“It is the reciprocity of these appearances—that each party should think the other has contracted—that is so difficult to realise.”

— Arthur Stanley Eddington

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)
Context: It is the reciprocity of these appearances—that each party should think the other has contracted—that is so difficult to realise. Here is a paradox beyond even the imagination of Dean Swift. Gulliver regarded the Lilliputians as a race of dwarfs; and the Lilliputians regarded Gulliver as a giant. That is natural. If the Lilliputians had appeared dwarfs to Gulliver, and Gulliver had appeared a dwarf to the Lilliputians—but no! that is too absurd for fiction, and is an idea only to be found in the sober pages of science.... It is not only in space but in time that these strange variations occur. If we observed the aviator carefully we should infer that he was unusually slow in his movements; and events in the conveyance moving with him would be similarly retarded—as though time had forgotten to go on. His cigar lasts twice as long as one of ours.... But here again reciprocity comes in, because in the aviator's opinion it is we who are travelling at 161,000 miles a second past him; and when he has made all allowances, he finds that it is we who are sluggish. Our cigar lasts twice as long as his.<!--pp.23-24

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Do you have more details about the quote "It is the reciprocity of these appearances—that each party should think the other has contracted—that is so difficult t…" by Arthur Stanley Eddington?

Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

British astrophysicist 1882–1944

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

"The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Source: Existentialists and Mystics Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“But humans had to learn to ignore appearance. No two beings who shared common thinking processes and common goals should be truly alien to each other.”

Charles Sheffield book Summertide

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 5, “Summertide Minus Thirty” (p. 61)

“The first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the first part of the party of the first part shall be known in this contract-- Look, why should we quarrel about a thing like this? We'll take it right out, eh?”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Interview, The Paris Review No. 80, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/730/the-art-of-poetry-no-80-geoffrey-hill

“This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.”

John Jay Federalist Papers

1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2 (1787)

“We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn’t realise they hated each other so much.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Unguarded comment in Leeds while discussing rival devolution bids — "Cameron caught on camera making 'people in Yorkshire hate each other' jibe" Press Association, The Guardian (11 September 2015) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/11/david-cameron-yorkshire-people-hate-each-other-caught-camera?CMP=fb_gu
2010s, 2015

“Social life is merely a web of reciprocal hypnosis where people hypnotize each other without ever realizing it”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

“The understanding that so many people demand of others is that everyone should join their party.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

#576
The Furrow (1986)

“The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realise you've forgotten to give the other parents a pick up time.”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, 23 January 2009

“Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (1972) "Sprachspiel, intention und Bedeutung. Zu Motiven bei Sellars und Wittgenstein". In R.W. Wiggerhaus (Ed.) Sprachanalyse and Soziologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). p. 334
This is called the paradoxical achievement of intersubjectivity

“It is the reciprocity of these appearances—that each party should think the other has contracted—that is so difficult to realise.”

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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

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