"Observer" As A Form of Relative Coordinates
Egocentric direction or relative direction is a concept found in many human languages. In English, a description of the spatial location of an object may use terms such as "left" and "right" which are relative to the speaker or relative to a particular object or perspective (e.g. "to your left, as you are facing the front door.")
The degree to which such a description is subjective is rather subtle. See the Ozma Problem for an illustration of this.
Some impersonal examples of relative direction in language are the nautical terms bow, aft, port, and starboard. These are relative, egocentric-type spatial terms but they do not involve an ego: there is a bow, an aft, a port, and a starboard to a ship even when no one is aboard.
Special relativity statements involving an "observer" are in some measure articulating a similar kind of impersonal relative direction. An "observer" is a perspective in that it is a context from which events in other inertial reference frames are evaluated but it is not the sort of perspective that a single particular person would have: it is not localized and it is not associated with a particular point in space, but rather with an entire inertial reference frame that may exist anywhere in the universe (given certain lengthy mathematical specifications and caveats.)
Read more about this topic: Observer (special Relativity)
Famous quotes containing the words observer, form and/or relative:
“I had such a wonderful feeling last night, walking beneath the dark sky while cannon boomed on my right and guns on my left ... the feeling that I could change the world only by being there.”
—Viorica Butnariu, Rumanian student at Bucharest University. letter, Dec. 23, 1989, to American friend. Observer (London, Dec. 31, 1989)
“I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement.... It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)