Willem de Sitter - Theory Quotes

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In Einstein's general theory of relativity the identity of these two coefficients, the gravitational and the inertial mass, is no longer a miracle, but a necessity, because gravitation and inertia are identical.

Willem de Sitter
There is another side to the theory of relativity. We have pointed out in the beginning how the development of science is in the direction to make it less subjective, to separate more and more in the observed facts that which belongs to the reality behind the phenomena, the absolute, from the subjective element, which is introduced by the observer, the relative. Einstein's theory is a great step in that direction. We can say that the theory of relativity is intended to remove entirely the relative and exhibit the pure absolute.

Willem de Sitter
These... are the two observational facts about our neighbourhood, which have to be accounted for by the theory: there is a finite density of matter, and there is expansion, i. e. the mutual distances are increasing, and therefore the density is decreasing.

Willem de Sitter
In electromagnetism... the law of the inverse square had been supreme, but, as a consequence of the work of Faraday and Maxwell, it was superseded by the field. And the same change took place in the theory of gravitation. By and by the material particles, electrically charged bodies, and magnets which are the things that we actually observe come to be looked upon only as "singularities" in the field. So far this transformation from the force to the potential, from the action at a distance to the field, is only a purely mathematical operation.

Willem de Sitter
The triangles that we can measure are not large enough... to detect the curvature. Fortunately, however, we are, in a way, able to communicate with the fourth dimension. The theory of relativity has given us an insight into the structure of the real universe:... a four-dimensional structure. The study of the way in which the three space-dimensions are interwoven with the time-dimension affords a kind of outside point of view of the three-dimensional space... from this outside point of view we might be able to perceive the curvature of the three-dimensional world.

Willem de Sitter