Einstein at the Bus-Stop 
Jenny Diski
For the purposes of plain getting on with things – keeping warm, staying fed, making babies – there is no reason on earth, or off it, why anyone not actively engaged in the world of science should comprehend the underlying workings of physics. All we really need to know is that, accurate or not this week, relativity, cosmology, quantum mechanics don’t concern us in our everyday lives. Let the quantum physicist panic because she knows the floor she walks on is almost entirely empty space with a few widely scattered molecules dotted here and there. The rest of us stomp around in blissfully ignorant confidence that – barring unforeseeable acts of God – a floor will continue to do what a floor is supposed to do. Or as the New York Times for 10 November 1919 put it, ‘Einstein Theory Triumphs. Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to Be, but Nobody Need Worry.’
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Jenny Diski is writing a book about St Helena. A novel, Apology for the Woman Writing, is coming out in November.
Other articles by this contributor:
Flowery, rustic, tippy, smokey · Jenny Diski drinks a cup of tea
The Housekeeper of a World-Shattering Theory · Mrs Freud
Diary · Jenny Diski tries to stay awake
Mirror Images · Jenny Diski sees off Piers Morgan
A Long Forgotten War · Jenny Diski writes about Promise of a Dream: A Memoir of the 1960s by Sheila Rowbotham
Hang on to the doily · Catherine M.
XXX · Doing what we’re told
Diary · The Friendly Spider Programme
print layout
tell a friend