FQXi AGAINST EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY

Recently John Norton, one of the leading priests in Einsteiniana, sent
a clear message to Einsteinians all over the world: The concept of
time, initially deduced from Einstein's special relativity and then
deformed by Einstein's general relativity, should be rejected:

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.newscientist.com/article/...erse-tick.html
"It is still not clear who is right, says John Norton, a philosopher
based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is
hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in
physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The
trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with
relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose
geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

Overexcited, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) decided to
give substantial sums of money to Einsteinians who find it profitable
to develop Norton's ideas:

http://www.fqxi.org/grants/large/awardees/list
(...)
Lee Smolin Perimeter Institute $47,500 Physical and cosmological
consequences of the hypotheses of the reality of time
(...)
Craig Callender University of California, San Diego $102,263 What
Makes Time Special
(...)

http://www.fqxi.org/community

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.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. It's this
gap that he has set out to narrow, using ideas from physics,
evolutionary theory and cognitive science."

Some Einsteinians know (others don't care) that Einstein's special
relativity is based on two postulates: the principle of relativity and
the principle of constancy of the speed of light. So if you wish to
reject a deductive consequence of the theory, you will have to declare
at least one of the postulates false. For the moment only the option:

"Principle of relativity false, Principle of constancy of the speed of
light true"

seems to be permitted in Einsteiniana:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/5339/
Lorentzian theories vs. Einsteinian special relativity - a logico-
empiricist reconstruction
Laszlo E. Szabo
"It is widely believed that the principal difference between
Einstein's special relativity and its contemporary rival Lorentz-type
theories was that while the Lorentz-type theories were also capable of
"explaining away" the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment
and other experimental findings by means of the distortions of moving
measuring-rods and moving clocks, special relativity revealed more
fundamental new facts about the geometry of space-time behind these
phenomena. I shall argue that special relativity tells us nothing new
about the geometry of space-time, in comparison with the pre-
relativistic Galileo-invariant conceptions; it simply calls something
else "space-time", and this something else has different properties.
All statements of special relativity about those features of reality
that correspond to the original meaning of the terms "space" and
"time" are identical with the corresponding traditional pre-
relativistic statements. It will be also argued that special
relativity and Lorentz theory are completely identical in both senses,
as theories about space-time and as theories about the behavior of
moving physical objects."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Sim.../dp/0415701740
Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in
Contemporary Philosophy)
"It is remarkable that the Special Theory has thus far managed to
survive largely unscathed the collapse of its essential
epistemological underpinnings. One wonders how this can be so.
Undoubtedly a major part of the answer is the understandable one that
physicists are not epistemologists; physicists typically know no more
about epistemology, the philosophy of language (e.g. problems with the
verificationist criterion of semantic meaning), and ontology than
philosophers typically know about physics. The precise philosophical
arguments for the illogicality, falsity, or unjustifiably of the
epistemological, semantic, and ontological presuppositions of the
Special Theory remain, with a few exceptions, unknown among
physicists. The price paid for the growth of knowledge is increased
specialization, which, paradoxically, also prevents or reverses the
growth of knowledge, since specialists in one field often base their
work on premises that (unbeknownst to them) have been refuted or
disconfirmed in another field. The only solution we can see for this
problem is that the training or schooling of physicists ought to
include schooling in philosophy (and, as we shall see, the converse
should hold for philosophers). Perhaps this is most practicable in the
form of there being thinkers who take as their specialization the
intersection of physics and philosophy and the works of these
thinkers, at least in "introductory formats", being a part of the
education of both physicists and philosophers. If this proves
unfeasible and the situation remains as it presently stands, the
unpalatable situation may result that neither physicists nor
philosophers are in a position to have adequately justified beliefs
about space and time but only philosophers of physics (or the few
thinkers who are both philosophers and physicists, such as David
Albert and Bas Van Fraassen, and, from the side of physics, Niels Bohr
and David Bohm, who developed philosophical theories in addition to
physically interpreted equations). Apart from leaving unaddressed the
epistemological and semantic presuppositions of STR, there is an even
stronger factor behind physicists' unwillingness to abandon the
Special Theory. The Special Theory is a part of orthodox quantum field
theory (QFT) (quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics),
which aims to unify the Special Theory with quantum mechanics.
Physicists would be at a loss as to how to proceed if they rejected
the Special Theory as unjustified, since they (for the most part)
believe that this would require them to reject QFT. In the light of
this dependence on Special Relativity, physicists are not likely to
abandon it unless it is observationally disconfirmed and there is an
observationally adequate theory available to replace it. In fact,
there is a theory that is not merely observationally equivalent to the
Special Theory, but also observationally superior to it, namely
Lorentzian or neo-Lorentzian theory. Lorentz's theory is regarded by
many physicists who have studied Lorentzian theory, such as J.S. Bell,
to be observationally equivalent to the Special Theory. However a
Lorentzian or neo-Lorentzian theory is, in fact, observationally
superior to the Special Theory (a fact that Bell, surprisingly, did
not point out), since a Lorentzian theory, in contrast to the Special
Theory, is consistent with the relations of absolute, instantaneous
simultaneity..."

http://hps.elte.hu/PIRT.Budapest/
Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy In the Interpretations of
Relativity Theory, Budapest 4-6 September 2009
"The objective of the conference is to discuss the mathematical,
physical and philosophical elements in the physical interpretations of
Relativity Theory (PIRT); the physical and philosophical arguments and
commitments shaping those interpretations and the various applications
of the theory, especially in relativistic cosmology and relativistic
quantum theory. The organizing committee is open for discussion of
recent advances in investigations of the mathematical, logical and
conceptual structure of Relativity Theory, as well as for analysis of
the cultural, ideological and philosophical factors that have roles in
its evolution and in the development of the modern physical world view
determined to a considerable extent by that theory. The conference
intends to review the fruitfulness of orthodox Relativity, as
developed from the Einstein-Minkowski formulation, and to suggest how
history and philosophy of science clarify the relationship between the
accepted relativistic formal structure and the various physical
interpretations associated with it. While the organizing committee
encourages critical investigations and welcomes both Einsteinian and
non-Einsteinian (Lorentzian, etc.) approaches, including the recently
proposed ether-type theories, it is assumed that the received formal
structure of the theory is valid and anti-relativistic papers will not
be accepted."

Pentcho Valev