POSTSCIENTISM: THE FUNDAMENTAL FALSEHOODS

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/Clausius.html
"Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Warme" 1850
Rudolf Clausius: "It is this maximum of work which must be compared
with the heat transferred. When this is done it appears that there is
in fact ground for asserting, with Carnot, that it depends only on the
quantity of the heat transferred and on the temperatures t and tau of
the two bodies A and B, but not on the nature of the substance by
means of which the work is done."

This conclusion (the prototype of the second law of thermodynamics) is
based on the assumption that the REVERSIBLE transfer of heat from a
cold to a hot body, demonstrated in Clausius's thought experiment, is
equivalent to a SPONTANEOUS flow of heat from a cold to a hot body.
The assumption is false: the two processes are NOT equivalent and the
impossibility of the latter tells us nothing about the possibility or
impossibility of the former.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/
"ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES" 1905
Albert Einstein: "They suggest rather that, as has already been shown
to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of
electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference
for which the equations of mechanics hold good. We will raise this
conjecture (the purport of which will hereafter be called the
"Principle of Relativity'') to the status of a postulate, and also
introduce another postulate, which is only apparently irreconcilable
with the former, namely, that light is always propagated in empty
space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of
motion of the emitting body. These two postulates suffice for the
attainment of a simple and consistent theory of the electrodynamics of
moving bodies based on Maxwell's theory for stationary bodies."

The theoretical hybrid produced by the two "apparently irreconcilable"
postulates has nothing to do with Maxwell's theory. According to
Maxwell's theory, the speed of light is VARIABLE and obeys the
equation c'=c+v, where c is the speed of light relative to the aether
and v is the speed of the observer relative to the aether. This
prediction for the speed of light is wrong (refuted by the Michelson-
Morley experiment) but still physically reasonable. An alternative
that is both physically reasonable and true is given by Newton's
emission theory of light: the speed of light is VARIABLE and obeys the
equation c'=c+v, where c is the speed of light relative to the light
source and v is the relative speed of the light source and the
observer. Einstein's hybrid gives a physical absurdity: the speed of
light is CONSTANT (independent of the speeds of both the light source
and the observer) and obeys the equation c'=c.

Pentcho Valev

Accurate descriptions of the post-scientific reality:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "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."

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "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!"

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf...09145525ca.pdf
Albert Einstein: "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."

Pentcho Valev

Hypocrisy in the era of Postscientism:

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/cv.htm

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "Reading Mr Valev’s postings to the BTK-MCA and
other news groups and trying to answer all the nonsense contained in
them incurs the risk of being so time-consuming that it takes over
one’s professional time completely, leaving none for more profitable
activities. On the other hand, not answering them incurs the even
greater risk that some readers of the news group may think that his
points are unanswerable and that thermodynamics, kinetics, catalysis
etc. rest on as fragile a foundation as he pretends."

The non-fragile foundation of thermodynamics according to Athel
Cornish-Bowden:

http://www.beilstein-institut.de/boz...nishBowden.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."

Pentcho Valev

Typical camouflage (in this case masking the fatality of Einstein's
1905 false light postulate and bringing fame and money to some new
"maverick") in the era of Postscientism:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...elativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008
Mark Buchanan
NEW SCIENTIST
"Welcome to the weird world of Einstein's special relativity, where as
things move faster they shrink, and where time gets so distorted that
even talking about events being simultaneous is pointless. That all
follows, as Albert Einstein showed, from the fact that light always
travels at the same speed, however you look at it. Really? Mitchell
Feigenbaum, a physicist at The Rockefeller University in New York,
begs to differ. He's the latest and most prominent in a line of
researchers insisting that Einstein's theory has nothing to do with
light - whatever history and the textbooks might say. "Not only is it
not necessary," he says, "but there's absolutely no room in the theory
for it." What's more, Feigenbaum claims in a paper on the arXiv
preprint server that has yet to be peer-reviewed, if only the father
of relativity, Galileo Galilei, had known a little more modern
mathematics back in the 17th century, he could have got as far as
Einstein did (http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1234). "Galileo's thoughts are
almost 400 years old," he says. "But they're still extraordinarily
potent. They're enough on their own to give Einstein's relativity,
without any additional knowledge." (...) This was a problem if
Maxwell's theory, like all good physical theories, was to follow
Galileo's rule and apply for everyone. If we do not know who measures
the speed of light in the equations, how can we modify them to apply
from other perspectives? Einstein's workaround was that we don't have
to. Faced with the success of Maxwell's theory, he simply added a
second assumption to Galileo's first: that, relative to any observer,
light always travels at the same speed. This "second postulate" is the
source of all Einstein's eccentric physics of shrinking space and
haywire clocks. And with a little further thought, it leads to the
equivalence of mass and energy embodied in the iconic equation E =
mc2. The argument is not about the physics, which countless
experiments have confirmed. It is about whether we can reach the same
conclusions without hoisting light onto its highly irregular pedestal.
(...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum, both Galileo and Einstein missed
a surprising subtlety in the maths - one that renders Einstein's
second postulate superfluous. (...) The result turns the historical
logic of Einstein's relativity on its head. Those contortions of space
and time that Einstein derived from the properties of light actually
emerge from even more basic, purely mathematical considerations.
Light's special position in relativity is a historical accident. (...)
The idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could
actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty
shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of
light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less
than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our
understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric
charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a
massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate,
as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same
speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists'
beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."

Note that this camouflage is a development of an old one:

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière
est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de
futures mesures mettent enévidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procedures operationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La theorie elle-meme en serait-elle
invalidee ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus economiques. En verite, le "premier postulat" suffit, a la
condition de l'exploiter a fond."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c....We believe that special relativity at the present time stands
as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time
arena in which all fundamental processes take place....The evidence of
the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way
the validity of the special relativity. It would, however, nullify all
its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
velocity."

http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Rela.../dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the
long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a
relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of
light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity.
This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery
of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman,
Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."

http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.ph...1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
of applicability would be reduced)."

Pentcho Valev

The mythology of Postscientism says: the second law of thermodynamics
was discovered by Sadi Carnot whereas the first law was established
much later by Joule.

The truth: Sadi Carnot discovered the FIRST law of thermodynamics and
ended in deep frustration because that discovery made the second law
groundless:

Jean-Pierre Maury, "Carnot et la machine a vapeur", Presse
Universitaires de France, 1986:

p. 108: "Et Carnot, apres 1824? Est-il decourage par cet echec?
Pourquoi ne publie-t-il pas autre chose? Bien sur, il va mourir tres
tot (en 1832). Mais tout de meme, en huit ans....C'est qu'au debut de
ces huit ans, il lui est arrive une chose terrible, bien plus terrible
que l'echec des Reflexions; il a realise que le calorique ne se
conservait pas - et pour lui, cela signifiait forcement que la base
meme des Reflexions etait fausse..."

p. 109: Sadi Carnot: "La chaleur n'est autre chose que la puissance
motrice ou plutôt que le mouvement qui a changé de forme. C'est un
mouvement dans les particules des corps, partout où il y a destruction
de puissance motrice il y a en même temps production de chaleur en
quantité précisément proportionnelle à la quantité de P.M. détruite.
Réciproquement, partout où il y a destruction de chaleur, il y a
producion de P.M."

p. 111: Sadi Canot: "La ch. est donc le résultat d'un mouv-t. Alors il
est tout simple qu'elle puisse se produire par la consomm-on de P.Mot.
et qu'elle puisse produire cette puissance. Tous les autres phénomènes
(...) pourraient s'expliquer dans cette hypothèse. Mais il serait
difficile de dire pourquoi, dans le développ-t de la PM par la chal.
un corps froid est nécessaire, pourquoi en consommant la chal. d'un
corps échauffé on ne peut pas produire du mouvement."

The first law was rediscovered by Julius Robert Mayer in 1842 whereas
Joule was a person who had a lot of money and no intellect. The
mediocrity Joule was just used by Kelvin against Mayer, in the same
way in which, later, the mediocrity Einstein was used by Planck
against Poincare. Mayer attempted suicide and was sent to a mental
institution, Poincare died prematurely, the mediocrities became
geniuses.

Pentcho Valev

The fundamental question in the era of Postscientism:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/di...n-john-lennon/
"But where is all this money coming from? And who gets it?"

Pentcho Valev

The romantic image of science is that of constant conflict between
truth and falsehood, intellect and stupidity, impartiality and
prejudice. In the era of Postscientism this image is simply wrong:
there is no conflict and what is called "science" exists only insofar
as "scientists" are able to extract career and money from it. For
instance, thanks to Gibbs, classical thermodynamics is a gold-mine for
professors of chemistry; accordingly, the so-called chemical
thermodynamics is a fundamental discipline. In contrast, professors of
physics see no profit in classical thermodynamics; accordingly, in
physics the situation is entirely different:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
"In the eyes of many modern physicists, the theory has acquired a
somewhat dubious status. They regard classical thermodynamics as a
relic from a bygone era... Indeed, the view that thermodynamics is
obsolete is so common that many physicists use the phrase 'Second Law
of Thermodynamics' to denote some counterpart of this law in the
kinetic theory of gases or in statistical mechanics."

Pentcho Valev

Oxymorons normally participate in the deductive process in the era of
Postscientism. For instance, Clausius' conclusion that the entropy
always increases is based on the assumption that any irreversible
process can be closed by a reversible process to become a cycle. This
is tantamount to saying:

"Any irreversible process is reversible"

For 140 years nobody has questioned this assumption, except for Jos
Uffink:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
p.39: "A more important objection, it seems to me, is that Clausius
bases his conclusion that the entropy increases in a nicht umkehrbar
[irreversible] process on the assumption that such a process can be
closed by an umkehrbar [reversible] process to become a cycle. This is
essential for the definition of the entropy difference between the
initial and final states. But the assumption is far from obvious for a
system more complex than an ideal gas, or for states far from
equilibrium, or for processes other than the simple exchange of heat
and work. Thus, the generalisation to all transformations occurring in
Nature is somewhat rash."

Any corollary of Einstein's 1905 false light postulate can be
transformed into an oxymoron: the long train is short (if trapped
inside a short tunnel), the 80m long pole is 40m long (if trapped
inside a 40m long barn), the bug is both dead and alive etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRIy...elated&search=

http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ph...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....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."

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../bugrivet.html

Pentcho Valev

On Oct 30, 9:05 am, Pentcho Valev wrote:
Hypocrisy in the era of Postscientism:

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/cv.htm

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "Reading Mr Valev’s postings to the BTK-MCA and
other news groups and trying to answer all the nonsense contained in
them incurs the risk of being so time-consuming that it takes over
one’s professional time completely, leaving none for more profitable
activities. On the other hand, not answering them incurs the even
greater risk that some readers of the news group may think that his
points are unanswerable and that thermodynamics, kinetics, catalysis
etc. rest on as fragile a foundation as he pretends."

The non-fragile foundation of thermodynamics according to Athel
Cornish-Bowden:

http://www.beilstein-institut.de/boz...nishBowden.htm
Athel Cornish-Bowden: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."

Philosopher of science Steven French, 2005:

http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/Staff/SF/Index.htm

http://groups.google.com/group/fa.ph...103ac911cb9c8?
Steven French: "ah, so thats why my son is turned off by science, its
because thermodynamics and relativity are inconsistent! (dang, why
didn't I spot that ....?)"

Recent (2008) activity in Steven French's department:

http://groups.google.com/group/fa.ph...be9a103a3a52f?
A one-day workshop: “Is Science Inconsistent?”
Saturday 21st June 2008.
Organised by the Division of History and Philosophy of Science,
University of Leeds.
"Recently there has been regenerated interest in inconsistency in
science, sparked by Mathias Frisch’s Inconsistency, Asymmetry and Non-
locality (OUP, 2005). The remarkable central claim of this book is
that classical electrodynamics is an inconsistent theory. (...)
However, the fact that the waker word ‘conflict’ is often used is
indicative of the continuing uncertainty about what place
inconsistency has in science. Similarly with use of the word
‘paradox’. Are these scientific conflicts and paradoxes cases of
iconsistency as logicians understand the term? And if not, is there
warrant to call them ‘conflicts’ at all? The Division of History and
Philosophy of Science at Leeds has a long history of studies into
inconsistency in science and belief sets generally. Past years have
seen A. Bobenrieth M., Otavio Bueno and Steven French write
extensively on inconsistency, both within and without science."

http://groups.google.com/group/fa.ph...a56bfabe7af78?
"I've now found the source of the "Einstein quote" I asked about some
time ago. It's actually not a very reliable quote in the end, but here
it is for those who voiced an interest: "I talked for quite a while to
Albert Einstein at a banker's jubilee banquet where we both felt
rather out of place. In reply to my
question what problem he was working on now, he said he was engaged in
thinking. Giving thought to any scientific proposition almost
invariably brought progress with it. For, without exception, every
scientific proposition was wrong. That was due to human inadequacy of
thought and inability to comprehend nature, so that every abstract
formulation about it was always inconsistent somewhere. Therefore
every time he checked a scientific proposition his previous acceptance
of it broke down and led to a new, more precise formulation. This was
again inconsistent in some respects and consequently resulted in fresh
formulations, and so on indefinitely."
From the diaries of Count Kessler, quoted in Stachel, J. (1983),
"Comments on 'Some Logical Problems Suggested by Empirical Theories'
by Professor Dalla Chiara", in R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky (eds.),
*Language, Logic and Method*, D. Reidel: 91-102."

Pentcho Valev

Desperate attempts to get rid of idiocies taught in the era of
Postscientism:

http://www.worldscibooks.com/chemist...69_preface.pdf
"I believe that the time is ripe to acknowledge that the term entropy,
as originally coined by Clausius, is an unfortunate choice. Moreover,
it is also a misleading term both in its meaning in ancient and in
contemporary Greek. On this matter, I cannot do any better than Leon
Cooper (1968). Cooper cites the original passage from Clausius: in
choosing the word "Entropy," Clausius wrote: "I prefer going to the
ancient languages for the names of important scientific quantities, so
that they mean the same thing in all living tongues. I propose,
accordingly, to call S the entropy of a body, after the Greek word
"transformation." I have designedly coined the word entropy to be
similar to energy, for these two quantities are so analogous in their
physical significance, that an analogy of denominations seems to be
helpful." Right after quoting Clausius' explanation on his reasons for
the choice of the word "Entropy," Cooper commented: "By doing this,
rather than extracting a name from the body of the current language
(say: lost heat), he succeeded in coining a word that meant the same
thing to everybody: nothing." I fully agree with Cooper’s comment;
however, I have two additional comments, and contrary to Cooper, I
venture into taking the inevitable conclusion: First, I agree that
"entropy means the same thing to everybody: nothing." But more than
that, entropy is also a misleading term...."
Arieh Ben-Naim
Department of Physical Chemistry
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Israel

Pentcho Valev