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From: Sam Wormley on 13 Jul 2010 12:56
On 7/13/10 11:43 AM, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote:
>
> Sigh,
>
> If you wanted proof that theoretical physics has left the world of
> reason and wandered into the swamp of untestable postmodern
> pseudoscience, braying like a crude drunk, just read Dennis Overbye's
> piece in the Science Times section of today's NYT [7/13/10].

The jury hasn't even been seated yet!

> A Scientist Takes On Gravity
> by DENNIS OVERBYE
> Published: July 12, 2010
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html
>
> "It?s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life
> on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and
> fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and
> dreams".
>
> "But what if it?s all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side
> effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality"?
>
> "So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of
> physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is
> indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or
> at least among those who profess to understand it. Reversing the logic
> of 300 years of science, he argued in a recent paper, titled ?On the
> Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,? that gravity is a consequence
> of the venerable laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of
> heat and gases".


>
> General Relativity has been considered one of mankind's finest
> achievements. But our heroic string theorists, unrestrained by the
> principles of science, would blithely throw it out the window into the
> trashbin.

Like Newton's classical mechanics, I doubt that general relativity
would ever be relegated to the trash bin.

>
> In place of GR, the much-deluded Verlinde offers hand-waving about
> poorly defined and unmeasurable abstractions: information, entropy and
> holographic screens. His speculations cannot make a single definitive
> prediction [and the same has been true for string theory in general
> over the last 30 years] whereby the speculations could be considered
> scientific.

Suggest readers read Overbye's article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html

>
> Does the community of theoretical physicists protest? Not much.
> Perhaps the majority see a long-term feeding trough in this untestable
> pseudoscience stuff?
>
> What has happened to science?

Science still requires empirical testing. If an idea can't be tested,
it isn't science, but philosophy.

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