The philosophical implications of Einstein's relativity theory

Abstract

"The struggle to widen our horizon and to go deep into our knowledge, is one of those absolute objectives without which it seems impossible for any thinking individual to have a conscious and positive attitude toward life. The true essence of our struggle for knowledge is made up, on the one hand, from the attempt to embrace the whole width and complex variety of the human experience, and, on the other hand, from the search for simplicity and for brevity in their essential foundations. ,,The originator of the Special and General Theories of relativity, 2 Albert Einstein exerted a significant influence on his and all successive generations. His intellectual endeavour had great repercussions on many a field of thought, from mathematics to metaphysics. In his days, Einstein unceasingly advocated the attitude of critical rationalism, the critical search for error. His most important contribution being obviously that by which he taught us that Newton's cosmology, overwhelmingly successful due to its incredible survival of the most severe tests, may well be mistaken.