General Relativity

Einstein...part of the classical system of thought derived from Enlightenment values: empiricism, linearity, logic, patriarchy... is it any wonder he would attempt to come up with a theory that is essentially elegant, sensible, and somewhat rational or easy to explain? Einstein was working in a period of time which was witnessing the collapse of Enlightenment values which had begun in the mid 19th century and was predicted by Nietzsche. To me it seems unsuprising that Einstein would be working at developing a theory which mirrored the changing position of society at the time. The society of Europe at the time just before Einstein had reached a point in which it had apparently explained itself and fulfilled the highest expectations of its particular set of values, which were essentially derived from the Renaissance - in other words Greek and Medieval values jammed together. Then came the stirrings of the epistemological crisis - the sense that a few forward thinkers were having: "That's it?" This began a questioning of the European psyche, how knowledge was gathered, how reliable that knowledge was, and if there was any real knowledge at all. In fact the people of that period began to see that their systems of knowledge had been built on a fundamentally bizarre notion which combined the fearful attitude of the Judeo-Christian tradition with the logos of Ancient Greece. These value systems were vastly more complex than I can possible let on about briefly, but suffice it to say there we absolutely incompatible. The union of two systems of belief of how the universe works and what reality is was essentially a whole lot of nonsense. For the entire system of knowledge and culture in the West to be built upon this farce was a realization slowly dawning on a few people. People like Nietzsche or Einstein saw that how they had been taught to perceive the universe, life, and reality, was fundamentally incorrect and built entirely, like a house of cards, on a set of two very different cultural systems. Both these men were dreamers, and both of them a bit nostalgic. They were successful and listened to not because of the brilliance of their ideas, but because they most adequately represented the shift in the consciousness of the people in Europe. Europe was awakening to the fact that all their knowledge and reason and science and culture could not be proved to be any more true than any other cultures. This lack of certainty, or even the possibility that certainty would EVER be possible, could be said to directly challenge and shake apart the authority of Enlightenment values. Nietzsche and Einstein both maintained many traditions of Enlightenment, such as reason and patriarchy, while making allowances for the most obvious flaws and falsities. Einstein’s view of reality as defined by the Theory of General Relativity and Special Relativity are essentially easy to sum up and understand. Einstein would not be happy unless the ideas still fit the pattern of Empiricism which stated that for it to be true it must be simple to state and comprehend. Einstein was never happy with his theories or the ramifications of them…they already took the epistemological crisis much further than he was ever comfortable.

Quantum Mechanics


Quantum mechanics occurred slightly later than Einstein and was resultant of a drastically changed worldview. Reason, empiricism, and Enlightenment had failed. The first World War had shown Europe where these values had lead them: to devastation and war like had never been seen before. Mechanization and industrialization had allowed war to become mechanistic and industrialized as well. It was more efficient, less honour bound, and certainly more reasonable than it had ever been before. Mutual Protection Pacts had brought more people into conflict at once than almost ever before. Quantum mechanics reflects this state of what was to become Post-modernism. While Modernism was attempting to revive Enlightenment systems, the challenge put to the world by the Great War only snowballed into greater and greater insecurities. The house of cards collapsed entirely and this theory in science reflected the scattered and almost infinite multiplicity inherent in the destruction of European culture. Suddenly EVERYTHING was uncertain, choices were infinite, and the mega structure that united the imagination of the world was collapsing. Quantum mechanics reflects this uncertainty and does not in any way represent reality any more realistically than any other scientific explanation. Science is a cultural system bound by the same iconography, systems of signification, mythology, and linguistics/psychology as the rest of the culture is springs from and is more a mirror of the present cultural worldview than of any reality.

Superstring Theory

In response to Modernism and Post-modernism, we now have our current cultural climate which has given birth to Superstring Theory, which again is no more correct or real than any other system of belief. One might call the period we are in post-post-modernism, or if I dare coin my own term: Historicist. Essentially now our global culture (which exists because of many different media and the Information Age: see Marshall McLuhan) is bridging the gap between the specificity of the Age of Reason, the uncertainty of post-modernism, and the intrinsic human need for love and friendship. The current psychological environment of most humans now is media-centric. This means more than just the internet and television, which are two of the biggest current mediums. It also entails things like airplanes, automobiles, cell phones, and even electric lighting. All of these current media, and a great many more, represent the age of the story, and a story told in an intimate setting. This is why I call our current period Historicism. Post-modernism was the age of the Parody, and now with Historicism, we parody so constantly and have access to so much information that the parody is now no longer just a tool, it is an assumption. Every work of art of cultural production is now created and distributed with the concept of all the work that has come before it. It is not that people necessarily know any more than they did in the past, but the mere ability that they could know more changes the make up of the story. Now all history is suddenly a realm of stories all in dialogue with each other. And not just European history, all histories of all peoples in all places. Their stories can be recorded in the Amazon jungle and played on television a week later, their weblogs can be instantaneously transmitted to almost anywhere in the world. An infinite number of tiny stories all existing together, neither in a sense of cooperation nor of antagonism. Merely a coexistence of infinite choice instead of infinite regress. All stories are becoming fluid because they no longer have to rely on being reasonable or culturally specific. Superstring Theory, as I understand it in a most limited sense, suggests that the entire universe is made up of an infinite number of tiny strings vibrating which give us the illusion in a universe made of many more dimensions than we notice, that what we are seeing is “real” in the sense we have traditionally understood it. Superstring theory exists in dialog with all the past theories and is a story. One could say that the infinite number of relatively simple, human stories that we are seeing is a song, vibrating out into a universe immensely more complex than we can probably ever see or understand. In the past there were perhaps just a few dimensions to a persons life: a sense of duty (to family, community, nation, whatever), obtaining basic needs (food, water, shelter), and hopefully reproducing. Now we see a world with many more dimensions available to us such as health and fitness, the quest for happiness, environmentalism, global conflict, conscience, pleasure. So again we see the current scientific theory reflecting the state of our psyche which is very much in tune with story-telling.