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From: Pentcho Valev on 29 Jul 2010 03:50
The problem is getting more and more pressing:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/2010/07/the_adults_arent_alright_every.html
"Everybody is worked up about the state of education in the United
States. The KIDS are FALLING BEHIND. No, it's not the KIDS, it's the
SCHOOLS. No, it's not the SCHOOLS it's the TEACHERS. No, it's not the
TEACHERS, it's the PARENTS. Okay, so if we fix the schools and the
teachers and the parents, will our kids stop falling behind? I'm
inclined to extend the ring of panic out one ring further. If it's
true that the supporting envelope of the home is crucial to education,
might it not also be true that the supporting envelope of society is
important, too? It's not just the kids or the schools or the teachers
or the parents, it's the CULTURE. Look around. Where is the support
for careful reasoning?"

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2010/0729/1224275683050.html
"...Isaac Newton would be astounded that his theories of motion and
gravitation had been usurped by Einstein's theory of relativity.
Christopher Wren would be amazed that modern astronomical measurements
had led to the discovery that we live in an expanding universe that
was once smaller than an atom. But what would surprise the founding
members most is that these, and other discoveries, remain the preserve
of a few. Far from being an indispensable part of the human
experience, science has remained a specialised subject understood by
only a fraction of society. Does it matter? (...) A second, and often
overlooked, reason for a public understanding of science is that
science is part of the human experience, just as history and music
are. Not everyone may want to partake in the actual discovery of the
workings of the natural world, but they deserve to know what has been
discovered! This science-as-culture argument was first articulated by
the physicist C P Snow when he realised that he could engage in
literary discussion with friends in the humanities, while they knew
nothing of his subject. Indeed, he felt that the general public was
being cheated out of a scientific education. This coincides with my
own belief, and that of many scientists, that society has a right to
know the discoveries of modern science. Indeed, I believe society also
has a right to know how those discoveries were made, as the story of
unfolding scientific discovery is an important part of human history."

Clues:

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://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html
John Barrow: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of
science. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in
1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what
it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921,
he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the
ordinary person: Does it make a silly impression on me, here and
yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I
think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it
is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them...it
impresses them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious."

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 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."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev(a)yahoo.com
From: Arindam Banerjee on 29 Jul 2010 05:33
On Jul 29, 5:50 pm, Pentcho Valev <pva...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> The problem is getting more and more pressing:
>
> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/2010/07/the_adults_arent_al...
> "Everybody is worked up about the state of education in the United
> States. The KIDS are FALLING BEHIND. No, it's not the KIDS, it's the
> SCHOOLS. No, it's not the SCHOOLS it's the TEACHERS. No, it's not the
> TEACHERS, it's the PARENTS. Okay, so if we fix the schools and the
> teachers and the parents, will our kids stop falling behind? I'm
> inclined to extend the ring of panic out one ring further. If it's
> true that the supporting envelope of the home is crucial to education,
> might it not also be true that the supporting envelope of society is
> important, too? It's not just the kids or the schools or the teachers
> or the parents, it's the CULTURE. Look around. Where is the support
> for careful reasoning?"
>
> http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2010/0729/1224275683...
> "...Isaac Newton would be astounded that his theories of motion and
> gravitation had been usurped by Einstein's theory of relativity.
> Christopher Wren would be amazed that modern astronomical measurements
> had led to the discovery that we live in an expanding universe that
> was once smaller than an atom. But what would surprise the founding
> members most is that these, and other discoveries, remain the preserve
> of a few. Far from being an indispensable part of the human
> experience, science has remained a specialised subject understood by
> only a fraction of society. Does it matter? (...) A second, and often
> overlooked, reason for a public understanding of science is that
> science is part of the human experience, just as history and music
> are. Not everyone may want to partake in the actual discovery of the
> workings of the natural world, but they deserve to know what has been
> discovered! This science-as-culture argument was first articulated by
> the physicist C P Snow when he realised that he could engage in
> literary discussion with friends in the humanities, while they knew
> nothing of his subject. Indeed, he felt that the general public was
> being cheated out of a scientific education. This coincides with my
> own belief, and that of many scientists, that society has a right to
> know the discoveries of modern science. Indeed, I believe society also
> has a right to know how those discoveries were made, as the story of
> unfolding scientific discovery is an important part of human history."
>
> Clues:
>
> 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://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/Einstein/index.html
> John Barrow: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of
> science. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in
> 1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what
> it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921,
> he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the
> ordinary person: Does it make a silly impression on me, here and
> yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I
> think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it
> is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them...it
> impresses them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious."
>
> 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 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."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...(a)yahoo.com

How long will the einsteinian thugs dominate?
Arindam Banerjee
From: Stephen Morgan on 29 Jul 2010 10:24
Mow my lawn, beaner.

"Pentcho Valev" <pvalev(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:70f7abc3-71f8-4f2c-a28c- <nothing>


From: Chazwin on 29 Jul 2010 13:34
If science were not part of culture then it would be part of nature.
As science is actually the study of nature then it is not nature per
se.
Therefore as culture and nature are often see as mutually exclusive
terms, science must be included as part of culture.
In fact science fulfills most definitions of of culture. From wiki....

1 Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as
high culture
2 An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that
depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
3 The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that
characterizes an institution, organization or group

Clearly we do not mean def 1. But def 2 is exacly what science is.
Science would be nothing without symbolic thought and learning. It is
goal oriented and is generated by institutions.
From: Ludovicus on 30 Jul 2010 06:52

> 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 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
> 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."
>
As a good marxist Mr. Peter Hayes resorts to the argument of ideology
to tarnish the findings of "bourgeois" science and slander their
professionals.
Einstein did'nt say that the clocks move at different rates, but that
the mesures of intervals of time from vehicles moving at relatively
different velocities, are mutually different.
Ludovius
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