Hans Reichenbach - Special Quotes

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Clocks are inherently four-dimensional instruments, since the endpoints of their unit distances are events. Measuring rods, on the other hand, are three-dimensional measuring instruments; their end points are space points and they can be changed into four-dimensional measuring instruments only if events are produced at their end points according to a special rule.

Hans Reichenbach
We define: any two events which are indeterminate as to their time order may be called simultaneous.... Simultaneity means the exclusion of causal connection.... Yet we must not commit the mistake of attempting to derive from it the conclusion that this definition coordinates to any given event at a given different place. This would be the case only for a special form of causal structure, a form that does not conform to physical reality.

Hans Reichenbach
We can... treat only the geometrical aspects of mathematics and shall be satisfied in having shown that there is no problem of the truth of geometrical axioms and that no special geometrical visualization exists in mathematics.

Hans Reichenbach
Perceptual space is not a special space in addition to physical space, but physical space which we endow with a special subjective metric.... apart from the definition of congruence in physics and that based on perception, there is no third one derived from pure visualization. Any such third definition is nothing but the definition of physical congruence to which our normative function has adjusted the subjective experience of congruence.

Hans Reichenbach