In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

UNCERTAINTY VS. REALITY 339
no time, we see a number of hand grenades smash down, creating a
straight line of explosions ... We begin to feel that vague shaking of the
earth under our feet. The enemy tries to smoke out those soldiers of our
group that have fled into the tunnel" (Junger, 134). In such scenes, the
loss of a stable ground under the soldiers' feet literally coincides with the
complete loss of existential security: "We rise, and we feel how the last
secure plank is sliding away" (95). On a less dramatic level, this is a
feeling with which sailors-and a growing number of transatlantic passengers-have
long been familiar: "In the end I felt a craving to feel solid
ground under my feet. I wanted to see people hustling about. I wanted
to make sure that the world was still going on in the usual way" (Traven,
9). [see Americans in Paris, Ocean Liners] Rapidly developing transport
technologies are transforming people's perception of the relation between
the human body and the surface of the earth [see Airplanes,
Automobiles, Elevators, Railroads], and the reactions to this transformation
are not exclusively negative. As the now popular "illuminated dance
floors" indicate, losing the ground under one's feet can also bring ecstatic
happiness, a euphoria caused by an illusory departure from the hardships
of earthly existence. [see Dancing, Immanence vs. Transcendence]
No other single event, however, has had a greater impact on both
scholarly and popular attitudes toward the production of knowledge
than Einstein's publication of his theory of relativity. While it is difficult
to assess how much of this theory has become accessible to the nonspecialist
public in the two decades since it initiated a revolution in theoretical
physics, and while Einstein himself has been insisting that the physical
principle of relativity has nothing whatsoever to do with
philosophical relativism and even less with the relativism of everyday
values (Graham, 109), there is no doubt that the connotations of the
word "relativity" are rapidly generating a collective trauma: "The theory
of relativity was seen by many laypeople as the denial of absolute standards
and values. Coming at a time when the global political and economic
environment was exceedingly unstable, and at a moment when
the successful Russian Revolution had thrown into question the entire
range of assumptions and values upon which European order was based,
the new physics seemed to be one more threat to reliable standards. That
Einstein was a political radical and a Jew did not help allay the misgivings
of those who felt that the old order-political and scientific-was
under attack from similar quarters" (Graham, 119). At least on a pre-