FROM POSTSCIENTISM TO SCIENCE

[Pentcho Valev]

Answering the following two questions IN PUBLIC may turn out to be the
first step in the transition from Postscientism to Science:

Does the combination of the six quotations below suggest that:

(A) the speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source,
in accordance with Newton's emission theory of light?

(B) Einstein's 1905 light postulate (stating that the speed of light
does NOT depend on the speed of the light source) has virtually killed
theoretical physics?

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "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......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
p.92: "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.academie-sciences.fr/membres/in_memoriam/Einstein/Einstein_pdf/Einstein_eloge.pdf
Louis de Broglie: "Tout d'abord toute idée de "grain" se trouvait
expulsée de la théorie de la Lumière : celle-ci prenait la forme d'une
"théorie du champ" où le rayonnement était représenté par une
répartition continue dans l'espace de grandeurs évoluant continûment
au cours du temps sans qu'il fût possible de distinguer, dans les
domaines spatiaux au sein desquels évoluait le champ lumineux, de très
petites régions singulières où le champ serait très fortement
concentré et qui fournirait une image du type corpusculaire. Ce
caractère à la fois continu et ondulatoire de la lumière se trouvait
prendre une forme très précise dans la théorie de Maxwell où le champ
lumineux venait se confondre avec un certain type de champ
électromagnétique."

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
John Norton: "Einstein could not see how to formulate a fully
relativistic electrodynamics merely using his new device of field
transformations. So he considered the possibility of modifying
Maxwell's electrodynamics in order to bring it into accord with an
emission theory of light, such as Newton had originally conceived.
There was some inevitability in these attempts, as long as he held to
classical (Galilean) kinematics. Imagine that some emitter sends out a
light beam at c. According to this kinematics, an observer who moves
past at v in the opposite direction, will see the emitter moving at v
and the light emitted at c+v. This last fact is the defining
characteristic of an emission theory of light: the velocity of the
emitter is added vectorially to the velocity of light emitted....If an
emission theory can be formulated as a field theory, it would seem to
be unable to determine the future course of processes from their state
in the present. AS LONG AS EINSTEIN EXPECTED A VIABLE THEORY LIGHT,
ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM TO BE A FIELD THEORY, these sorts of
objections would render an EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT INADMISSIBLE."

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein 1954: "I consider it entirely possible that physics
cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "Einstein's special relativity theory with his second
postulate that the speed of light in space is constant is the linchpin
that holds the whole range of modern physics theories together.
Shatter this postulate, and modern physics becomes an elaborate
farce!....The speed of light is c+v."

Pentcho Valev
***@yahoo.com

[Uncle Al]

Post by Pentcho Valev
Answering the following two questions IN PUBLIC may turn out to be the
(A) the speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source,
in accordance with Newton's emission theory of light?

[snip rest of crap]

idiot

<http://www.edu-observatory.org/physics-faq/Relativity/SR/experiments.html>
Experimental constraints on Special Relativity

Science 323(5919) 1327 (2009)
Double pulsar J0737-3039A/B is within 0.05% of GR model

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.2861
DI Herculis anomalous orbital precession reconciled with General
Relativity

<http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/>
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/9148/title/Einstein_Unruffled_Relativity_passes_stringent_new_tests>
<http://einstein.stanford.edu/highlights/status1.html>
http://arXiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0311039
Experimental constraints on General Relativity

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele-Keating_experiment>
<http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/airtim.html>
<http://metrologyforum.tm.agilent.com/pdf/flying_clock_math.pdf>
http://metrologyforum.tm.agilent.com/cesium.shtml
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0008012
Hafele-Keating Experiment

<http://relativity.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrr-2003-1&page=node5.html>
<http://unusedcycles.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/physics-of-gps-relativistic-time-delay/>
Relativistic effects on orbital clocks

idiot

[Pentcho Valev]

A second decisive step in the transition from Postscientism to Science
will be taken as an OFFICIAL answer to the following question is given
IN PUBLIC:

When Einstein introduced his false light postulate in 1905, was
deductive science already in big trouble? The scientific community was
singing, with gay abandon, the praises of the law of entropy increase
which held "the supreme position among the laws of Nature" but later
the selfsame law was characterized as "a red herring" and the science
based on it as "a dismal swamp of obscurity" or "a prime example to
show that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds":

http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/overview/background/index.html
Arthur Eddington: "The law that entropy always increases, holds, I
think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone
points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in
disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for
Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation
- well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your
theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can
give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest
humiliation."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "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' and 'a prime example to show
that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds'. He is
outright cynical about the respect with which nonmathematicians treat
the Second Law: "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." From this anthology it emerges that although many
prominent physicists are firmly convinced of, and express admiration
for the Second Law, there are also serious complaints, especially from
mathematicians, about a lack of clarity and rigour in its formulation.
At the very least one can say that the Second Law suffers from an
image problem: its alleged eminence and venerability is not perceived
by everyone who has been exposed to it. What is it that makes this
physical law so obstreperous that every attempt at a clear formulation
seems to have failed? Is it just the usual sloppiness of physicists?
Or is there a deeper problem? And what exactly is the connection with
the arrow of time and irreversibility? Could it be that this is also
just based on bluff? Perhaps readers will shrug their shoulders over
these questions. Thermodynamics is obsolete; for a better
understanding of the problem we should turn to more recent,
statistical theories. But even then the questions we are about to
study have more than a purely historical importance. The problem of
reproducing the Second Law, perhaps in an adapted version, remains one
of the toughest, and controversial problems in statistical
physics.....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."

Pentcho Valev
***@yahoo.com