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Yep. That is expected when the data needed for a paradigm shift is repressed or obscure.
However I would say that that web page author is not quite right. The scientific revolution was from Earth-centric to Sun-centric and that took about 60 years. Nicolaus Copernicus published his work in 1543. It was Johannes Kepler who proposed the modern system in 1605. Then Galileo Galilei's 1610 observations of Jupiter and the phases of Venus validated the modern system.
The extra years to Newton is after the revolution.
The religious revolution (i.e. acceptance of the modern system) took longer though (1992!) .
BurntSynapse: Farisght is also being misleading. He represents himself as a master of physics, but he doesn't actually know any physics. He presents himself as a master of Einstein's gravitational theories, but by his own admission he has never worked through any of the mathematics of Einstein's work on gravitation. And he will never, ever, answer a direct question that asks him to provide the details in physics that support his claims.
Baloney. The guy can read my posts, and yours. And he can pick a number between one and nine* to check my credentials:
1. Are there undiscovered principles of nature: new symmetries, new physical laws? 2. How can we solve the mystery of dark energy? 3. Are there extra dimensions of space? 4. Do all the forces become one? 5. Why are there so many kinds of particles? 6. What is dark matter? How can we make it in the laboratory? 7. What are neutrinos telling us? 8. How did the universe come to be? 9. What happened to the antimatter?
So beat it, troll. This is important.
* Apart from number eight. I don't know the answer to that one. Yeah, you heard right.
Edit: RealityCheck, the vicious sneering opposition to relativity that lasted for decades has been airbrushed away from public sight, just as ben m tries to airbrush away the interest-group propaganda and censorship that shackles contemporary physics. Which is like a feudal society. Wherein there's an awful lot of good physicists out there who are serfs. That's a bad thing because it hampers scientific progress. Then the public and politicians become impatient and exasperated, then funding cuts occur, then you're into a downward spiral.
You do know that a list of topics is not credentials, Farsight?
The nasty thing is that this list looks like it comes from the Quantum Universe Committee document and I see no sign that you were a member, Farsight. You also have not cited your published work on these topics.
However I suspect that you just want to derail the thread into your delusions about these topics.
Your credentials, Farsight, are the ignorance you have shown in this forum.
For example, you still have not shown that you know that the Higgs mechanism is a relativistic QFT (does not violate E=mc^2).
From 13th March 2013:
Farsight, your vicious sneering statement is wrong. Anyone who wants to find out about the gap between the formation of SR and GR and their acceptance have always been able to found out about it.
Well, I certainly agree that if you are going to “argue against something else” you probably won’t “argue successfully against apathy” but may even inspire some more apathy.”
If anyone can convince me of any position they like, on any topic they like I would gratefully yield to them the victory with on camera honors in a vlog episode with some cool graphics or something equally worthy of their success.
I promise to be honest to the best of my ability, and the only restrictions on the topic are that it must be unrelated to anything I consider worth my time to consider. Fair?
Depending one's position, perhaps none. In the course however, the prof uses currently undefined terms in definitions and then unpacks the meaning of the definition by later defining those terms, and so on. In distinguishing between what should count as science or non-science, philosophers want to create criteria that clearly exclude astrology, but include astronomy. The road to doing that turned out to be harder than it sounds.
There is a big difference between your professor using some term that has not been defined for you yet and “rigorous definitions” that are not “expressed in specifically defined terms”. The former is just a matter of timing and the latter self contradictory.
In the areas where only boolean logic is applicable, I agree, but when dealing with any measurements or observations UNKNOWN can typically occur. I think this is especially true in science, the domain in question. UNKNOWN is clearly NOT FALSE, but we wouldn't want to assign it TRUE, nor be forced to chuck our project or put it on hold for a result that may never come.
This is true, but it does seem important to recognizing research that should not count as proper science. The categorization is different than the things we are categorizing as good science vs. pseudo-science.
Absolutely. The problem is that we must have a structure to tell us what the world is, and while the benefits of our current structures we use are very easily perceived, the detrimental effects are incredibly hard to see until after we've adopted a different paradigm we consider superior.
This would explain why atheist skeptics converted from religion often clearly perceive advantages of a natural worldview and detrimental impacts of superstition, while believers' perceptions are largely opposite.
“what the world is”? It Depends on what the meaning of the word is is!!!
Actually though, we must have a structure to tell us how to function in the world. What the world actually is may not be represented in the nature of that structure for interaction. Is there an independent objective reality? Who knows but I do have to act, as the world seems to behave, as if there is an independent objective reality, even if there actually isn’t.
While I admit my understanding plays a crucial role in my reasoning, I don't think attributing the rejection to me is fair. This kind of rejection was being argued long before I was born, and I think both sides have merit.
The quote is attributable directly to you, that you feel others may agree with you doesn’t change that. Unless you don’t, in fact, reject those interpretations than your rejection is also ultimately attributable to only you.
If you really don’t know or don’t care which if any of those interpretations may be correct then that is not a very difficult position to express and in fact would be consistent with your “Approach 1”.
Heck, we may never actually know as many interpretations can be compatible with the same data and same interactive requirements. In some cases apathy isn’t a bad approach, particularly those (like the nature of an independent objective universe) where what you care or don’t care about can’t make a dang difference.
Decisions are justified on the bases of available information, not the future unknown state of nature. Thus, purchasing a lottery ticket can be justified economically when the expected value reaches a positive value, like a $100M jackpot has accumulated, and $50M ticket will be sold for that draw.
Since we cannot know at the decision point (purchase) whether a ticket wins, appealing to a future unknown as a justification for doing anything would be a mistake.
Tell that to the last winner or the next (as that state does become known). The point was that we may never know and I certainly never appealed to that current or as professed future lack of knowledge as the basis of any decision as exemplified by the stated justified apathy.
This common error is one of the first we learn in graduate decision science: good decisions are not based on non-existent future outcomes, they are good/bad decisions based on how well we analyze available information at the decision point.
Some learn this rather quickly and even without “graduate decision science”. The problem is of course when developmental research is needed just to get the “available information” to make some decision other than the ones you already had to make before you got that data. As Reality Check noted before just finding out it doesn’t work is advancement.
No problem, but the thing is would it be representative of how the universe actually is or just a useful tool in thinking about and calculating results? If getting result is all one cares about (physics wise that is) than it just doesn’t matter if that is how the universe actually is.
I think Kwalish Kid is perfectly correct, and on-topic.
The arguments you have presented in support of your own version(s) of physics have, I think without exception, failed to demonstrate an appreciation of fundamental concepts such as energy, entropy and space-time, and of how physics is done in general, and have never been supported with mathematics.
Conveniently, it makes for a good case study for the present thread (as good a place as any to start is "Relativity+ / Farsight's thread").
In that thread you'll see many of the crackpot traits discussed earlier, along with the "aesthetic" type of reasoning I've mentioned, i.e. objections to modern physics based on nothing but distaste for its counter-intuitiveness or its silence on matters of metaphysics dear to the crackpot's heart (e.g. the "true nature" of matter, or time, or whatever...). And of course (as mentioned by lpetrich and others earlier) there are often also the curious appeals to ancient authorities - e.g. Einstein, or Maxwell - as though their pronouncements were infallible, and modern physics has somehow lost its way.
BurntSynapse and Farsight seem to be claiming that the mainstream scientific community is too closed-minded and unwilling to accept new theories.
That's an argument that many pseudoscientists are fond of. It seems like their favorite hypothesis to explain why their beliefs are not accepted by mainstream scientists.
But one should not expect the scientific community to accept new theories right away. Otherwise the community would be swamped with bad theories. Consider the discovery of the Higgs particle. It was not "officially" discovered until its evidence was a bump more than 5 standard deviations in size. This is because smaller bumps have a tendency to come and go.
Yes, and although not a widely shared ethic, I believe it important I focus mostly on my misleading comments, where others are deceived as to my opinion or thinking due to carelessness, fatigue, distraction, or whatever. Many of those misleading posts are from my keyboard.
You should agree to differ with ben m, because he is not being honest with you. And as I said in post #1168, how can I assist? Would you like me to say something about those nine mysteries?
Most of the time ben m seems very honest and committed to providing good criticism. I'm concerned when emotion seems to overwhelm such virtues, more with me than anyone else however.
My hesitation in enlisting your help stems mainly from my purpose of being in this forum: obtaining solid criticism of my reasoning (good and bad).
The other is a concern with apparent overconfidence which quite frankly, often indicates a member of the lunatic fringe. You have a lot of sources and project managers are not supposed to focus on technical details of project work, they are supposed to focus on selecting and using the best available technical experts.
The experts I seek here are experts in critical skepticism. It's a free resource, so I'm able to tolerate a lot of snark, insults, fallacies, and what have you as the price for gaining a mass of invaluable feedback rapidly and for free.
I'm not certain how you might help me, but the smarter and more rational critics are a gold mine in a way a supporter never can be. How do you envision helping?
It doesn't. The Higgs mechanism is said to do be responsible for mass, but take a look at A Zeptospace Odyssey: A Journey into the Physics of the LHC.
... the Higgs mechanism accounts for about 1 per cent of the mass of ordinary matter ...
E=mc² is responsible for mass.
It is perhaps excusable that someone would thnk that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for all mass. They may only know about the Higgs mechanism from popular articles about it. But citing a document that expictly states that the Higgs mechanism accounts for 1% of mass is not smart. The rest of mass is accounted for by binding energy.
The last statement is just dumb. E=mc² states nothing about the cause of mass - it is the mass/emergy equivalance equation. The E is responsible for m and the m is responsible for E.
Like how the Higgs mechanism contradicts E=mc² and needs to come out of the Standard Model to be replaced by a symmetry? You can trace the problem back to QED you know. When the penny drops it's kind of an Ohmygawd! moment.
Ditto.
We should point out that changes in scientific paradigms are not planned. No one sat done in 1500 and stated that by 1543 the first data collection phase would be finished and the next on would be scheduled for the early 1600's .
The biggest problem seems that your reasoning is based on a faulty premise - that science is a project and so project planing methodology can be used.
You can certainly plan scientific research and that is done all of the time.
But we do not plan scientific progress (see above). For example, it would be insane to sit down and schedule the detection of dark matter particles here on Earth by 1 April 2014.
Or maybe the biggest problem is that you have not been able to communicate your reasoning coherently enough !
Yep. That is expected when the data needed for a paradigm shift is repressed or obscure.
However I would say that that web page author is not quite right. The scientific revolution was from Earth-centric to Sun-centric and that took about 60 years. Nicolaus Copernicus published his work in 1543. It was Johannes Kepler who proposed the modern system in 1605. Then Galileo Galilei's 1610 observations of Jupiter and the phases of Venus validated the modern system.
The extra years to Newton is after the revolution.
The religious revolution (i.e. acceptance of the modern system) took longer though (1992!) .
Yet there were substantial hurdles to accepting a sun-centred system. Including the lack of parallax and the seemingly immense size of the stars relative to our own sun given the lack of parallax and their apparent size in telescopes (an artefact due to the small lenses used in telescopes).
And then he can see that you have dodged the following questions again and again, all questions based on direct claims that you made:
"why does the expansion rate of a homogeneous matter dominated universe slow?"
Can you provide a detailed scale for the inhomogeneity that you identify as being so great in the universe?
Can you please provide us with a detailed model for your claim that in a universe as homogeneous as you identify the universe to be, gravity will cause the matter in the universe to coalesce into one central lump, but it will not do the same to space?
Can you please give us the equation for the pressure that you identify as being an innate feature of empty space? (And please do not dodge the question as you often do by claiming that this is Phil Plait's idea. You are endorsing the pressure and you are using it as the basis of your claims.)
Can you explain why every practicing cosmologist engaged in "a misunderstanding of gravity and a disregard for space" since (at least) 1920?
Can you please provide a citation as to when this misunderstanding and disregard was rectified?
Can you point to where this misunderstanding and disregard occurs in standard papers on cosmology?
Why is it that conservation of energy says the dark energy density can't stay the same? In your answer, please clearly state the law of conservation of energy in a form usable in a physics application.
Edit: RealityCheck, the vicious sneering opposition to relativity that lasted for decades has been airbrushed away from public sight, just as ben m tries to airbrush away the interest-group propaganda and censorship that shackles contemporary physics. Which is like a feudal society. Wherein there's an awful lot of good physicists out there who are serfs. That's a bad thing because it hampers scientific progress. Then the public and politicians become impatient and exasperated, then funding cuts occur, then you're into a downward spiral.
Yet there were substantial hurdles to accepting a sun-centred system. Including the lack of parallax and the seemingly immense size of the stars relative to our own sun given the lack of parallax and their apparent size in telescopes (an artefact due to the small lenses used in telescopes).
That is basally why it was not accepted at once scientifically.
It was not until Galileo Galilei'a observations that a sun-centred system was the only option. Astronomers could say:
Look: there are moons around Jupiter that are not orbiting the Earth.
Look: the phases of Venus cannot be explained by it orbiting the Earth and can be explained by it orbiing the Sun.
That is basally why it was not accepted at once scientifically.
It was not until Galileo Galilei'a observations that a sun-centred system was the only option. Astronomers could say:
Look: there are moons around Jupiter that are not orbiting the Earth.
Look: the phases of Venus cannot be explained by it orbiting the Earth and can be explained by it orbiing the Sun.
Compared to ancient Greece, where the heliocentric system of Aristarchos was discussed as a viable alternative to the Ptolemaic system, the middle ages were dominated by supernatural thinking. It is an unfortunate accident of history that Aristotle embraced the Ptolemaic system, which was then adopted as dogma by Christian authorities.
So, it seems to me that objections to a heliocentric system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not scientifically based but were religiously motivated. Consequently, there is little to be gained with this discussion in understanding the nature of scientific advancement and any opposing inertia in modern times by scientists.
Actually, Farsight's claim is quite different, and rather unique in my experience. He doesn't claim to be promoting a new theory--he claims that everyone else misunderstands Einstein, and only he has been able to figure out what Einstein really meant. He did this by the simple expedient of ignoring all of Einstein's math (or at least, all that's more complicated than a talented high-school graduate might be able to comprehend), and focusing purely on the words that Einstein wrote.
Basically, his thesis seems to be that all the math is just inherently misleading, and the truth can only be found by studying the words of the One True Physicist. So it's not that the mainstream is too close-minded. It's simply that they're paying too much attention to the math, and not enough to possible metaphoric interpretations of Einstein's words, so they've gotten off-track.
If only Einstein's own math didn't contradict Farsight's claims of Einstein's "true meaning", I might almost find his (Farsight's) claims plausible--though improbable. But his complete failure to address the math makes me completely unable to take him seriously.
Still, I find him more interesting/entertaining than your typical physics crank. But maybe that's just me.
Yes, and although not a widely shared ethic, I believe it important I focus mostly on my misleading comments, where others are deceived as to my opinion or thinking due to carelessness, fatigue, distraction, or whatever. Many of those misleading posts are from my keyboard.
Most of the time ben m seems very honest and committed to providing good criticism. I'm concerned when emotion seems to overwhelm such virtues, more with me than anyone else however.
I'm an experienced IT project manager, I empathise with your reasoning. Note my initial comment where I said the project timescale means the deliverable is beyond the life expectancy of participants, and the project needs to be broken down into subprojects starting with manned spaceflight.
The other is a concern with apparent overconfidence which quite frankly, often indicates a member of the lunatic fringe. You have a lot of sources and project managers are not supposed to focus on technical details of project work, they are supposed to focus on selecting and using the best available technical experts.
Where the physics is concerned I've played more of a systems analyst role investigating the terms in expressions like E=mc². Sorry about the apparent overconfidence. A forum like this can be somewhat combative, it's all too easy to be rather pugnacious.
The experts I seek here are experts in critical skepticism. It's a free resource, so I'm able to tolerate a lot of snark, insults, fallacies, and what have you as the price for gaining a mass of invaluable feedback rapidly and for free.
They aren't experts in critical scepticism I'm afraid. By and large they're "naysayers" who are sceptical of the hard scientific evidence that challenges their convictions that lack evidential support.
I'm not certain how you might help me, but the smarter and more rational critics are a gold mine in a way a supporter never can be. How do you envision helping?
Pathlogical Physics: Tales from the Box - a talk on crank physics. Apparently lasts about an hour, despite two hour timescale of video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXSgp755DSA
That is basally why it was not accepted at once scientifically.
It was not until Galileo Galilei'a observations that a sun-centred system was the only option. Astronomers could say:
Look: there are moons around Jupiter that are not orbiting the Earth.
Look: the phases of Venus cannot be explained by it orbiting the Earth and can be explained by it orbiing the Sun.
The debate continued after this because it is possible to have a sun-centred system moving around the Earth. Again, the lack of parallax and the apparent size of stars if the stars were distant (a mostly forgotten problem) made the Earth-centred view problematic even after the phases of Venus observations.
I'm an experienced IT project manager, I empathise with your reasoning. Note my initial comment where I said the project timescale means the deliverable is beyond the life expectancy of participants, and the project needs to be broken down into subprojects starting with manned spaceflight.
Are you PMI certified? If we can talk in PM specific terms its much better...and faster. Depending on what you mean by "beginning with" I agree from a standpoint of developing a reliable vision of success, that's the first major step.
I provided an overview of what I'm about at the 100 Year Starship symposium in Houston last year, and is online as Starship Vlog 005. In that, I note that the most expertise in developing long range visions of technological progress are science fiction authors, and because its both so well known and had so many people working on what would be their ideal outcome I used Star Trek tech for an idealized vision of future manned spaceflight.
Then I work backward to say out of all the zillions of future developments needed to make a vision like that, what can we say about those technologies that offer concrete problems which require revolutionary paradigm change of the kind likely to impact the issues raised by the Quantum Universe committee.
My opinion is that our focus should be on improving mathematical modeling for reasons I partially covered earlier in the forum.
Where the physics is concerned I've played more of a systems analyst role investigating the terms in expressions like E=mc². Sorry about the apparent overconfidence. A forum like this can be somewhat combative, it's all too easy to be rather pugnacious.
They aren't experts in critical scepticism I'm afraid. By and large they're "naysayers" who are sceptical of the hard scientific evidence that challenges their convictions that lack evidential support.
I'd add that a major insight of Popper is missing: evidence is cheap! There's mountains of evidence for astrology, religions, political theories and pseudo-sciences of every kind.
What discussions in this forum need, IMO, are more good criteria for distinguishing good science from bad...in other words: the Demarcation Problem that gave rise to philosophy of science in the first place. These are on the opposite end of the price scale from evidence, they are very hard to come by...just try reading "Causation and Counterfactuals" - I couldn't finish it. <sigh> At least there's more accessible stuff now.
Actually, Farsight's claim is quite different, and rather unique in my experience. He doesn't claim to be promoting a new theory--he claims that everyone else misunderstands Einstein, and only he has been able to figure out what Einstein really meant. He did this by the simple expedient of ignoring all of Einstein's math (or at least, all that's more complicated than a talented high-school graduate might be able to comprehend), and focusing purely on the words that Einstein wrote.
Basically, his thesis seems to be that all the math is just inherently misleading, and the truth can only be found by studying the words of the One True Physicist. So it's not that the mainstream is too close-minded. It's simply that they're paying too much attention to the math, and not enough to possible metaphoric interpretations of Einstein's words, so they've gotten off-track.
Farsight claims to have discovered the true meanings of the writings of some other notable physicists, like Newton, Maxwell, Minkowski, and Feynman, but you are correct about how he works with their work. In fact, that's what I mean when I state that Farsight argues like a theologian.
If only Einstein's own math didn't contradict Farsight's claims of Einstein's "true meaning", I might almost find his (Farsight's) claims plausible--though improbable. But his complete failure to address the math makes me completely unable to take him seriously.
Pathlogical Physics: Tales from the Box - a talk on crank physics. Apparently lasts about an hour, despite two hour timescale of video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXSgp755DSA
Here again we see an intriguing preponderance of engineers involved in crackpot physics. My own personal experience is in the context of teaching freshman calculus and linear algebra to engineering students. I do have the general impression (perhaps unfairly) that the engineering students tended to perform poorly in math compared to the physics and mathematics majors.
That observation is certainly consistent with the fact that all the cranks I have observed in these threads seem to lack a good understanding of the mathematics needed to do physics.
A few computer programmers also come to mind. I personally know both engineers and computer professionals (retired) that embrace crackpot notions.
I acknowledge that the above comments are purely anecdotal and I'm on thin ice here.
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