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From: John Jones on 6 Feb 2010 22:26
Pentcho Valev wrote:
> Open Letter to: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society
>
> Copy to: Professor John Pethica, Physical Secretary and Vice-
> President, Professor Sir Michael Berry, Sir Peter Williams CBE,
> Treasurer and Vice-President, Professor Lorna Casselton, Foreign
> Secretary and Vice-President
>
> Dear Dr. Rees,
>
> Classical thermodynamics has been dead for a long time so when in 2001
> a respected scientist, Jos Uffink, declared that a version of the
> second law of thermodynamics ("Entropy always increases") is a RED
> HERRING, this sounded like an epitaph officially putting an end to any
> further discussion:
>
> 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."
>
> Einstein's relativity is younger than thermodynamics so its own
> epitaph came only recently:
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
> "General relativity knits together space, time and gravity.
> Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe
> depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster
> when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you
> age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground
> floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General
> relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo
> Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the
> Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....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."
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/passage/index.html
> John Norton: "A common belief among philosophers of physics is that
> the passage of time of ordinary experience is merely an illusion. The
> idea is seductive since it explains away the awkward fact that our
> best physical theories of space and time have yet to capture this
> passage. I urge that we should resist the idea. We know what illusions
> are like and how to detect them. Passage exhibits no sign of being an
> illusion....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 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. There are temporal orderings. We
> can identify earlier and later stages of temporal processes and
> everything in between. What we cannot find is a passing of those
> stages that recapitulates the presentation of the successive moments
> to our consciousness, all centered on the one preferred moment of
> "now." At first, that seems like an extraordinary lacuna. It is, it
> would seem, a failure of our best physical theories of time to capture
> one of time's most important properties. However the longer one works
> with the physics, the less worrisome it becomes....I was, I confess, a
> happy and contented believer that passage is an illusion. It did
> bother me a little that we seemed to have no idea of just how the news
> of the moments of time gets to be rationed to consciousness in such
> rigid doses.....Now consider the passage of time. Is there a
> comparable reason in the known physics of space and time to dismiss it
> as an illusion? I know of none. The only stimulus is a negative one.
> We don't find passage in our present theories and we would like to
> preserve the vanity that our physical theories of time have captured
> all the important facts of time. So we protect our vanity by the
> stratagem of dismissing passage as an illusion."
>
> The problem is that, despite Thomas Kuhn's revolutionary dreams, there
> is no tumultuous "paradigm change"; rather, false theories just
> silently die, burying with themselves an essential part of human
> culture:
>
> ftp://ftp.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/SISTA/markovsky/reports/06-46.pdf
> "From the pedagogical point of view, thermodynamics is a disaster. As
> the authors rightly state in the introduction, many aspects are
> "riddled with inconsistencies". They quote V.I. Arnold, who concedes
> that "every mathematician knows it is impossible to understand an
> elementary course in thermodynamics". Nobody has eulogized this
> confusion more colorfully than the late Clifford Truesdell. On page 6
> of his book "The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics" 1822-1854
> (Springer Verlag, 1980), he calls thermodynamics "a dismal swamp of
> obscurity". Elsewhere, in despair of trying to make sense of the
> writings of some local heros as De Groot, Mazur, Casimir, and
> Prigogine, Truesdell suspects that there is "something rotten in the
> (thermodynamic) state of the Low Countries" (see page 134 of Rational
> Thermodynamics, McGraw-Hill, 1969)."
>
> http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/080616
> "Like bronze idols that are hollow inside, Einstein built a cluster of
> "Potemkin villages," which are false fronts with nothing behind them.
> Grigori Potemkin (17391791) was a general-field marshal, Russian
> statesman, and favorite of Empress Catherine the Great. He is alleged
> to have built facades of non-existent villages along desolate
> stretches of the Dnieper River to impress Catherine as she sailed to
> the Crimea in 1787. Actors posing as happy peasants stood in front of
> these pretty stage sets and waved to the pleased Empress. This
> incident reminds me of the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's Moscow tour
> guide who showed her the living quarters of communist party bosses and
> claimed that these were the apartments of the average Russian worker.
> The incredibly gullible first lady was delighted. Like Catherine, the
> sentimental Eleanor was prone to wishful thinking and was easily
> deceived. What has all this to do with Einstein? The science
> establishment has a powerful romantic desire to believe in Einstein.
> Therefore, they are not only fooled by Einstein's tricks, they are
> prepared to defend his Potemkin villages."
>
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880
> Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
> Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
> 57-78
> "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."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education
> Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method
> is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes
> all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew
> "belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture
> of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all,
> curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that
> it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and
> it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion
> of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for
> the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes
> this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any
> hope for UK? I am really not sure."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
> "We are nearing the end of the "World Year of Physics", otherwise
> known as Einstein Year, as it is the centenary of his annus mirabilis
> in which he made three incredible breakthroughs, including special
> relativity. In fact, it was 100 years ago yesterday that he published
> the most famous equation in the history of physics: E=mc2. But instead
> of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report showed a
> dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at school.
> The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the past 15
> years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over the next
> few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics teachers and a
> lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of physics in state
> schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to only those
> students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain was the home
> of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-
> class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and
> electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing
> extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so
> WHO CARES IF WE DISAPPEAR?"
>
> Dr. Rees, the Royal Society bestowed Einstein on humankind in 1919;
> now it is time for redemption. I am sure you are considering some kind
> of redemption:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6057362/Give-scientists-the-freedom-to-be-wrong.html
> Martin Rees: "Over the past week, two stories in the press have
> suggested that scientists have been very wrong about some very big
> issues. First, a new paper seemed to suggest that dark energy the
> mysterious force that makes up three quarters of the universe, and is
> pushing the galaxies further apart might not even exist. (...) Cynics
> said that Einstein might as well have gone fishing from 1920 onwards,
> given the failure of much of his research." Lord Rees is President of
> the Royal Society
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3338512/Think-big-like-Einstein.html
> Martin Rees: "Cynics have said that Einstein might as well have gone
> fishing from 1920 onwards. Although there's something rather noble
> about the way he persevered in his attempts to reach far beyond his
> grasp, in some respects THE EINSTEIN CULT SENDS THE WRONG SIGNAL."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pvalev(a)yahoo.com
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