I am always curious about use of the word "relativism", because it directly derived of Einstein's Realtivity Theory. Einstein never proposed that scientific law was absurd or incontinent (popular use of the term "relativism" or "relative"). He emphasized the uniqueness of relativity in respect to observation: the rules are what they are but appear to be more or less, relative to the position of the observer. Sure, Einstein appears to have undermined Newton's overtly Christian position as theoretical and highly simplistic for modern times; however, simplicity is no fault of Newton. He was an 18th century man and profound for his time. Nature and knowledge by design is transient.
However, when I talk about "funny", to another individual in a different referential frame it will translate as "totally inappropriate." When I talk about "complicated", to another individual I might mean "completely normal." Nevertheless, Relativity Theory is still contingent upon a point: the entire theory leverages a point. That is no inconsistency unless an individual coddles a fictitiously infantile perspective about context.
Around this time was borne the new “relativists” who clearly did not translate Einstein's idea well at all. They gloated over the death of Newtonian simplicity and many of them gloated over the death of Newton's God. Einstein was infuenced by the idea of time travel (the fourth dimension) which was becoming a popular discussion amongst intellectuals. H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895, and Henri Poincare wrote Science and Hypothesis in 1902, a text that discusses the measurement of time. We know, for example, that Einstein read Science and Hypothesis and that Pablo Picasso learned about Poincare's book from a Maurice Princet.
I mention Pablo Picasso because he was experimenting with relativity theory in art. Picasso, the Father of Cubism, would break up a painting and depict the various parts of the painting from various perspectives so that as one scanned the painting, one would "see" all perspectives at the same time. Of course, most people, I am sure, did not know what he was doing. It is true that Picasso was morally disreputable, habitually abandoning family after family. However, Picasso's experimentation with relativity did not cause his moral failures. Perhaps, his misunderstanding of relativity supported his infidelity, but that does not diminish the truthfulness of relativity.
Arnold Schoenberg, the 20th century composer, did a similar thing with music. The Father of Atonality, Schoenberg did not set out to create absurd music. He created music based upon the twelve tones of the chromatic scale instead of the traditionally harmonious eight-tone octave. His music had a logical relationship from one tone to the other and from each tone to the whole within the framework he developed. Did people understand what he was doing? Probably not at first. At one concert, Schoenberg's atonal composition was so misunderstood and caused so much emotional agitation amongst the audience that a fight broke out. The police had to be called in, and Schoenberg threatened to end the concert. People initially did not understand what he was doing with music. They assumed it to be both new and disruptive. In this sense, I like to tell my students that Schoenberg is the father of punk music. And that was at the beginning of the 20th century.
Einstein disliked his Relativity Theory being used to support the idea of a sinister moral relativism: the notion that no moral framework is uniquely privileged over all others. Of course, Einstein was a scientist, not a philosopher. Further, he was an exile in America where his ideas and their cultural applications became widely popularized, probably because of media. What we do know is that relativity grew to become the new social framework of the 20th century and was directly responsible for the erosion of "traditional norms" like colonialism. Colonialism could not survive in a framework of relativity (except under very special circumstances) because a political expression of relativity opposes the political subjugation of nations. Under relativity, the nations "parallel" each other: each nation is its own entity. Einstein's relativity was the impetus of the relativist cultural tendency (and of several self-consciously associated cultural movements like Ghandi and Martine Luther King) for wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western culture in the early 20th century as much as its misunderstanding provided a toehold and then an eventual foothold for many destructive changes as well.
It is no mistake that the shakers and movers of the 20th century felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life to be outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of the 20th century. Because nature is finite, it is transient and must change. Relativity, however, was the equivalent of a "quantum leap" and moved at a faster rate than the general culture and its various sub-cultures were able to monitor or regulate. So the beginning of the 20th century was not only the undoing of Newtonian Physics but ultimately the undoing of the religious axioms that underpinned Newtonian Physics. In this way relativism (and its association with relativity) is negatively viewed as a questioning of the axioms, including religious axioms, of the previous age. Relativity, however, is something very different. It is the air that both liberal and conservative Moderns breathe.
