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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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