328 CREATIVE SCIENCE 



Mach and others, showed some of them unjustified by any experi- 

 ence of obsen'ables. And, so goes the fable, rejection of these unjusti- 

 fied concepts and assumptions then led "naturally" to a powerful new 

 theory that, free from all metaphysical pretensions, sought only an 

 economic description of observables. This account will not bear ex- 

 amination. 



The scholastics' critical commentaries on the older physics paved 

 the way for Galileo's reconstruction of mechanics and, to some extent, 

 even for Copernicus' reconstruction of astronomy— both of which re- 

 constructions were however rejected by the scholastics. The ante- 

 cedent critiques of such as Mach cleared the way for Einstein— and 

 Mach rejected Einstein's innovation. We never regard the works of 

 Copernicus and Galileo as the triumphs of scholasticism; we have no 

 better reason for regarding the work of Einstein as a triumph of posi- 

 tivist scepticism. However necessary as a preliminary to innovation, 

 the critical re-examination of accepted theory does not itself produce 

 innovation. If relativity is claimed for positivism we must at the very 

 least set Mach's failure even to appreciate it beside Einstein's suc- 

 cess in creating it. 



Relativity theory is no trivial work of relativism but, on the con- 

 trary, fruition of the effort to grasp the invariant absolute within the 

 context of observables always relative to observers. Not content to 

 describe, Einstein sought to understand. And he had precisely what 

 Mach lacked: that faith in the possibility of human understanding 

 which so shines forth from a statement of his later years. 



I still believe in the possibility of producing a model of reality— that 

 is to say, a theory which will represent things themselves . . . 



Reichenbach reports that: 



When I, on a certain occasion, asked Professor Einstein how he found 

 his theory of relativity, he answered that he found it because he was 

 so strongly convinced of the harmony of the universe. 



Had Reichenbach been on hand to interview Copernicus he would 

 have received much the same answer: Einstein and Copernicus pur- 

 sued parallel courses under the inspiration of the same faith. Reich- 

 enbach found Einstein's answer unsatisfactory— for "a creed is not a 

 philosophy"— and others have held it absurdly metaphysical and sci- 

 entifically immature. However that may be, the faith is nonetheless 



