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Sidebar 1
Are Attributes Absolute?
We orient ourselves according to the structures of our environment. Our own self-image is founded on a comparison of ourselves to the people we see and know, the objects we handle and the places we visit. I compare my height to those near me in an elevator. You judge your attractiveness relative to the appearance of your co-workers. Our very sense of our position is determined by the walls of the room that surrounds us or, if outdoors, by the buildings, trees and cars we can see.
That building is 150 feet high, that leafy tree is green and brown, that person weighs 195 pounds. It comforts us and solidifies our hold on reality to believe that all these things orienting us are solid and our understanding of them is basically static. We live and work in this stable world described by Newtonian physics because it is functional and we have evolved to operate successfully in it. But relativity tells a different story and a closer look at the phenomena of attributes can reveal a deeper understanding or how the universe works.
Look at someone near you. We tend to think that he has certain physical characteristics that are identifiable and stable. He’s 6’2” tall, 195 pounds, hair is brown, eyes are green, skin is a pale brown with just a slight texture. You can already tell how variable many of these characteristics are. Through growth, physical appearance changes over time. Height, weight, hair color (and amount!) are attributes that are points along a spectrum and are continuously evolving.
But even if we freeze time and define the person in the frame of an instant, those defining characteristics are still relative. In our frozen instant, 6’2” has absolutely no meaning by itself. 6’2” means something only in its relationship with all the other possible heights, taller and shorter. It means slightly shorter than 6’3” and significantly taller than 4’2.” Now you may suggest that, numbers aside, the man does have an actual height, and this is true. But the point to understand is that the man must have his height and there must be other heights to help give it definition. Reality derives from the relationship between the man’s height and other possible options.
Similarly, color only makes sense through relativity. Our man’s eyes are green by virtue of that color’s relationship to the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. “Green” sits comfortably between blue and yellow and derives its reality as much from the other colors as from its own wavelengths. And even within the color green the range of possibilities is infinite. One has only to look at a grove of trees to realize there is no such thing as absolute green. Like snowflakes, one would be hard pressed to find two leaves in an entire forest that are exactly the same color. The color of each leaf is defined by the light it reflects as well as the chlorophyll it produces. And just as each leaf will produce slightly different amounts of chlorophyll, each photon will strike at a slightly different angle. And equally important, each reflected photon will enter our man’s green eyes and be interpreted just a little differently by his mind. Certainly any single wavelength of electromagnetic energy can be associated with a single color, but each wavelength only exists as part of a continuum. Equally true, every eye and every mind will “see” that wavelength differently, and its “color” will be determined as much by that mind as by the wavelength itself.
These are but two examples of how physical attributes are relative, not absolute. The same truth holds for all describable physical attributes. Size, shape, color, texture, hardness, motion – all are given reality by their relationships. And the reality of metaphysical things – ideas, emotions, abstract concepts, words – is equally relational. Love in all its degrees of warmth, romance, friendship and affection is defined by the many shades of both hate and indifference. How could beauty be without the equally essential attributes of plain, homely, ugly and having a nice personality? What would constitute good if there were no such thing as bad, or even mediocre?
No idea stands alone, no feeling exists without an alternative. And what is language but a complex interrelationship of letters, words, sentences, intonations, ideas (and misunderstandings)? The grand truth of relativity is that no “thing” in the universe stands alone. Each thing exists in relationship to all of the other things of the universe. Yes, each has its reality, but it is not a lonely one. That reality needs and must embrace the rest of the universe. It is in that embrace that both the individual and the universe as a whole find their realities.