POSTSCIENTISM: REMNANTS OF CONSCIENCE

http://www.wickedlocal.com/pembroke/...lton-Ratcliffe
Hilton Ratcliffe: "I have colleagues who have been barred from
observatories, had been refused publication, had research funding
withdrawn, lost jobs and even been chased from their country of birth
- all because they insisted on publicly announcing what they had seen
in the heavens, which did not fit the preferred model. They have so
much courage it makes my eyes water. They almost literally put their
lives on the line. They are the Galileos of our time. (...) Theory
would be more interesting if it were logical and comprehensible. In
the case of mathematical theory, it is neither. There have been no new
fundamental discoveries in physics for over half a century. Physics is
dying, being suffocated by meta-mathematics, and physics departments
at major universities with grand histories in physical science are
closing down for lack of interest. (...) Professor Don Scott told me
once, “The problems with cosmology and astrophysics in the modern era
are not scientific so much as sociological.” The Big Bang Theory is a
faith-based system. People believe it because they want to believe it,
not because they have been convinced by the supporting data. When
Einstein was ready to write down what was to become his General Theory
of Relativity, he found that the mathematics required by such a
concept were quite beyond him. He consequently engaged the services of
his friend, mathematics professor Marcel Grossman, to construct the
mathematical formalism. Grossman felt, for reasons we can only
speculate, that the best way to achieve this was to use a new and
arcane mathematical language called Differential Geometry. It is
estimated that when GTR was published in 1915, only about a dozen
specialist meta-mathematicians in the world could decipher the math.
Yet, before long, Einstein was the focus of intense international
adulation by millions of people. Since only a minute fraction of those
fans could understand the theory, there had to be another reason for
the adulation. It was not the workings or the plausibility of the
theory that impressed people so much that they created from it an
enduring dogma. It was a psychosocial imperative that characterized
all widely defended dogma, including Big Bang Theory, of course, which
is the offspring of GTR. Once the new dogma has become entrenched
within the educational system, it is done and dusted. Universities
(mostly inadvertently) become in effect propaganda machines and
produce scientists who quite frankly cannot practice or teach physics
any other way."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "Snow stands up for the view that exact science is, in its
own right, an essential part of civilisation, and should not merely be
valued for its technological applications. Anyone who does not know
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and is proud of it too, exposes
oneself as a Philistine. Snow's plea will strike a chord with every
physicist who has ever attended a birthday party. But his call for
cultural recognition creates obligations too. Before one can claim
that acquaintance with the Second Law is as indispensable to a
cultural education as Macbeth or Hamlet, it should obviously be clear
what this law states. This question is surprisingly difficult. The
Second Law made its appearance in physics around 1850, but a half
century later it was already surrounded by so much confusion that the
British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to appoint
a special committee with the task of providing clarity about the
meaning of this law. However, its final report (Bryan 1891) did not
settle the issue. Half a century later, the physicist/philosopher
Bridgman still complained that there are almost as many formulations
of the second law as there have been discussions of it (Bridgman 1941,
p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains so obscure that it
continues to attract new efforts at clarification. A recent example is
the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......The historian of science and
mathematician Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical
development of thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He
characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a dismal
swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show that
physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p.
8).......Clausius' verbal statement of the second law makes no
sense.... All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition ; a century of
philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment ; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean.....Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers....and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me.... I cannot explain what I cannot
understand.....This summary leads to the question whether it is
fruitful to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of
the second law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the
unargued statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the
strained attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that
Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion
about the arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the
thermodynamics is actually a RED HERRING."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
57-78
Peter Hayes: "In the interwar period there was a significant school of
thought that repudiated Einstein's theory of relativity on the grounds
that it contained elementary inconsistencies. Some of these critics
held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, and this has tended to
discredit their technical objections to relativity as being
scientifically shallow. This paper investigates an alternative
possibility: that the critics were right and that the success of
Einstein's theory in overcoming them was due to its strengths as an
ideology rather than as a science. The clock paradox illustrates how
relativity theory does indeed contain inconsistencies that make it
scientifically problematic. These same inconsistencies, however, make
the theory ideologically powerful. The implications of this argument
are examined with respect to Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's accounts of
the philosophy of science. (...) The prediction that clocks will move
at different rates is particularly well known, and the problem of
explaining how this can be so without violating the principle of
relativity is particularly obvious. The clock paradox, however, is
only one of a number of simple objections that have been raised to
different aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity. (Much of this
criticism is quite apart from and often predates the apparent
contradiction between relativity theory and quantum mechanics.) It is
rare to find any attempt at a detailed rebuttal of these criticisms by
professional physicists. However, physicists do sometimes give a
general response to criticisms that relativity theory is syncretic by
asserting that Einstein is logically consistent, but that to explain
why is so difficult that critics lack the capacity to understand the
argument. In this way, the handy claim that there are unspecified,
highly complex resolutions of simple apparent inconsistencies in the
theory can be linked to the charge that antirelativists have only a
shallow understanding of the matter, probably gleaned from misleading
popular accounts of the theory. (...) The argument for complexity
reverses the scientific preference for simplicity. Faced with obvious
inconsistencies, the simple response is to conclude that Einstein's
claims for the explanatory scope of the special and general theory are
overstated. To conclude instead that that relativity theory is right
for reasons that are highly complex is to replace Occam's razor with a
potato masher. (...) The defence of complexity implies that the novice
wishing to enter the profession of theoretical physics must accept
relativity on faith. It implicitly concedes that, without an
understanding of relativity theory's higher complexities, it appears
illogical, which means that popular "explanations" of relativity are
necessarily misleading. But given Einstein's fame, physicists do not
approach the theory for the first time once they have developed their
expertise. Rather, they are exposed to and probably examined on
popular explanations of relativity in their early training. How are
youngsters new to the discipline meant to respond to these accounts?
Are they misled by false explanations and only later inculcated with
true ones? What happens to those who are not misled? Are they supposed
to accept relativity merely on the grounds of authority? The argument
of complexity suggests that to pass the first steps necessary to join
the physics profession, students must either be willing to suspend
disbelief and go along with a theory that appears illogical; or fail
to notice the apparent inconsistencies in the theory; or notice the
inconsistencies and maintain a guilty silence in the belief that this
merely shows that they are unable to understand the theory. The
gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and research
institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises
problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A
winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of
Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are
then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics.
Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of
elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing
question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these
circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on
scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of
realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the
theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of
professional discourse. (...) The argument that Einstein fomented an
ideological rather than a scientific revolution helps to explain of
one of the features of this revolution that puzzled Kuhn: despite the
apparent scope of the general theory, very little has come out of it.
Viewing relativity theory as an ideology also helps to account for
Poppers doubts over whether special theory can be retained, given
experimental results in quantum mechanics and Einsteins questionable
approach to defining simultaneity. Both Kuhn and Popper have looked to
the other branch of the theory - Popper to the general and Kuhn to the
special - to try and retain their view of Einstein as a revolutionary
scientist. According to the view proposed here, this only indicates
how special and general theories function together as an ideology, as
when one side of the theory is called into question, the other can be
called upon to rescue it. The triumph of relativity theory represents
the triumph of ideology not only in the profession of physics bur also
in the philosophy of science. These conclusions are of considerable
interest to both theoretical physics and to social epistemology. It
would, however, be naïve to think that theoretical physicists will
take the slightest notice of them."

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "There is a popular argument that the world's oldest
rofession is sexual prostitution. I think that it is far more likely
that the oldest profession is scientific prostitution, and that it is
still alive and well, and thriving in the 20th century. (...) The
people who tend to believe more in theories than in the scientific
method of testing theories, and who ignore the evidence against the
theories they believe in, should be considered pseudoscientists and
not true scientists. To the extent that the professed beliefs are
based on the desire for status, wealth, or political reasons, these
people are scientific prostitutes. (...) Einstein's special relativity
theory with his second postulate that the speed of light in space is
constant is the linchpin that holds the whole range of modern physics
theories together. Shatter this postulate, and modern physics becomes
an elaborate farce! (...) The speed of light is c+v. (...) I expect
that the scientists of the future will consider the dominant abstract
physics theories of our time in much the same light as we now consider
the Medieval theories of how many angels can dance on the head of a
pin or that the Earth stands still and the Universe moves around it."

Pentcho Valev