28 RELATIVITY 



used. Or perhaps the concealment is not any particular 

 subtlety; she may have done her work without employing 

 a frame of space. Let me tell you a parable. 



There was once an archaeologist who used to com- 

 pute the dates of ancient temples from their orientation. 

 He found that they were aligned with respect to the 

 rising of particular stars. Owing to precession the 

 star no longer rises in the original line, but the date 

 when it was rising in the line of the temple can be 

 calculated, and hence the epoch of construction of the 

 temple is discovered. But there was one tribe for 

 which this method would not work; they had built only 

 circular temples. To the archaeologist this seemed a 

 manifestation of extraordinary subtlety on their part; 

 they had hit on a device which would conceal entirely 

 the date when their temples were constructed. One 

 critic, however, made the ribald suggestion that per- 

 haps this particular tribe was not enthusiastic about 

 astronomy. 



Like the critic I do not think Nature has been par- 

 ticularly subtle in concealing which frame she prefers. 

 It is just that she is not enthusiastic about frames of 

 space. They are a method of partition which w T e have 

 found useful for reckoning, but they play no part in 

 the architecture of the universe. Surely it is absurd to 

 suppose that the universe is planned in such a way as to 

 conceal its plan. It is like the schemes of the White 

 Knight — 



But I was thinking of a plan 



To dye one's whiskers green, 



And always use so large a fan 



That they could not be seen. 



If this is so we shall have to sweep away the frames 

 of space before we can see Nature's plan in its real 



