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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
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." http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21470 William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith (eds.), Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity, Routledge, 2008 Reviewed by Thomas Ryckman, Stanford University: "The subject of this book is clearly stated by its title. The editors (...) unite here in bringing together "the first collection of essays devoted . . . to arguing that simultaneity is absolute". (...) Differences emerge on the grounds for "absolute simultaneity" and on what it implies." All possible grounds for absolute simultaneity could be discussed in Einsteiniana except for this: The relativity of simultaneity is a direct consequence of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate. Accordingly, given the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the absolute simultaneity is a direct consequence of the true antithesis of the postulate, 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. http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com...html#seventeen George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity." Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
The only permitted development in Einsteiniana (Einstein's 1905 false
constant-speed-of-light postulate should remain intact): 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 |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
Lorentzians and Neo-Lorentzians criticize Einstein but worship his
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." Yet sometimes Lorentzians and Neo-Lorentzians admit that the speed of light is variable - it varies with the speed of the observer: http://www.eng.uwi.tt/depts/elec/sta...relativity.pdf The Invalidation of a Sacred Principle of Modern Physics Stephan J.G. Gift "For a stationary observer O, the stationary light source S emits light at speed c, wavelength Lo, and frequency Fo given by Fo=c/Lo. If the observer moves toward S at speed v, then again based on classical analysis, the speed of light relative to the moving observer is (c + v) and not c as required by Einstein's law of light propagation. Hence the observer intercepts wave-fronts of light at a frequency fA, which is higher than Fo, as is observed, and is given by fA = (c+v)/Lo Fo. (...) In light of this elementary result invalidating STR, it is difficult to understand why this invalid theory has been (and continues to be) accepted for the past 100 years. It is time to reject STR with its incorrect light speed invariance principle long pointed out by Ives, and return to the Lorentz-Maxwell ether-based theory elucidated by Ives and summarized by Erlichson." Lorentzians and Neo-Lorentzians, the following argument is VALID: Premise 1: The principle of relativity (Einstein's 1905 first postulate) is correct. Premise 2: The speed of light varies with the speed of the observer. Conclusion: The speed of light varies with the speed of the emitter, that is, Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate is FALSE. Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
Lern hau two uze a kebyoard, moran.
"Pentcho Valev" wrote in message ... http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Sim.../dp/0415701740 Einstein, Relativity and my tiny spic brane |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
In a world different from Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world any
rejection of any feature of the space-time structure deduced by Einstein and Minkowski would immediately cast doubt on the deductive source - 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." In Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world no such false-consequence-means- false-postulate reasoning exists. Rather, criticisms of Einstein- Minkowski space-time are usually part of dishonest "Beyond Einstein" projects designed to save (or save prudent Einsteinians from) Einsteiniana's sinking ship: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...spacetime.html NEW SCIENTIST: "Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time. IT WAS a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and only a union of the two will preserve an independent reality." And so space-time - the malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter - was born. It is a concept that has served us well, but if physicist Petr Horava is right, it may be no more than a mirage. (...) Something has to give in this tussle between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the smart money says that it's relativity that will be the loser." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n28572885/ "Einstein introduced a new notion of time, more radical than even he at first realized. In fact, the view of time that Einstein adopted was first articulated by his onetime math teacher in a famous lecture delivered one century ago. That lecture, by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski, established a new arena for the presentation of physics, a new vision of the nature of reality redefining the mathematics of existence. The lecture was titled Space and Time, and it introduced to the world the marriage of the two, now known as spacetime. It was a good marriage, but lately physicists passion for spacetime has begun to diminish. And some are starting to whisper about possible grounds for divorce. (...) Physicists of the 21st century therefore face the task of finding the true reality obscured by the spacetime mirage. (...) What he and other pioneers on the spacetime frontiers have seen coming is an intellectual crisis. The approaches of the past seem insufficiently powerful to meet the challenges remaining from Einstein's century - such as finding a harmonious mathematical marriage for relativity with quantum mechanics the way Minkowski unified space and time. And more recently physicists have been forced to confront the embarrassment of not knowing what makes up the vast bulk of matter and energy in the universe. They remain in the dark about the nature of the dark energy that drives the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. Efforts to explain the dark energy's existence and intensity have been ambitious but fruitless. To Albrecht, the dark energy mystery suggests that it's time for physics to drop old prejudices about how nature's laws ought to be and search instead for how they really are. And that might mean razing Minkowski's arena and rebuilding it from a new design. It seems to me like it's a time in the development of physics, says Albrecht, where it's time to look at how we think about space and time very differently." http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...me-an-illusion Craig Callender in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "Einstein mounted the next assault by doing away with the idea of absolute simultaneity. According to his special theory of relativity, what events are happening at the same time depends on how fast you are going. The true arena of events is not time or space, but their union: spacetime. Two observers moving at different velocities disagree on when and where an event occurs, but they agree on its spacetime location. Space and time are secondary concepts that, as mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who had been one of Einstein's university professors, famously declared, "are doomed to fade away into mere shadows." And things only get worse in 1915 with Einstein's general theory of relativity, which extends special relativity to situations where the force of gravity operates. Gravity distorts time, so that a second's passage here may not mean the same thing as a second's passage there. Only in rare cases is it possible to synchronize clocks and have them stay synchronized, even in principle. You cannot generally think of the world as unfolding, tick by tick, according to a single time parameter. In extreme situations, the world might not be carvable into instants of time at all. It then becomes impossible to say that an event happened before or after another." http://www.newscientist.com/article/...al-denial.html New Scientist, 12 January 2011: "Scepticism towards Einstein's theory of relativity is not confined to irrational conservatives (13 November 2010, p 48). In his later years, the philosopher Karl Popper became increasingly troubled by relativity. I argue that, for Popper, inconsistencies in Einstein's presentation of his theory gave a rational explanation for persistent opposition to it (Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, vol 41, p 354). Popper himself ended up preferring Hendrik Lorentz's version of relativity, which retained absolute space and time." 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." Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
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." Poor Smolin! The same hurdle over and over again: of all the Einsteinians not one could think of a reason why the falsehood of special relativity should be explained in terms of the falsehood of Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate (the crimestop is absolute in this case). Then if Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of- light postulate is false, the Michelson-Morley experiment tells us that 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.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong within two years of publishing it." 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.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.fr/James-Smith-Int.../dp/B0014P9USI James H. Smith "Introduction à la relativité": "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 LUMIERE SOIT INDEPENDANTE DE CELLE DE LA SOURCE, IL N'EN EXISTAIT AUCUNE PREUVE EXPERIMENTALE." http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com...html#seventeen George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity." Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
It seems the rallying cry among some priests in Einsteiniana (Lee
Smolin, John Norton, Craig Callender) is: Back to Newton without repudiating Einstein! This is equivalent to: Back to 2+2=4 without repudiating 2+2=5! http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-7.html George Orwell: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?" Other priests worship and feel quite comfortable with 2+2=5 (except for Brian Greene who is still struggling internally with his decision to accept 2+2=5): http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148 "Smolin's ideas may be unconventional, but others admire his attempts to save time. (...) However, Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Marseille, France takes the opposite view: "We must not force theories into our intuition: We change the intuition to understand the theory." http://www.psycho-energie.fr/double/...hibault-damour Thibault Damour: "Le formalisme de la relativité einsteinienne dit que le temps est une illusion..." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/op...t-we-knew.html Brian Greene: "In the early part of the 20th century, however, Albert Einstein saw through nature's Newtonian facade and revealed that the passage of time depends on circumstance and environment. He showed that the wris****ches worn by two individuals moving relative to one another, or experiencing different gravitational fields, tick off time at different rates. The passage of time, according to Einstein, is in the eye of the beholder. (...) Rudolf Carnap, the philosopher, recounts Einstein's telling him that ''the experience of the now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics.'' And later, in a condolence letter to the widow of Michele Besso, his longtime friend and fellow physicist, Einstein wrote: ''In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by just a little. That doesn't mean anything. For we convinced physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.'' (...) Now, however, modern physics' notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have internalized. Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the familiar experience of time with ''painful but inevitable resignation.'' The developments since his era have only widened the disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. Most physicists cope with this disparity by compartmentalizing: there's time as understood scientifically, and then there's time as experienced intuitively. For decades, I've struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I delight in what I know is the individual's power, however imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization." Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
Einsteinians know no limits: Both 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 are incorrect; 2+2=3
is the truth: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-...dimension.html "But some researchers theorize that this Newtonian idea of time as an absolute quantity that flows on its own, along with the idea that time is the fourth dimension of spacetime, are incorrect. (...) In two recent papers (one published and one to be published) in Physics Essays, Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar from the Scientific Research Centre Bistra in Ptuj, Slovenia, have described in more detail what this means. (...) "Minkowski space is not 3D + T, it is 4D," the scientists write in their most recent paper. "The point of view which considers time to be a physical entity in which material changes occur is here replaced with a more convenient view of time being merely the numerical order of material change. This view corresponds better to the physical world and has more explanatory power in describing immediate physical phenomena: gravity, electrostatic interaction, information transfer by EPR experiment are physical phenomena carried directly by the space in which physical phenomena occur." As the scientists added, the roots of this idea come from Einstein himself." Pentcho Valev wrote: It seems the rallying cry among some priests in Einsteiniana (Lee Smolin, John Norton, Craig Callender) is: Back to Newton without repudiating Einstein! This is equivalent to: Back to 2+2=4 without repudiating 2+2=5! http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-7.html George Orwell: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?" Other priests worship and feel quite comfortable with 2+2=5 (except for Brian Greene who is still struggling internally with his decision to accept 2+2=5): http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148 "Smolin's ideas may be unconventional, but others admire his attempts to save time. (...) However, Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Marseille, France takes the opposite view: "We must not force theories into our intuition: We change the intuition to understand the theory." http://www.psycho-energie.fr/double/...hibault-damour Thibault Damour: "Le formalisme de la relativité einsteinienne dit que le temps est une illusion..." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/op...t-we-knew.html Brian Greene: "In the early part of the 20th century, however, Albert Einstein saw through nature's Newtonian facade and revealed that the passage of time depends on circumstance and environment. He showed that the wris****ches worn by two individuals moving relative to one another, or experiencing different gravitational fields, tick off time at different rates. The passage of time, according to Einstein, is in the eye of the beholder. (...) Rudolf Carnap, the philosopher, recounts Einstein's telling him that ''the experience of the now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics.'' And later, in a condolence letter to the widow of Michele Besso, his longtime friend and fellow physicist, Einstein wrote: ''In quitting this strange world he has once again preceded me by just a little. That doesn't mean anything. For we convinced physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.'' (...) Now, however, modern physics' notion of time is clearly at odds with the one most of us have internalized. Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the familiar experience of time with ''painful but inevitable resignation.'' The developments since his era have only widened the disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. Most physicists cope with this disparity by compartmentalizing: there's time as understood scientifically, and then there's time as experienced intuitively. For decades, I've struggled to bring my experience closer to my understanding. In my everyday routines, I delight in what I know is the individual's power, however imperceptible, to affect time's passage. In my mind's eye, I often conjure a kaleidoscopic image of time in which, with every step, I further fracture Newton's pristine and uniform conception. And in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization." Pentcho Valev |
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EINSTEINIANA: ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity
"It was Albert Einstein in 1905 who abandoned the (classical) aether and emphasized the significance of relativity of simultaneity to our understanding of space and time. He deduced the failure of absolute simultaneity from two stated assumptions: *the principle of relativity - the equivalence of inertial frames, such that the laws of physics apply equally in all inertial coordinate systems; *the constancy of the speed of light detected in empty space, independent of the relative motion of its source." Discoverers of absolute simultaneity in Einsteiniana are unable to see this text. This text implies that the absolute simultaneity is a consequence of some antithesis of Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of- light postulate and therefore this text does not extst. It has never existed. This text is an untext. 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 wrote: The only permitted development in Einsteiniana (Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate should remain intact): 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 |
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