In Other Worlds

A letter in response to Rivka Galchen’s article (May 2, 2011)

In Galchen’s piece, David DiVincenzo remarks that “quantum mechanics does have a unique place in physics, in that it does have a subcurrent of philosophy you don’t find even in Newton’s laws of gravity.” But Newton’s contemporaries worried deeply about the philosophical implications of gravity, especially about how gravity could possibly act instantaneously across vast cosmic distances. These philosophical concerns, in fact, ultimately led to nineteenth-century electromagnetic-field theories and Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

Marc Lange

Professor of Philosophy

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, N.C.