GUILTY CONSCIENCE IN EINSTEINIANA'S SCHIZOPHRENIC WORLD

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."

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its.../dp/0486406768
Banesh Hoffmann: "In an accelerated sky laboratory, and therefore also
in the corresponding earth laboratory, the frequence of arrival of
light pulses is lower than the ticking rate of the upper clocks EVEN
THOUGH ALL THE CLOCKS GO AT THE SAME RATE. (...) As a result the
experimenter at the ceiling of the sky laboratory will see with his
own eyes that the floor clock is going at a slower rate than the
ceiling clock - EVEN THOUGH, AS I HAVE STRESSED, BOTH ARE GOING AT THE
SAME RATE. (...) THE GRAVITATIONAL RED SHIFT DOES NOT ARISE FROM
CHANGES IN THE INTRINSIC RATES OF CLOCKS. It arises from WHAT BEFALLS
LIGHT SIGNALS AS THEY TRAVERSE SPACE AND TIME IN THE PRESENCE OF
GRAVITATION."

James H. Smith "Introduction à la relativité" EDISCIENCE 1969 pp.
39-41: "Si la lumière était un flot de particules mécaniques obéissant
aux lois de la mécanique, il n'y aurait aucune difficulté à comprendre
les résultats de l'expérience de Michelson-Morley.... Supposons, par
exemple, qu'une fusée se déplace avec une vitesse (1/2)c par rapport à
un observateur et qu'un rayon de lumière parte de son nez. Si la
vitesse de la lumière signifiait vitesse des "particules" de la
lumière par rapport à leur source, alors ces "particules" de lumière
se déplaceraient à la vitesse c/2+c=(3/2)c par rapport à
l'observateur. Mais ce comportement ne ressemble pas du tout à celui
d'une onde, car les ondes se propagent à une certaine vitesse par
rapport au milieu dans lequel elles se développent et non pas à une
certaine vitesse par rapport à leur source..... Il nous faut insister
sur le fait suivant: QUAND EINSTEIN PROPOSA QUE LA VITESSE DE LA
LUMIÈRE SOIT INDÉPENDANTE DE CELLE DE LA SOURCE, IL N'EN EXISTAIT
AUCUNE PREUVE EXPÉRIMENTALE."

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."

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.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.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 »."

Pentcho Valev