since he cannot even say whether he is walking into Basel or whether Basel is coming toward him. After all, the fatigue would be completely inexplicable if Basel were coming toward him, and why would I have to move my feet at all when I walk; I could just stand still, I could wait until Basel comes toward me! You see, all these things show nothing other than that it is not yet enough to think correctly and sensibly, but that something else is needed as well: One must be immersed in life and must judge things according to life.

[ 38 ] That is what I can tell you about the theory of relativity. It has caused quite a stir, but as I said, people don’t really understand it; otherwise, they would already be thinking about these things.

[ 39 ] See you again next Saturday, then.