Popular resistance to relativity stems from treating motion as external to being

Evidence

But this relativity is not a “relativism;” it has nothing to do with knowledge; better yet, it implies the dogmatic postulate according to which knowledge releases to us what is. The relativity of modern science aims at being. Man and the world are relative beings, and the principle of their being is the relation. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 835 (#expands, via linked claim)

To the Greek, attempting to give a scientific account of motion, the purely mechanical view hardly suggested itself, except in the case of a few men of genius such as Democritus and Archimedes. Two sets of phenomena seemed important: the movements of animals, and the movements of the heavenly bodies. … To the Greek, it seemed more natural to assimilate apparently lifeless motions to those of animals. A child still distinguishes live animals from other things by the fact that they can move of themselves; to many Greeks, and especially to Aristotle, this peculiarity suggested itself as the basis of a general theory of physics. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 866 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Motion is the least-being that never fully is; Physical relativity is ontological, not merely epistemological — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 835; Greeks modeled physical motion on biological life rather than mechanical machines — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 866

Broader Connections

• Physical relativity is ontological, not merely epistemological #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 835
• Greeks modeled physical motion on biological life rather than mechanical machines #complicates (0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 866