Felix Alba-Juez

After some cogitation, it is difficult not to agree with Herman Bondi (1919 - 2005), who in his book 'Relativity and Common Sense' says:... The surprising thing, surely, is that molecules in a gas behave so much as billiard balls, not that electrons behave so little like billiard balls.

If Relativity Theory kills our deepest convictions, why not start by finding out why we believed in them for millennia?

Without causality in the world, there is no point in educating people, or making any moral or political appeal.

Teaching the layperson (divulgare) is not distorting (tergiversare) the subject, but educating the public; and it is our duty as scientists to educate without distorting the essence of the scientific knowledge attained by humanity. The future of our society depends upon this premise.

Subjectivity is strange to Science, while Relativity is an objective part of it.

It is curious that the human mind could blindly accept an infinite speed but had reservations to accept a finite one, simply because it was too large!

When we say two bodies 'touch', what we mean (without knowing it) is that both electromagnetic fields are interacting to avoid physical interpenetration and ... that happens well before subatomic particles touch!

Truth is not as pompous and romantic as myth ... but it has the immeasurable value of being the Truth.

To believe in nothing is as ridiculous as to believe in everything. Reason and factual evidence may convert a belief into knowledge.

The command of our language is crucial to focusing our thoughts and communicating them with precision to others.

Why is it so difficult for us to think in relative terms? Well, for the good reason that human nature loves absoluteness, and erroneously considers it as a state of higher knowledge.

There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.

It is worth noting that a wrong folkoric definition of an Inertial Frame in the Popular Science literature (even in text books) reads that 'it is a frame in uniform motion'. We know very well by now that the idea of motion requires a frame of reference, so that such a definition of an Inertial Frame has no meaning whatsoever, confusing the reader because it tacitly reaffirms the idea of absolute motion -- when the goal of every didactic exposition of Relativity Theory should be precisely the opposite.

Is numerical equality (forced by the use of specific physical units) the same as conceptual equality? Of course NOT!

One of the various theories proposed to explain the negative result of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment with light waves (conceived to measure the absolute space), was based on the ballistic hypothesis, i.e. on postulating that the speed of light predicted by Maxwell's equations was not given as relative to the medium but as relative to the transmitter (firearm). Had that been the case, the experiment negative results would have not caused such perplexity and frustration (as we shall see in forthcoming sections).