Or... they observe an astronomic phenomenon... an eclipse of the moon, and... suppose... this... is perceived… — Henri Poincaré
Or... they observe an astronomic phenomenon... an eclipse of the moon, and... suppose... this... is perceived simultaneously from all points of the earth. That is not altogether true, since the propagation of light is not instantaneous; if absolute exactitude were desired, there would be a correction... according to a complicated rule.
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More from this book
Does the harmony the human intelligence thinks it discovers in nature exist outside of this intelligence? No, beyond doubt, a reality completely independent of the mind which conceives it, sees or feels it, is an impossibility. A world as exterior as that, even if it existed, would for us be forever inaccessible.
Time and Space … It is not nature which imposes them upon us, it is we who impose them upon nature because we find them convenient.
The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile or vain.
