On my desk the book is open to page nine, where it says, “I stand at the window of a railway carriage which is traveling uniformly, and drop a stone on the embankment, without throwing it.” Einstein is speaking here, addressing laymen in the 1920 translation of his handy primer Relativity: The Special and General Theory. To him on the train, the stone falls in a straight line, while a pedestrian outside sees it trace a parabola. This simple act shows that motion is relative to the position of the viewer. So begins the presentation of the greatest breakthrough in modern physics, not with a formula, but a scenario. And it’s not a one-time event in the book. Einstein returns to it again and again, adding new elements with each step of the demonstration: a raven flying by, a man walking through the railway car, not sitting down. He really wants you to pretend you are there in the carriage and to see what is actually happening. Yes, we have citations of “Galilean co-ordinate systems” and Lorentz on “electrodynamical and optical phenomena” that require scientific reason, but we also have a dramatic scene that tests the imagination.

My English department colleagues love this kind of illustration. It shows how important the humanities are to the frontiers of science, not to mention the progress of society. If that seems like a stretch, a desperate claim of relevance, consider what they have witnessed in just the last few years