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From: Me, ...again! on 2 Jun 2010 07:13


On Tue, 1 Jun 2010, PD wrote:

> On Jun 1, 10:59 pm, "Me, ...again!" <arthu...(a)mv.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, 2 Jun 2010, Peter Webb wrote:
>>> I gather from the context that you believe that Einstein's Special and
>>> General Theory of Relativity are wrong.
>>
>>> What do you think of Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect
>>> (which was instrumental in thedevelopment of Quantum Mechanics, and for which
>>> he earned a Nobel prize), and Einstein's modelling of Brownian motion (which
>>> virtually created the whole field of statistical mechanics) ?
>>
>>> Was he wrong about them as well?
>>
>> Was Einstein right or wrong?
>>
>> What we have are two schools of thought: i) Einstein did something, vs.
>> ii) a bunch of experts/skeptics who think Einstein made a lot of noise,
>> more heat than light, and fooled a lot of people.
>>
>
> I really don't care much for schools of thought.

Fine. But, quite a few people do pay attention to these schools of
thought.

After all, there is
> still a substantial school of thought that the earth is 6600 years
> old,

That is more of a belief of faith than a determination for something (the
planet, the universe) that is a natural "object" for intellectual inquery.
Biblical scholars don't have laboratories, instruments, or systems of
experiments that yield data the same way this is done by scientists.

but that doesn't mean its existence automatically earns it any
> credibility.

The various religions of the world are major creations of the human mind
and in various societies around the world. I do not practice any religion,
but I never the less respect people who do, and those beliefs are taken
with seriousness by those people and I prefer to accomodate them as much
as possible. Co-existence is a reciprocal political policy meant to avoid
bad relationships rather than thwart the pursuit of truth.

> I'm much more interested in understanding WHY those people in the anti-
> Einstein school of thought feel that way.

See below....

> Some candidate ideas:
> - The theory is wrong, because it makes no sense to these people, and
> these people firmly believe that unless a theory makes sense, it
> cannot possibly be considered right.
> - The theory is wrong, though it is right by the metrics by which
> science judges theories. But this points to the fundamental problem
> with how science is done, and this theory being wrong is just a
> symptom of that problem.
> - The theory is probably right, but the credit is wrongly given to
> Einstein, as it properly belongs to other people.
> - The theory's correctness is completely uncertain at this point, and
> the issue is that scientists insist that it must be accepted as right.
> - Even if the theory is right, voice needs to be given to the contrary
> proposal with equal weight, for the sake of maintaining debate.
>
> Which of these represents your position?

None of them. First, a sentence about science: it is a system by which
careful thinking is connected with observations to develop understandings
which allow predictions that come true (at least in high accuracy). This
sentence will surely have at least some scientists who will disagree with
it on all kinds of grounds (including exceptions, teleology, etc).

Second, I know damned well that I do _not_ understand enough about either
of the relativity theories to defend them against criticism except from
anti-science religious fanatics. This is despite the fact that my
undergraduate degree is in physics (with chem, bio as minors) and I have
no fundamental dislike of either Einstein or science.

Third, most people really have difficulty, or even dislike, maintaining a
knowledge which permits competing and mutually contradictory theories to
co-exist in their minds. These people would like to _prefer_ one, and
discard the rest. One fact about science is that real scientists actually
do this and controversies all through the history of science really do
exist, and this includes all branches of science. The controversies are
usually resolved if and only if some new insight leads to a vast consensus
in which a majority of practitioners _accept_ one theory over many others
and that this acceptance is overwhelming. This in and of itself is not
"final proof" since various tweaks, adjustments, revisions, additions can
happen to any of even major theories.

As a non expert in relativity, I can only go by what is said by the
experts and that includes people who wrote books on the subject. When I
was much younger, I accepted relativity because my physics teachers did
and most of the books (and journal articles) did, too. I thought the
"fringe" crowd were basically a very _few_ nut-cases. Over the years, it
seems that there is a substantial number of people who question relativity
to the point where they deserve an audience.

A book I read decades ago, "Beyond the Edge of Certainty" ed. by Colodney
('60s-70s) with chapters by professors of philosophy departments opened my
eyes to the historical development of the Newton laws of motion. You might
think this is trivial stuff; after all, we all _accept_ these laws, and
nobody questions them. Yet the book, a very serious book, presented a very
interesting "interpretation" of these laws which allowed for the
possibility that we don't know as much as we think we do about these laws
and about physical phenomena.

Another angle in this discussion is semantics and the psychology of the
human brain. We all have at least some kinds of intuitive concepts of
the physical world through the psychology of our brains. This also
includes a whole dependence on words and their semantics and how they are
derived from simple, practical interpretations. When non-intuitive (eg.
quantum theory) science (physics) is involved, the correspondence between
the non-intuitive phenomena become inaccurately describable with our
intuitive lexicon, and that is where the rub occurs.

I also recently (a few days ago) re-read the chapter on the wave-particle
duality in an advanced undergraduate textbook I have on quantum mechanics.
I have always been uncomfortable with this explanation, but the book (also
authored by a professor of physics) was also uncomfortable with this, too,
and I'll say that the book did a nice job of explaining the "status" of
this idea that the wave-particle "duality" means that somehow light has
both particle and wave properties _simultaneously_. The book,
unfortunately did not get into the area of philosophy which asks or
studies "what is knowledge" and how do we design experiments which include
so called "strong inference" (or, in short, can you design one experiment
which proves light is either wave or particle instead of two experiments:
one in which light is a wave or not a wave, and a second in which light is
a particle or not a particle, and, thus this leaves open the possibility
that light is something else).

So, in the end, I must leave my eyes open to all possibilities, including
recognizing that there is a school of thought (I have not studied it
deeply) that includes very bright people who argue against Einstein's
theory of relativity. Perhaps one day I may look at some of these books
and try to decide, only for myself, if there is anything to them. And, if
I make noise about these anti-Einstein books, it does not mean,
necessarily, that I think Einstein is wrong or totally wrong. Only that
there are experts who doubt Einstein's theories. And, that leaves me at
the position that the doubters deserve further study.

And, I also know that there is a Flat Earth Society with a very small
number of members who you also cannot argue with because their arguments
are non-debateable through -- perhaps-- some peculiar version of logic.
Me? I am sure the earth is a sphere, and satellites really do orbit, etc.
Cosmology is another mess: cosmologists have many theories of black holes
and articles I read in the popular media that are authored by guys who
know more about it than I do say that these theories leave a lot to be
desired, so there is a problem there, too.

There are two other dangerous but useful books out there that I have read:
"The End of Science" and "The End of Physics." Both written by
scientists/physicists.

Sorry for the long response, but I took your question seriously.

I have a PhD in biology, and am retired after a career with my own
laboratory, staff, publications in peer-reivewed journals, grants from
granting agencies, books edited, invited conference papers, conference
organization, and retired from a faculty appointment (research professor)
at a major university.



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