In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

340 CODES
conscious level, Einstein's own thought seems to have been influenced by
the metaphorical proximity of physical relativity to existential instability.
This is revealed by the fact that trains, which serve as a metaphor for
people's changing relation to the-increasingly unstable-ground under
their feet, are also the standard metaphor that Einstein and his students
use to explain relativity (Salmon, 69ff.). [see Railroads] The train metaphor
is such an obvious common denominator for scientific research and
for a new experience of the human condition because it can symbolize,
on different levels, the impression that the production of knowledge
depends on the motion of the individual who is in the process of observing
the world. In the context of physics, relativity thus leads to the
conclusion that, as a surface (or rather as a ground) on which knowledge
is produced, the earth is not homogeneous. If Einstein redefines space as
"motion relative to a practically rigid body of reference," and if he points
to a train and an embankment as examples of such bodies of reference,
then it is clear that his world-at least his world of special relativitywill
break up into a variety of individual spaces (Einstein, 10-11). A
passenger riding on a train drops a stone from the train window; the
stone's trajectory as observed by the passenger appears quite different
from the trajectory as observed by a person standing on the embankment.
The relativity principle generates such a broad reaction because its
basic outlines offer some striking similarities to certain collective obsessions
of the moment. Among the observers of the current epistemological
and practical instability, Walter Benjamin is one of the very few who
manages to maintain an analytical attitude instead of indulging in dramatic
hyperbole: "A stable situation is not necessarily a comfortable
situation, and even before the war there were social groups for whom
stability meant the stabilization of misery. Social decline is by no means
less stable or more miraculous than social rise" (Benjamin, 94-95).
Benjamin's reflection epitomizes two of the main practical insights stemming
from the epistemological crisis. Knowledge is always contingent
upon-and true or false in relation to-the position of the observer. This
means that economic and social instability will seem a nightmare only
to those who have a great deal to lose. But it also means that a situation
which different observers agree to see as unstable when they look at it
from a certain perspective can turn into the stability of change when it