S/O Are most things subjective or are most things absolute?
What does the phrase, "It's all relative", mean?
I believe Einstein came up with the idea, but I'm not sure.
- wiseguy answered 6 years ago
Sauwelios answered 6 years ago
It means all values -- everything that can be expressed in units -- are relative. For instance, if you're driving 90 on a freeway, your speed is 90 miles per hour in relation to the hitchhiker standing by the side of the road; but it is 180 miles per hour in relation to the car moving in the opposite direction in the other lane, whose speed is also 90 miles per hour in relation to the hitchhiker.
The same applies to all physical properties: for instance, the weight of a stone is different here on earth than on the moon. Now one may ask whether, if one would strip the stone of all its properties, anything would remain (the "stone-in-itself"). I think not, and this means the stone as a whole is relative: it has only relative being (for it is really in flux; it is just relatively less fluxious than, say, a river).
Some things are not relative, however, but absolute. These absolutes are the properties of properties -- abstractions from abstractions. The properties of all concrete things are relative, but the relativity of these properties is not itself relative (something cannot be more or less relative: it either is relative or it is not). An example:
The stone we mentioned has a relative weight. This weight is a property of the stone. If we abstract this property from the stone, and inquire into the properties of this property, we find that it has the following properties, among others:
1. It is relative. But this relativity is absolute.
2. It is indefinite. But this indefiniteness is itself definite -- the weight is definitely indefinite.
It seems the properties of properties have the opposite properties of the properties they are properties of.
Nina answered 6 years ago
Values have no meaning on its own...its all relative.