Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

keeperkairos t1_j3nqpfn wrote

Let’s say I have a frictionless ball, I drop the ball and it bounces back to my hand exactly into its original position (because it is frictionless). However me and the ball are on Earth, which is rotating and which orbits the Sun, so me and the ball have actually moved significantly from where we were when I dropped the ball. You can go even further than this and think about how the Solar system moves through the Milky Way, which itself is also moving etc. So did the ball bounce back to its original position? You might say no, but that’s only because you have other objects as a reference point, if you could not see them you would have no idea.

The point is there is no absolute space. You can’t describe a point in space without also describing a point in time (or another object, but then it has the same issue of needing its own time coordinate or another relative object, then the issue repeats). The same goes for describing a point in time without describing a point in space, although this is harder to grasp.

We actually already think like this in our day to day lives, in fact humans are very unique for thinking this way. For example, do you show up at work simply at a specific place? Or do you show up for work at a specific place, and at a specific time?

1