Discoveries that emerged from 1905 to 1925 predict experimental results with great accuracy, and their theories underpin many of the technological advances of the past hundred years. Isn’t it odd, then, that we haven’t agreed how to incorporate their implications into a single picture of reality?
Julian Barbour aims to complete the work Einstein began but did not to take to its fruition — rejecting all space and time (and space-time) as absolute metrics for or containers of change. His work embodies a crucial willingness to question fundamental assumptions, to see through old stories and imagine new ones that may work better.