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Old June 5th 11, 06:23 AM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Posts: 8,078
Default FQXi AGAINST EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY

Self-mutilation of Einsteiniana's minds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/op...t-we-knew.html
Brian Greene: "In the early part of the 20th century, however, Albert
Einstein saw through nature's Newtonian facade and revealed that the
passage of time depends on circumstance and environment. He showed
that the wris****ches worn by two individuals moving relative to one
another, or experiencing different gravitational fields, tick off time
at different rates. The passage of time, according to Einstein, is in
the eye of the beholder. (...) Rudolf Carnap, the philosopher,
recounts Einstein's telling him that ''the experience of the now means
something special for man, something essentially different from the
past and the future, but this important difference does not and cannot
occur within physics.'' And later, in a condolence letter to the widow
of Michele Besso, his longtime friend and fellow physicist, Einstein
wrote: ''In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me
by just a little. That doesn't mean anything. For we convinced
physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only
an illusion, however persistent.'' (...) Now, however, modern physics'
notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have
internalized. Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the
familiar experience of time with ''painful but inevitable
resignation.'' The developments since his era have only widened the
disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. Most
physicists cope with this disparity by compartmentalizing: there's
time as understood scientifically, and then there's time as
experienced intuitively. For decades, I've struggled to bring my
experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I
delight in what I know is the individual's power, however
imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often
conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I
further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in
moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events
exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition
into past, present and future being a useful but subjective
organization."

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-7.html
George Orwell: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two
made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that
they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their
position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the
very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their
philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was
terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise,
but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two
and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the
past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist
only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?"

Pentcho Valev