Felix Alba-Juez Quotes

Einstein's theory, experimentally corroborated for the last hundred years, regardless of how outlandish and opposed to our prejudices (disguised as they are with the 'common sense' costume), is rational, consistent, and intelligible to the layperson - if s/he has the audacity of accepting the unfounded nature of those prejudices.

The past and the future are not a collection of instants shared by all space, but a collection of events that correspond to a possible relation of causal order with the present event.

Without causality in the world, there is no point in educating people, or making any moral or political appeal.

When we say two bodies 'touch', what we mean (without knowing it) is that both electromagnetic fields are interacting to avoid physical interpenetration and ... that happens well before subatomic particles touch!

Such is how Science makes progress: not destroying the past, but learning from it, and building on it.

Both space and time are metrically amorphous, i.e. they do not have - despite how strongly we believe so - an inherent metric which would allow us to measure them without any definitions. In this sense, thus, neither space nor time is absolute.

The present is not an instant shared by all space, but an event, i.e. an instant at a place in space.

One can know very much but comprehend very little and, besides, ... different objectives require different levels of knowledge - though always with the maximum possible comprehension suited to the purpose.

Is numerical equality (forced by the use of specific physical units) the same as conceptual equality? Of course NOT!

A good part of what appears to us - prima facie - as objective reality is, instead, just a consequence of our conventions to discover it.

The command of our language is crucial to focusing our thoughts and communicating them with precision to others.

The objective and merit of Einstein's theory is to identify those physical magnitudes which are absolute, i.e. common for all Inertial Frames, distinguishing them from those which are a mere perspective, only shared by those observers in repose within a given Inertial Frame.

It is worth noting that a wrong folkoric definition of an Inertial Frame in the Popular Science literature (even in text books) reads that 'it is a frame in uniform motion'. We know very well by now that the idea of motion requires a frame of reference, so that such a definition of an Inertial Frame has no meaning whatsoever, confusing the reader because it tacitly reaffirms the idea of absolute motion
when the goal of every didactic exposition of Relativity Theory should be precisely the opposite.

Subjectivity is strange to Science, while Relativity is an objective part of it.

Why is it so difficult for us to think in relative terms? Well, for the good reason that human nature loves absoluteness, and erroneously considers it as a state of higher knowledge.

There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.

Truth is not as pompous and romantic as myth ... but it has the immeasurable value of being the Truth.

The difference between Lorentz's Transformation in Lorentz's theory and Lorentz's Transformation in Einstein's Special Relativity is not mathematical but ontological and epistemological and, being so, it was to be expected the emergence of historians, scientists, and philosophers that, not having understood in depth the philosophical content and transcendence of the theory, would minimize Einstein's contribution.

It is not the reverence for words, but for their meaning that determines our deepness of comprehension of a given assertion about Nature.

To believe in nothing is as ridiculous as to believe in everything. Reason and factual evidence may convert a belief into knowledge.