THE END OF SCIENCE

http://arc-tv.com/the-crisis-in-physics-and-its-cause/
"However, for the past century, theoretical physicists have been
sending a different message. They have rejected causality in favor of
chance, logic in favor of contradictions, and reality in favor of
fantasy. The science of physics is now riddled with claims that are as
absurd as those of any religious cult."

http://school.maths.uwa.edu.au/~mike/Trouble.doc
Mike Alder: "It is easy to see the consequences of the takeover by the
bureaucrats. Bureaucrats favour uniformity, it simplifies their lives.
They want rules to follow. They prefer the dead to the living. They
have taken over religions, the universities and now they are taking
over Science. And they are killing it in the process. The forms and
rituals remain, but the spirit is dead. The cold frozen corpse is so
much more appealing to the bureaucratic mind-set than the living
spirit of the quest for insight. Bureaucracies put a premium on the
old being in charge, which puts a stop to innovation. Something
perhaps will remain, but it will no longer attract the best minds.
This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and
examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is
optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not. (...) Developing ideas
and applying them is done by a certain kind of temperament in a
certain kind of setting, one where there is a good deal of personal
freedom and a willingness to take risks. No doubt we still have the
people. But the setting is gone and will not come back. Science is a
product of the renaissance and an entrepreneurial spirit. It will not
survive the triumph of bureacracy. Despite having the infrastructure,
China never developed Science. And soon the West won't have it
either."

http://www.wickedlocal.com/pembroke/...lton-Ratcliffe
Hilton Ratcliffe: "Physics is dying, being suffocated by meta-
mathematics, and physics departments at major universities with grand
histories in physical science are closing down for lack of interest.
It is a crisis in my view. (...) If, as in the case of GTR and later
with Big Bang Theory and Black Hole theory, the protagonists have
seductive charisma (which Einstein, Gamow, and Hawking, respectively,
had in abundance) then the theory, though not the least bit
understood, becomes the darling of the media. GTR and Big Bang Theory
are sacrosanct, and it's most certainly not because they make any
sense. In fact, they have become the measure by which we sanctify
nonsense."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20.../22/schools.g2
"But instead of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report
showed a dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at
school. The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the
past 15 years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over
the next few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics
teachers and a lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of
physics in state schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to
only those students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain
was the home of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and
Brits made world-class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum
physics and electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now
facing extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as
pandas, so who cares if we disappear?"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...l/433218a.html
John Barrow: "EINSTEIN RESTORED FAITH IN THE UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF
SCIENCE. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in
1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what
it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921,
he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the
ordinary person: "Does it make a silly impression on me, here and
yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I
think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it
is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to themit impresses
them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious." Relativity
was a fashionable notion. It promised to sweep away old absolutist
notions and refurbish science with modern ideas. In art and literature
too, revolutionary changes were doing away with old conventions and
standards. ALL THINGS WERE BEING MADE NEW. EINSTEIN'S RELATIVITY
SUITED THE MOOD. Nobody got very excited about Einstein's brownian
motion or his photoelectric effect but RELATIVITY PROMISED TO TURN THE
WORLD INSIDE OUT."

http://io9.com/5607692/are-physicist...up-dark-energy
Dave Goldberg, Associate Professor of Physics at Drexel University:
"The idea of dark energy is so ridiculous that almost every question
is based on trying to make it go away. And believe me, I share your
concerns. I don't want to believe in dark energy, but I have no
choice. (...) Basically, if you want to get rid of dark energy, you
have to get rid of relativity."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/science/26essay.html
"The worrying continued. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona
State, said that most theories were wrong. "We get the notions they
are right because we keep talking about them," he said. Not only are
most theories wrong, he said, but most data are also wrong..."

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc.../87150187.html
"Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe (...) "We have a
complete inventory of the universe," Sean Carroll, a California
Institute of Technology cosmologist, has said, "and it makes no
sense."

http://www.dogma.lu/txt/EK-ScienceQuiestion.htm
Etienne Klein: "Votre science dit-elle réellement le vrai ? Comment
osez-vous prétendre qu'elle se réfère à la rationalité alors que les
jugements esthétiques, les préjugés métaphysiques et autres désirs
subjectifs imprégnent sinon sa démarche tout entière, du moins
certaines de ses phases ? Votre légitimité incontestée est-elle fondée
sur autre chose que des effets de pouvoir ? Les mythes, que vous
méprisez, ne disent-ils pas eux aussi une part de la vérité ? Le
relativisme bénéficie, sous toutes ses formes, d'une sympathie
intellectuelle quasi-spontanée. Pourquoi séduit-il tant ceux qui
s'interrogent sur la portée des discours de la science ? Sans doute
parce que, abusivement interprété comme une remise en cause des
prétentions de cette dernière, il semble nourrir un soupçon qui se
généralise, celui de l'imposture : « Finalement, (là comme ailleurs)
tout est relatif. » (...) Comment inciter ceux qui ne connaissent pas
la science à vouloir la connaître ? Comment convertir le droit de
savoir, légitime mais gratuit en termes d'effort, en désir de
connaître, qui, lui, demande un engagement chronophage et un véritable
travail personnel ? Et comment inciter les moins intéressés d'entre
nous à se tourner vers les scientifiques pour les questionner : " Que
faites-vous au juste ? Que savez-vous exactement ? En quoi ce que vous
proposez est-il pertinent pour nous ? " Réciproquement, comment
obliger les experts à ne plus s'en tenir à leurs seules propres
raisons et à écouter celles des autres ?"

http://www.i-sem.net/press/jmll_isem_palermo.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: "La science souffre d'une forte perte de
crédit, au sens propre comme au sens figuré : son soutien politique et
économique, comme sa réputation intellectuelle et culturelle
connaissent une crise grave. (...) Mais le plus grave peut-être dans
la déculturation de la science se situe à l'extérieur de la recherche
scientifique, à l'interface entre le milieu scientifique proprement
dit et la société au sens large."

http://www.archipope.net/article-12278372-6.html
"Nous nous trouvons dans une période de mutation extrêmement profonde.
Nous sommes en effet à la fin de la science telle que l'Occident l'a
connue », tel est constat actuel que dresse Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond,
physicien théoricien, épistémologue et directeur des collections
scientifiques des Editions du Seuil."

http://archives.lesechos.fr/archives...077-80-ECH.htm
"Physicien au CEA, professeur et auteur, Etienne Klein s'inquiète des
relations de plus en plus conflictuelles entre la science et la
société. (...) « Je me demande si nous aurons encore des physiciens
dans trente ou quarante ans », remarque ce touche-à-tout aux multiples
centres d'intérêt : la constitution de la matière, le temps, les
relations entre science et philosophie. (...) Etienne Klein n'est pas
optimiste. Selon lui, il se pourrait bien que l'idée de progrès soit
tout bonnement « en train de mourir sous nos yeux »."

http://www.inra.fr/dpenv/pdf/LevyLeblondC56.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: "Il est peut-être trop tard. Rien ne prouve,
je le dis avec quelque gravité, que nous soyons capables d'opérer
aujourd'hui ces nécessaires mutations. L'histoire, précisément, nous
montre que, dans l'histoire des civilisations, les grands épisodes
scientifiques sont terminés... (...) Rien ne garantit donc que dans
les siècles à venir, notre civilisation, désormais mondiale, continue
à garder à la science en tant que telle la place qu'elle a eue pendant
quelques siècles."

EXISTENTIAL QUESTION: Would science have survived if Einstein had not
"resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of
particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and
introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less
obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether"?

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
"Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested
in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second
principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do
far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the
particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it.
And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these
particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian
relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the
Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths,
local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein
resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of
particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and
introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less
obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers
in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues
that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of
light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the
Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of
relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support
for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point
needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible
with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory
"Emission theory (also called emitter theory or ballistic theory of
light) was a competing theory for the special theory of relativity,
explaining the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Emission
theories obey the principle of relativity by having no preferred frame
for light transmission, but say that light is emitted at speed "c"
relative to its source instead of applying the invariance postulate.
Thus, emitter theory combines electrodynamics and mechanics with a
simple Newtonian theory. Although there are still proponents of this
theory outside the scientific mainstream, this theory is considered to
be conclusively discredited by most scientists. The name most often
associated with emission theory is Isaac Newton. In his Corpuscular
theory Newton visualized light "corpuscles" being thrown off from hot
bodies at a nominal speed of c with respect to the emitting object,
and obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we then expect
light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed
of the distant emitter (c ± v)."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ind...ecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION: "I consider it entirely possible that
physics cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

Clues to EINSTEIN'S 1954 CONFESSION:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0101/0101109.pdf
"The two first articles (January and March) establish clearly a
discontinuous structure of matter and light. The standard look of
Einstein's SR is, on the contrary, essentially based on the continuous
conception of the field."

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "There is a popular argument that the world's oldest
profession is sexual prostitution. I think that it is far more likely
that the oldest profession is scientific prostitution, and that it is
still alive and well, and thriving in the 20th century. I suspect that
long before sex had any commercial value, the prehistoric shamans used
their primitive knowledge to acquire status, wealth, and political
power, in much the same way as the dominant scientific and religious
politicians of our time do. (...) Because many of the dominant
theories of our time do not follow the rules of science, they should
more properly be labeled pseudoscience. The people who tend to believe
more in theories than in the scientific method of testing theories,
and who ignore the evidence against the theories they believe in,
should be considered pseudoscientists and not true scientists. To the
extent that the professed beliefs are based on the desire for status,
wealth, or political reasons, these people are scientific prostitutes.
(...) Einstein's special relativity theory with his second postulate
that the speed of light in space is constant is the linchpin that
holds the whole range of modern physics theories together. Shatter
this postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce! (...)
The speed of light is c+v. (...) I expect that the scientists of the
future will consider the dominant abstract physics theories of our
time in much the same light as we now consider the Medieval theories
of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or that the Earth
stands still and the Universe moves around it." [Bryan Wallace wrote
"The Farce of Physics" on his deathbed hence some imperfections in the
text!]

Pentcho Valev

How can a science be alive and sane and yet the following absurdities
(more precisely, consequences of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-
of-light postulate) taught at universities?

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einstein...le_paradox.htm
"The pole and barn paradox (or the ladder and garage paradox) pose the
question: Is the symmetry of length contraction paradoxical?
Einstein's theory of Special Relativity makes several predictions,
some of which seem counter intuitive. (...) So, who is right? From
Eric's point of view, he is: the pole's two ends were simultaneously
(in his frame) inside the barn. From Emma's point of view, she is: the
pole's two ends were never (in her frame) simultaneously inside the
barn: the pole is longer than the barn. Both are right - according to
their own point of view. And in relativity, there is no absolute point
of view."

http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
Stéphane Durand: "Pour mieux comprendre le phénomène de ralentissement
du temps, il est préférable d'aborder un autre phénomène tout aussi
paradoxal: la contraction des longueurs. Car la vitesse affecte non
seulement l'écoulement du temps, mais aussi la longueur des objets.
Ainsi, une fusée en mouvement apparaît plus courte que lorsqu'elle est
au repos. Là aussi, plus la vitesse est grande, plus la contraction
est importante. Et, comme pour le temps, les effets ne deviennent
considérables qu'à des vitesses proches de celle de la lumière. Dans
la vie de tous les jours, cette contraction est imperceptible.
Cependant, si une fusée de 100 m passait devant nous à une vitesse
proche de celle de la lumière, elle pourrait sembler ne mesurer que 50
m, ou même moins. Bien sûr, la question qui vient tout de suite à
l'esprit est: «Cette contraction n'est-elle qu'une illusion?» Il
semble tout à fait incroyable que le simple mouvement puisse comprimer
un objet aussi rigide qu'une fusée. Et pourtant, la contraction est
réelle... mais SANS COMPRESSION physique de l'objet! Ainsi, une fusée
de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être
entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde,
durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux
bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a
PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../bugrivet.html
"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
bug....The paradox is not resolved."

How desperately Herbert Dingle and Jacques Maritain (who are both
"unpersons" nowadays) fought the absurdity:

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/c...&filetype=.pdf
Herbert Dingle: "...the internal consistency of the restricted
relativity theory seems questionable if the postulate of the constancy
of the velocity of light is given its usual interpretation... (...)
These difficulties are removed if the postulate be interpreted MERELY
as requiring that the velocity of light relative to its actual
material source shall always be c..."

http://www.worldnpa.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_215.pdf
Herbert Dingle: "The special relativity theory requires different
rates of ageing to result from motion which belongs no more to one
twin than to the other: that is impossible. It is impossible to
exaggerate the importance of this result, for this theory is, by
common consent, "taken for granted" in Max Born's words, in all modern
atomic research. and it determines the course of practically all
current developments in physical science, theoretical and
experimental, whether concerned with the laboratory or with the
universe. (...) But it is now clear that the interpretation of those
[Lorentz] equations as constituting a basis for a new kinematics,
displacing that of Galileo and Newton, which is the essence of the
special relativity theory, leads inevitably to impossibilities and
therefore cannot be true. Either there is an absolute standard of rest
- call it the ether as with Maxwell. or the universe as with Mach, or
absolute space as with Newton, or what you will or else ALL MOTION,
INCLUDING THAT WITH THE SPEED OF LIGHT, IS RELATIVE, AS WITH RITZ."

http://www.amazon.ca/Oeuvres-compl%C.../dp/2850492752
Jacques Maritain, Raïssa Maritain, Jean-Marie Allion
Oeuvres complètes, Volume 3, pp. 275-276:
Jacques Maritain: "Ce qui est absurde, c'est d'imposer au temps réel
et à la simultanéité réelle une relativité qui est le propre des
relations de raison variant avec l'observateur, et de prétendre que la
distance qui sépare deux événements dans le temps, ou deux points dans
l'espace, prise dans ce qui la constitue intrinsèquement, soit ceci ou
cela selon l'observateur, que deux événements soient réellement
simultanés ou réellement successifs à raison du mouvement de
l'observateur ; bref que le changement de mesure provenant du
changement de l'observateur affecte la réalité même de la chose
mesurée."

http://www.amazon.ca/Oeuvres-compl%C.../dp/2850492752
Jacques Maritain, Raïssa Maritain, Jean-Marie Allion
Oeuvres complètes, Volume 3, p. 285:
Jacques Maritain: "Il ne reste plus alors qu'à avouer que la théorie
[d'Einstein], si l'on donnait une signification ontologiquement réelle
aux entités qu'elle met en jeu, comporterait des absurdités;
entièrement logique et cohérente comme système hypothético-déductif et
synthèse mathématique des phénomènes, elle n'est pas, malgré les
prétensions de ses partisans, une philosophie de la nature, parce que
le principe de la constance de la vitesse de la lumière, sur lequel
elle s'appuie, ne peut pas être ontologiquement vrai."

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-4.html
George Orwell: "Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not
exist : he had never existed."

Pentcho Valev

http://hiltonratcliffe.com/blog/?p=66
Hilton Ratcliffe: "A few years ago, I had the great privilege of
sharing a supper table with some of the finest scientific minds of my
era. Directly opposite me sat Professor Huseyin Yilmaz, formerly of
the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, a hallowed
and ivy-decked place where Albert Einstein had spent his later,
introspective years. To his left sat the larger-than-life Professor
Carroll Alley, Yilmaz's experimentalist colleague from the University
of Maryland. On my right was the quietly spoken, amiable Professor
Harold Puthoff, a director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at
Austin in Texas. Dr Puthoff has achieved a fair measure of notoriety
for his work on anti-gravity and the Zero Point Field, but that
doesn't frighten me in the least. What did overawe me was the enormous
scientific stature of these gentlemen, but I needn't have worried.
They were to a fault courteous and accommodating, and entertained my
dumb questions with remarkable patience. The conversation, once we had
come to terms with the unfamiliar cuisine, was about Relativity. (...)
Here were people discussing with great insight and authority the
mathematical implications of the field equations in General
Relativity. What's more (to my great astonishment) it sounded
distinctly like they were suggesting improvements to the Gospel! I
could contain myself no longer. "Professor Yilmaz," I said, glancing
furtively around the room and then dropping my voice to a whisper,
"does that mean Einstein was wrong?" All three gentlemen laughed
spontaneously at my obvious discomfort, and Hal Puthoff put his hand
good-naturedly on my shoulder. "Hilton," he said, "you don't have to
hide under the table. It's no longer controversial to say that
Einstein made mistakes. Most physicists accept that quite openly now."
I had learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life."

Kuhn would say the situation in science is pre-revolutionary, with
anomalies in the leading theory accumulating and being openly
discussed. He would be wrong. An internet search would show that the
"finest scientific minds" have abandoned Einstein's relativity long
ago. No serious discussions, no conferences, no seminars, nothing.
Science is simply dead and scientists feel that exhumation would be
pointless. Even explicit references to the falsehood of Einstein's
1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate, e.g. "The Michelson-Morley
experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that
CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE", evoke no interest:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the
importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even
though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the
experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation,
has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with
Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late
19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light
predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised
the greatest theoretician of the day."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers
in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues
that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of
light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the
Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of
relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support
for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point
needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible
with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

http://blog.hasslberger.com/Dingle_S...Crossroads.pdf
Herbert Dingle, p. 59: "In closing this valuable discussion, may I,
avoiding further controversy, state two indisputable and vitally
important facts which it has elicited? 1. I have asked for an answer
in one sentence to the question: What is it, on Einstein's theory,
that distinguishes which of two similar relatively uniformly moving
clocks lags behind the other (to use the translation of Einstein's own
words) by an amount that increases regularly with time? Lorentz
answered: its velocity through the ether, the faster moving clock
working at the slower rate. Ritz answered: nothing, for there is no
lag. Neither of these answers is possible to Einstein, and no one has
told me of a substitute that is permitted by his theory, despite my
repetition of the question and the fact that without an answer the
theory is invalid."

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/academ/...elativity.html
What is wrong with relativity?
G. BURNISTON BROWN
Bulletin of the Institute of Physics and Physical Society, Vol. 18
(March, 1967) pp.7177
"A more intriguing instance of this so-called 'time dilation' is the
well-known 'twin paradox', where one of two twins goes for a journey
and returns to find himself younger than his brother who remained
behind. This case allows more scope for muddled thinking because
acceleration can be brought into the discussion. Einstein maintained
the greater youthfulness of the travelling twin, and admitted that it
contradicts the principle of relativity, saying that acceleration must
be the cause (Einstein 1918). In this he has been followed by
relativists in a long controversy in many journals, much of which ably
sustains the character of earlier speculations which Born describes as
"monstrous" (Born 1956). Surely there are three conclusive reasons why
acceleration can have nothing to do with the time dilation
calculated:
(i) By taking a sufficiently long journey the effects of acceleration
at the start, turn-round and end could be made negligible compared
with the uniform velocity time dilation which is proportional to the
duration of the journey.
(ii) If there is no uniform time dilation, and the effect, if any, is
due to acceleration, then the use of a formula depending only on the
steady velocity and its duration cannot be justified.
(iii) There is, in principle, no need for acceleration. Twin A can get
his velocity V before synchronizing his clock with that of twin B as
he passes. He need not turn round: he could be passed by C who has a
velocity V in the opposite direction, and who adjusts his clock to
that of A as he passes. When C later passes B they can compare clock
readings. As far as the theoretical experiment is concerned, C's clock
can be considered to be A's clock returning without acceleration
since, by hypothesis, all the clocks have the same rate when at rest
together and change with motion in the same way independently of
direction. [fn. I am indebted to Lord Halsbury for pointing this out
to me.] (...) The three examples which have been dealt with above show
clearly that the difficulties are not paradoxes) but genuine
contradictions which follow inevitably from the principle of
relativity and the physical interpretations of the Lorentz
transformations. The special theory of relativity is therefore
untenable as a physical theory."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
"This first appearance of what has become known as time dilation in
Einstein's work requires careful attention. In particular, anyone who
assumes that the special theory deals only with uniform movement in a
straight line and is thus a precisely delineated subset of the later
general theory, will wish to explore why Einstein extends his
conclusions to polygonal and circular movements. It is by no means "at
once apparent" that what is true for a straight line is true for a
polygon, nor that what has been "proved" for a polygon applies to a
circle. The principle of relativity introduced at the outset of the
1905 paper implicitly limited the special theory to reference frames
moving at a constant speed in a straight line with respect to one
another. In later work, Einstein explicitly stated that the special
theory applied only to a reference frame "in a state of uniform
rectilinear and non rotary motion" in respect of a second reference
frame, in contrast to the general theory that dealt with reference
frames regardless of their state of motion (Einstein 1920, 61).
Acceleration, therefore, would appear to be the province of the
general theory. A polygon, however, would seem to necessarily involve
acceleration whenever there is a abrupt alteration in the direction of
travel. Even more confusingly, a circular path, far from allowing
movement at a "constant velocity", has a velocity that continually
changes. Einstein, it is argued, wished to minimise the significance
of acceleration - as he did not mention acceleration at all in the
passage, he could hardly be said to do otherwise (Essen 1971, 13).
With respect to the transition from the straight line to the polygon,
this assumption is corroborated by comments Einstein made in 1911 when
he said that the larger the polygon the less significant the impact of
a sudden change of direction would be.
Einstein 1911: "The [travelling] clock runs slower if it is in uniform
motion, but if it undergoes a change of direction as a result of a
jolt, then the theory of relativity does not tell us what happens. The
sudden change of direction might produce a sudden change in the
position of the hands of the clock. However, the longer the clock is
moving rectilinearly and uniformly with a given speed in a forward
motion, i.e., the larger the dimensions of the polygon, the smaller
must be the effect of such a hypothetical sudden change." (Einstein et
al. 1993, 354)
(...) The argument that the prediction of time difference between a
moving and a stationary clock violates the principle of relativity is
well known. Certainly, it must have become known to Einstein, for in
1918 he created a dialogue in which "Kritikus" voiced exactly this
objection (Einstein 1918). In response to this criticism, Einstein
underwent a volte-face, reversing his reasoning in 1905 and 1911. The
sudden change in direction of the moving clock, far from having
unknown effects that needed to be minimised, was now said to provide
the entire explanation for the change. Instead of imagining a moving
clock travelling in a huge polygon or circle to make sudden changes in
direction as insignificant as possible or the journey as smooth as
possible, Einstein imagined an out and back journey. He then explained
that the slow-down in the moving clock occurred during the sudden jolt
when it went into reverse. (...) Given Einsteins argument in 1918, it
seems inescapable that his 1905 prediction of time dilation was not,
in fact, a "peculiar consequence" of his forgoing account of special
relativity (Einstein 1923, 49). When it is also remembered that in
1904 Lorentz deduced the existence of "local time", it is reasonable
to conclude that the prediction that the clocks would end up showing
different times can be reached without entering into Einstein's
reasoning on the special theory at all. The supporters of Einstein,
however, generally maintain that one needs to move beyond the special
theory to the general theory to understand why the times shown by the
clocks would be different. However, as Einstein's prediction preceded
the general theory, this argument is problematic (Lovejoy 1931, 159;
Essen 1971, 14). It has been seen that: (a) in 1911 Einstein
explicitly rules out the ability of the special theory of relativity
to say what happened if the moving clock suddenly changed direction,
and (b) in 1918 Einstein tacitly admitted that his explanation of the
clock paradox in 1905 was incorrect by transforming the polygonal or
circular journey of the moving clock into an out and back journey. If
the general theory is necessary to explain the clock paradox, then
Einstein must have (a) predicted the effects of acceleration in 1905
even though he did not incorporate them into his theory for another
decade, and (b) hidden his intuition by describing a journey that
discounted their significance. (...) There is, nonetheless, some
divergence about how to resolve the clock paradox amongst mainstream
scientists and philosophers who address the issue. The majority
suggest that (a) the general theory is required to resolve the paradox
because like "Kritikus" they have deduced - quite correctly - that it
cannot be explained by the special theory. However, a minority believe
that (b) the paradox can be explained by the special theory because
they have deduced - again quite correctly - that it is incredible to
suppose that only the general theory can explain a prediction
ostensibly arising from the prior special theory. Each deduction,
considered in isolation, is allowable within the mainstream; what is
not permitted is to bring the two of them together to conclude that
( c) neither the special nor the general theory explains time
dilation."

Pentcho Valev

In 2001 Jos Uffink, the famous expert in the foundations of
thermodynamics, informed the scientific commmunity that the second law
of thermodynamics (the version stating that the entropy always
increases) is "a red herring". Uffink also quoted Clifford Truesdell's
statements that thermodynamics, in its present state, is "a dismal
swamp of obscurity" and "a prime example to show that physicists are
not exempt from the madness of crowds":

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "Snow stands up for the view that exact science is, in its
own right, an essential part of civilisation, and should not merely be
valued for its technological applications. Anyone who does not know
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and is proud of it too, exposes
oneself as a Philistine. Snow's plea will strike a chord with every
physicist who has ever attended a birthday party. But his call for
cultural recognition creates obligations too. Before one can claim
that acquaintance with the Second Law is as indispensable to a
cultural education as Macbeth or Hamlet, it should obviously be clear
what this law states. This question is surprisingly difficult. The
Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half
century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the
British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint
a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the
meaning of this law. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not
settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher
Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations
of the second law as there have been discussions of it (Bridgman 1941,
p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it
continues to attract new efforts at clarification. A recent example is
the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The historian of science and
mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical
development of thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He
characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a dismal
swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show that
physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p.
8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no
sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of
philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot
understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is
fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of
the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the
unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the
strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion
about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the
thermodynamics is actually a red herring."

If Uffink is correct, the growing set of anomalies was unbearably
large in 2001 so, in accordance with Thomas Kuhn's account of
scientific change, a revolution in thermodynamics must have taken
place in the period 2001-2011. Has anybody witnessed this revolution?
Has anybody felt even the slightest stir? How many times has Uffink's
paper been commented on by excited revolutionaries? Has Uffink himself
kept moving in the revolutionary direction?

Harry Kroto suspects there is no hope for (science in) UK:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...tion.education
Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method
is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes
all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew
"belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture
of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all,
curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that
it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and
it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion
of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for
the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes
this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any
hope for UK? I am really not sure."

I suspect there is no hope for (science in) Bulgaria.

Pentcho Valev

Scientists somehow feel that the Augean task of removing Einstein's
1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate and all its absurd
consequences is unaccomplishable (Einstein: "Nothing will remain of my
whole castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also
nothing of the rest of contemporary physics"; Wallace: "Shatter this
postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce!"). In a
sense scientists are right in claiming that the human brain is
incapable of replacing the dead corpse of science with some "new
physics":

http://www.france-info.com/chronique...92-81-165.html
"Marc Lachièze-Rey est directeur de recherche au CNRS, au Laboratoire
"Astroparticules et cosmologie" de l'Université Pars7-Denis Diderot :
La physique d'aujourd'hui se fonde à la fois sur la physique quantique
et sur la relativité générale, nous dit-il. Véritables systèmes de
pensée, ces deux théories suggèrent deux manières différentes de voir
le monde. Si notre physique ne convient pas, il faut en construire une
nouvelle. Des hypothèses audacieuses sous-tendent de nouvelles
théories : supersymétrie, cordes et supercordes, gravité et cosmologie
quantiques, géométrie non commutative…, qui renouvellent les
conceptions mêmes de l'espace et du temps, de la matière et de
l'univers. Mais peut-être faut-il tout simplement admettre que nous ne
disposons pas d'un cerveau suffisamment développé, capable d'accéder à
une nouvelle physique ? Vous pourrez écouter Marc Lachièze-Rey en duo
avec son collègue et ami, Etienne Klein dans le cadre des rencontres
"Sciences et humanisme" au Lazaret Ollandini à Ajaccio qui se
dérouleront du 19 au 23 Juillet 2011"

Pentcho Valev

On Jul 9, 7:53*am, Pentcho Valev wrote:
Scientists somehow feel that the Augean task of removing Einstein's
1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate and all its absurd
consequences is unaccomplishable (Einstein: "Nothing will remain of my
whole castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also
nothing of the rest of contemporary physics"; Wallace: "Shatter this
postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce!"). In a
sense scientists are right in claiming that the human brain is
incapable of replacing the dead corpse of science with some "new
physics":


To change things requires an incentive that just doesn't make itself
visible to people who live off each other's reputations as the only
source of authority but any resolution should not require the
replacement of one tyranny with another but rather it is a sort of a
nervous balance to be restored where individual satisfaction becomes a
reward in itself and people want to genuinely get to the bottom of
things,from a individual perspective,a community perspective and
bottom line.

The entire community can suffer the loss of relativity or indeed any
agenda of the last few hundred years,what they can't and won't do is
revisit the nuts and bolts of the original empirical agenda in the
late 17th century where all the damage was done.This is not a
piecemeal rearrangement of details to muddle through but a core shift
to remove the methodology which must have seemed great 300 years ago
but has created a tangled mess in a contemporary setting.

From experience as an astronomer,and the terms between astrophysics
and astronomy must diverge,many of the difficulties arise from the
attempt to skip past astronomical facts like trivia and especially the
attempt to diminish geometry as the language of astronomy -

"The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics ... the
symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without
whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word." Galileo

The overhaul of science where it intersects with terrestrial and
celestial sciences in their raw state is a colossal task and perhaps
prohibits people from actually beginning it but nothing is ever going
to get done in an atmosphere where intellectual statues like Newton
are not challenged or rather,how his followers don't comprehend what
he actually did and why it is destructive for all sciences including
the empirical approach.

http://chronicle.com/article/Hey-Phy...-Real-/126662/
John Horgan: "Hey, Physics, Get Real! I'm not sure if I've changed or
physics has changed, but the thrill is gone. Recent books by
practitioner-popularizers - notably The Grand Design, by Stephen
Hawking and a collaborator, the Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow
(Bantam Books, 2010); The Hidden Reality, by Brian Greene (Alfred A.
Knopf, 2011); and the forthcoming Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New
View of the Universe, by Roger Penrose (Knopf, 2011) - are leaving me
peeved rather than inspired. In fact, I no longer recommend books like
those to students hungry for far-out ideas from science's frontiers. I
feel a little guilty knocking physics, which more than any other field
lured me into science journalism three decades ago. As a teenager, I
lapsed out of the Catholicism in which I was raised, but I never
stopped wrestling with the riddles that religion supposedly answered.
Physics provided me with a kind of scientific theology, an empirical,
rational way of probing, if not solving, the mysteries of existence.
Physicists were discerning deep resonances between the smallest and
largest scales of reality and spinning out astonishing conjectures
about our universe and even other universes. (...) I haven't entirely
given up on physics."

How do you decide what exactly to give up on, John Horgan? John Baez
gives up on everything that seems schizophrenic to him:

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html
John Baez: "On the one hand we have the Standard Model, which tries to
explain all the forces except gravity, and takes quantum mechanics
into account. On the other hand we have General Relativity, which
tries to explain gravity, and does not take quantum mechanics into
account. Both theories seem to be more or less on the right track but
until we somehow fit them together, or completely discard one or both,
our picture of the world will be deeply schizophrenic.....I realized I
didn't have enough confidence in either theory to engage in these
heated debates. I also realized that there were other questions to
work on: questions where I could actually tell when I was on the right
track, questions where researchers cooperate more and fight less. So,
I eventually decided to quit working on quantum gravity."

Pentcho Valev

End-of-science education:

http://www.autodidactproject.org/oth...deology_2.html
Ideology of/in Contemporary Physics, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
"In this way, major advances in modern physics, especially in
relativity and quantum mechanics, have paradoxically fed an intensely
irrational current. One knows the popular expression for scepticism
and unconcern: 'everything is relative . . . as Einstein said' (and
this is not so harmless as one would believe). At a seemingly more
elaborate level, the mad attempts of Bergson to criticise and
reinstate the theory of relativity within his own philosophy, even if
they took place fifty years ago, still give evidence of a serious
crisis in the relations between science and philosophy. (...) As far
as the theories of relativity or quantum physics are concerned, the
last fifty years have hardly witnessed any major evolution in their
mode of presentation. Most handbooks are surprisingly similar,
repeating indefinitely the same schemes of inner organisation. As a
general rule, a historical or rather chronological introduction - of
dubious accuracy - is followed by some philosophical reflections in
which traditional dogmas are enunciated under a much more schematic
and poorer form than that of their creators. Having fulfilled this
first task, the author then approaches the 'strictly scientific'
content of the book. It consists, in general, of purely theoretical,
exaggeratedly formalistic accounts, from which references to real
experiments steadily vanish. Not a single impression is left of the
real procedures of scientific activity, of the dialectic between
theory and practice, heuristic models and formalism, axioms and
history. Modern physics appears as a collection of mathematical
formulae, whose only justification is that 'they work'. Moreover, the
'examples' used to 'concretise' the knowledge are often totally
unreal, and actually have the effect of making it even more abstract.
Such is the case when the explanation of special relativity is based
on the consideration of the entirely fictitious spatial and temporal
behaviour of clocks and trains (today sometimes one speaks of
rockets . . . it sounds better . . . but it is as stupid!). This kind
of science fiction (which is not even funny) is the more dangerous as
erases the existence of a large experimental practice, where the
theory of relativity is embodied in the study of high-energy
particles, involving hundreds of scientific workers, thousands of tons
of steel and millions of dollars. (...) This teaching situation, even
if it appears unhealthy and harmful with regard to the simple aims of
training and teaching (transmission of knowledge), is however in
perfect ideological harmony with the general context of modern
physics. A closed arduous, forbidding education, which stresses
technical manipulation more than conceptual understanding, in which
neither past difficulties nor future problems in the search for
knowledge appear, perfectly fulfils two essential roles: to promote
hierarchisation and the 'elite' spirit on behalf of a science shown as
being intrinsically difficult, to be within the reach of only a few
privileged individuals; and to impose a purely operational technical
concept of knowledge, far from a true conceptual understanding, which
would necessarily be critical and thus would reveal the limits of this
knowledge. This is why discussions about educational problems take on
the form of ideological struggle. It is also why, because of the
essentially political nature of the resistance to change in this
field, no reformist illusions should be entertained as to the
possibility of any major successes, as long as such a struggle only
relies on the internal critique of scientific workers and teachers,
remaining within the framework of an unchanged technical and social
division of labour. (...) The very availability of an essay as this
reflects the existence of a deep ideological crisis in the scientific
milieu. This crisis is particularly obvious in the field of physics.
It is expressed, on the one hand, by a lack of motivation on the part
of many young research workers, and, on the other hand, by the efforts
of readjustment and self-justification on the part of the
establishment. It is characterised by a serious loss of credibility in
traditional values, which before had made it possible for research
workers to create acceptable self-images. (...) Average scientists do
not even control the meaning of their own work. Very often, they are
obscure labourers in theoretical computation or experimentation; they
only have a very narrow perspective of the global process to which
their work is related. Confined to a limited subject, in a specialised
field, their competence is extremely restricted. It is only necessary
to listen to the complaints of the previous generations' scientists on
the disappearance of 'general culture' in science. In fact, the case
of physics is eloquent on the subject. One can say that, until the
beginning of this century, the knowledge of an average physicist had
progressed in a cumulative way, including progressively the whole of
previous discovery. The training of physicists demanded an almost
universal knowledge in the various spheres of physics. The arrival of
'modern' physics has brought about not only the parcelling of fields
of knowledge, but also the abandonment of whole areas. I have already
said that important sections of nineteenthcentury physics are today
excluded from the scientific knowledge of many physicists. Therefore
the fields of competence are not only getting narrower, but some of
them are practically vanishing altogether. If physicists no longer
know about physics, a fortiori they know nothing about science! The
idea of a 'scientific culture', of a 'scientific method', of a
'scientific spirit', which were common to all scientists and used to
give them a large capacity for the rational understanding of all
reality, have turned into huge practical jokes. True, some scientists
have access to a global vision of their field or even of the social
organisation of science and social ties, but that tends to depend
solely on the position of power they occupy. The others, massively,
are dispossessed of all mastery over their activity. They have no
control, no understanding of its direction."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
Peter Hayes: "The prediction that clocks will move at different rates
is particularly well known, and the problem of explaining how this can
be so without violating the principle of relativity is particularly
obvious. The clock paradox, however, is only one of a number of simple
objections that have been raised to different aspects of Einstein's
theory of relativity. (Much of this criticism is quite apart from and
often predates the apparent contradiction between relativity theory
and quantum mechanics.) It is rare to find any attempt at a detailed
rebuttal of these criticisms by professional physicists. However,
physicists do sometimes give a general response to criticisms that
relativity theory is syncretic by asserting that Einstein is logically
consistent, but that to explain why is so difficult that critics lack
the capacity to understand the argument. In this way, the handy claim
that there are unspecified, highly complex resolutions of simple
apparent inconsistencies in the theory can be linked to the charge
that antirelativists have only a shallow understanding of the matter,
probably gleaned from misleading popular accounts of the theory.
The claim that the theory of relativity is logically consistent for
reasons that are too complex for non-professionals to grasp is not
only convenient, but is rhetorically unassailable - as whenever a
critic disproves one argument, the professional physicist can allude
to another more abstruse one. Einstein's transformation of the clock
paradox from a purported expression of the special theory to a
purported expression of the much more complicated general theory is
one example of such a defence. (...)
The defence of complexity implies that the novice wishing to enter the
profession of theoretical physics must accept relativity on faith. It
implicitly concedes that, without an understanding of relativity
theory's higher complexities, it appears illogical, which means that
popular "explanations" of relativity are necessarily misleading. But
given Einstein's fame, physicists do not approach the theory for the
first time once they have developed their expertise. Rather, they are
exposed to and probably examined on popular explanations of relativity
in their early training. How are youngsters new to the discipline
meant to respond to these accounts? Are they misled by false
explanations and only later inculcated with true ones? What happens to
those who are not misled? Are they supposed to accept relativity
merely on the grounds of authority? The argument of complexity
suggests that to pass the first steps necessary to join the physics
profession, students must either be willing to suspend disbelief and
go along with a theory that appears illogical; or fail to notice the
apparent inconsistencies in the theory; or notice the inconsistencies
and maintain a guilty silence in the belief that this merely shows
that they are unable to understand the theory.
The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and
research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who
raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A
winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of
Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are
then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics.
Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of
elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing
question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these
circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on
scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of
realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the
theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of
professional discourse."

Pentcho Valev

W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, Routledge, London,
1981, p. 14:
"...all physical theories in the past have had their heyday and have
eventually been rejected as false. Indeed, there is inductive support
for a pessimistic induction: any theory will be discovered to be false
within, say 200 years of being propounded. (...) Indeed the evidence
might even be held to support the conclusion that no theory that will
ever be discovered by the human race is strictly speaking true. (...)
The rationalist (who is a realist) is likely to respond by positing an
interim goal for the scientific enterprise. This is the goal of
getting nearer the truth. In this case the inductive argument outlined
above is accepted but its sting is removed. For accepting that
argument is compatible with maintaining that CURRENT THEORIES, while
strictly speaking false, ARE GETTING NEARER THE TRUTH."

The pessimistic induction is very popular among philosophers of
science but it is incompatible with deductivism. Consider Einstein's
1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ "...light is
always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is
independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

By a theory I shall mean the deductive closure of the postulate, that
is, the set of all its consequences deduced validly and in the absence
of false or absurd auxiliary hypotheses. If the light postulate is
true, and if the auxiliary length-contraction hypothesis advanced by
FitzGerald and Lorentz was not absurd, then all the conclusions of the
theory are true, and IN THIS SENSE the theory is absolutely true.

If Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate is false, then
its antithesis, the equation c'=c+v given by Newton's emission theory
of light and showing how the speed of light varies with v, the speed
of the emitter relative to the observer, is true:

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the
importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even
though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the
experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation,
has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with
Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late
19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light
predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised
the greatest theoretician of the day."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers
in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues
that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of
light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the
Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of
relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support
for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point
needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible
with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
"Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested
in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second
principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do
far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the
particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it.
And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these
particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian
relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the
Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths,
local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein
resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of
particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and
introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less
obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Then the respective Newtonian theory (the set of all consequences of
the antithesis of the light postulate, c'=c+v, deduced validly and in
the absence of false or absurd auxiliary hypotheses) is absolutely
true in the sense that all its conclusions are true. Clearly if
"deductive theory" is properly defined the pessimistic induction is
unjustified. The transition from Newtonian to relativistic mechanics
was either a transition from absolutely false to absolutely true or a
transition from absolutely true to absolutely false.

False theories die but, contrary to the pessimistic induction's
prophecies, no "less false" theories replace them. Rather, their
incorruptible corpses continue to grow and in the end become an
essential feature of our civilization. Disappearance of the false
theory's corpse would imply disappearance of the civilization itself.

Pentcho Valev

In the era of postscientism scientists are divided into two main
groups: those who are paid for their scientific activity and those who
are not. In terms of respectability no real division exists: any
scientist is just as insignificant as any other. Recently experts sent
a clear message to the scientific community: the concept of time
deduced in Einstein' special relativity is unacceptable:

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to
differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to
do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity
seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics
operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But
Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special
relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless
they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is
relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a
proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is
literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of
his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has
become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes
that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real
as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The
notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for
Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate
students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue13_Paper_Norton.pdf
John Norton: "It is common to dismiss the passage of time as illusory
since its passage has not been captured within modern physical
theories. I argue that this is a mistake. Other than the awkward fact
that it does not appear in our physics, there is no indication that
the passage of time is an illusion. (...) The passage of time is a
real, objective fact that obtains in the world independently of us.
How, you may wonder, could we think anything else? One possibility is
that we might think that the passage of time is some sort of illusion,
an artifact of the peculiar way that our brains interact with the
world. Indeed that is just what you might think if you have spent a
lot of time reading modern physics. Following from the work of
Einstein, Minkowski and many more, physics has given a wonderfully
powerful conception of space and time. Relativity theory, in its most
perspicacious form, melds space and time together to form a four-
dimensional spacetime. The study of motion in space and all other
processes that unfold in them merely reduce to the study of an odd
sort of geometry that prevails in spacetime. In many ways, time turns
out to be just like space. In this spacetime geometry, there are
differences between space and time. But a difference that somehow
captures the passage of time is not to be found. There is no passage
of time."

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/151
"The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly
persistent illusion." It was none other than Einstein who uttered
these words. He was speaking about how our perception of time differs
from the fundamental nature of time in physics. Take our perceptions
first: We have a clear sense of the present moment, what came before,
and what might come after. Unfortunately, physics treats time rather
differently. Einstein's theory of special relativity presents us with
a four-dimensional spacetime, in which the past, present and future
are already mapped out. There is no special "now," just as there's no
special "here." And just like spacetime does not have a fundamental
direction - forcing us to move inexorably from east to west, say -
time does not flow. "You have this big gap between the time of
fundamental science and the time we experience," says Craig Callender,
a philosopher at the University of California, San Diego."

http://hps.master.univ-paris7.fr/cours_du_temps.doc
Etienne Klein: "Aujourd'hui, L'astrophysicien Thibault Damour
développe à sa manière des idées qui vont dans le même sens. Selon
lui, le temps qui passe (qu'il sagisse d'un fait ou de notre
sentiment) est le produit de notre seule subjectivité, un effet que
nous devrions au caractère irréversible de notre mise en mémoire, de
sorte que la question du cours du temps relèverait non pas de la
physique, mais des sciences cognitives. Il écrit : « De même que la
notion de température n'a aucun sens si l'on considère un système
constitué d'un petit nombre de particules, de même il est probable que
la notion d'écoulement du temps n'a de sens que pour certains systèmes
complexes, qui évoluent hors de l'équilibre thermodynamique, et qui
gèrent d'une certaine façon les informations accumulées dans leur
mémoire. » Le temps ne serait donc qu'une apparence d'ordre
psychologique : « Dans le domaine d'espace-temps que nous observons,
poursuit-il, nous avons l'impression qu'il s'écoule "du bas vers le
haut" de l'espace-temps, alors qu'en réalité ce dernier constitue un
bloc rigide qui n'est nullement orienté a priori : il ne le devient
que pour nous [35]. » L'existence même d'un « cours du temps », ou
d'un « passage du temps », n'est ainsi que simple apparence pour de
nombreux physiciens contemporains. Certains vont même jusqu'à
considérer le passage du temps comme une pure illusion, comme un
produit culturel abusivement dérivé de la métaphore du fleuve. C'est
en effet la conception dite de l'« univers-bloc » qui semble avoir les
faveurs d'une majorité de physiciens. Dans le droit fil de la théorie
de la relativité, celle-ci consiste à invoquer un univers constitué
d'un continuum d'espace-temps à quatre dimensions, privé de tout flux
temporel : tous les événements, qu'ils soient passés, présents et
futurs, ont exactement la même réalité, de la même façon que
différents lieux coexistent, en même temps et avec le même poids
ontologique, dans l'espace. En d'autres termes, les notions de passé
ou de futur ne sont que des notions relatives, comme celles d'Est et
d'Ouest. En un sens, tout ce qui va exister existe déjà et tout ce qui
a existé existe encore. L'espace-temps contient l'ensemble de
l'histoire de la réalité comme la partition contient l'uvre musicale :
la partition existe sous une forme statique, mais ce qu'elle contient,
l'esprit humain l'appréhende généralement sous la forme d'un flux
temporel."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Sim.../dp/0415701740
Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in
Contemporary Philosophy)
"Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity is an anthology of
original essays by an international team of leading philosophers and
physicists who, on the centenary of Albert Einsteins Special Theory of
Relativity, come together in this volume to reassess the contemporary
paradigm of the relativistic concept of time. A great deal has changed
since 1905 when Einstein proposed his Special Theory of Relativity,
and this book offers a fresh reassessment of Special Relativitys
relativistic concept of time in terms of epistemology, metaphysics and
physics. There is no other book like this available; hence
philosophers and scientists across the world will welcome its
publication."
"UNFORTUNATELY FOR EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY, HOWEVER, ITS
EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND ONTOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS ARE NOW SEEN TO BE
QUESTIONABLE, UNJUSTIFIED, FALSE, PERHAPS EVEN ILLOGICAL."
Craig Callender: "In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to
respond to Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of
time dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these
effects (and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the
Lorentz invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and
radiation, not to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz
invariance is not a spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and
the special relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not
purely kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-
Newtonian, not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime
include a global absolute simultaneity among their invariant
structures (with Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian
spacetimes many preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this
picture, there is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is
uniquely decomposable into space and time."

Has the scientific community started to look for the responsible false
postulate (in a deductive theory, if a conclusion is unacceptable,
some initial postulate must be false)? It hasn't. Even if it had, even
if it had identified the false postulate, nothing would have changed.
Science seems to be irreversibly dead.

Pentcho Valev