Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

Next to the word 'Nature,' 'the Great Chain of Being' was the sacred phrase of the eighteenth century, playing a part somewhat analogous to that of the blessed word 'evolution' in the late nineteenth.

More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy: "[T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up.