Thoughts And Trivia

We like an ant on a football don't know who we are, why we are there on this globe, and what is the globe made of, what are the processes acting on this globe.

Millions of generations of accumulated wisdom of ants may develop a world view of the football:
-that its made of leather pieces sewn together
-has an internal bladder the penile spout which is tied up with string-its overinflated with air
-its prone to sudden kicks; flights in air and sudden landing and bouncing on ground
-some GOD like beings get pleasure in kicking it or making it fly.
The new generation may dispute this World-view and say that the world has changed.-It no longer is made of leather but of synthetic material.
-It no longer has internal bladder because the penile spout is no longer there instead a neat little hole is there
-they may even blame the disappearance on the polluting practices of certain ants-rest of ancient world
-view still holds.
Einstein was also faced with something similar when he propounded the Theory of General Relativity where the space-time continuum develops a curvature in the presence of heavy material objects. To describe these curvatures he used Riemann's Geometry.
Riemann Geometry was quite old and quaint not much known or of not much use till then. Unlike Euclidean Geometry it dealt with finding the geometry of a surface by taking small steps over a the surface. Say an ant walking over the surface of the football taking measurements after each step. With Riemann Geometry the ant can develop an equation describing the spherical ball with its seams and patches. The ant need not start a-priory with any world view of the football.With Riemann Geometry the ant need not take as gospel truth the unverified world-view handed down by its parents and society. It develops the world-view as it goes along step by step based on what it actually sees with its own eyes.
So we should discard the world-view handed down to us. Go along developing your own world-view from what your eyes see.
Euclidean geometry is from the perspective of all-seeing God above us. Riemann Geometry is for us Humans with limited perceptions.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Saturday, April 02, 2005