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TULASI-PRĀJÑA, Dec., 1990
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a single continuum in the same way as the three dimensions of space had been before. Physical space was thus increased to a four-dimensional space which also included the dimension of time. The fourdimensional space of the special theory of the relativity is just as rigid and absolute as Newton's space Thus, according to Dr. Einstein, "Space and time are forms of intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of colour, shape, or size. Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangement of the objects we perceive in it, and time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it."14
The philosophical implication of the theory of relativity in Einstein's view is: It must not be thought, however, that the spacetime continuum is simply a mathematical construction. The world is a space-time continuum; all reality exists both in space and in time, and the two are indivisible. All measurements of time are really measurements in space, and conversely measurements in space depend on measurements of time."15 Einstein has considered the space-time continuum to represent the objective reality. His view is: "But except on the reels of one's own consciousness, the universe, the objective world of reality, does not happen-it simply exists. It can be encompassed in its entire majesty only by a cosmic intellect. But it can also be represented symbolically, by a mathematician, as a fourdimensional space time continuum."16
We find that some scientists such as Sir James Jeans, Eddington, Weyl, Mach and Minkowski have made identical interpretations. All of them regard that when we divide the continuum into three dimensions of space and one of time, space and time sepretely become subjective realities but that when space and time are welded together to form a four dimensional continuum, through it we can get the knowledge of the objective universe. Sir James Jeans expresses this fact thus: "Yet, just because we can exhibit all nature within this framework (i.e. the four-dimensional continuum), it must correspond to some sort of an objective reality. But its division into Space and time is not objective; it is merely subjective."17 He further asserts that the main substance of the theory of relativity is that nature knows nothing about the division of continuum into space and time.18
As we have already quoted, Minkowski considers seperate space and time as mere shadows and the continuum as the objective reality. Hermann Weyl puts the thought in following words: "In the realm of physics, it is perhaps only the theory of relativity which has made it quite clear that the two essences, space and time, entering into our intuition have no place in the world constructed by mathematical
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