Of course, the title question is highly political, because for many mainstream science proponents is rather unpleasant to admit, such proclamativelly objective organization like science is driven by inter-subjective meaning of scientists like sectarian community, rather then by bare facts - despite of their origin. Such stance is somewhat idealistic or even hypocritical, indeed - because just these members are refuting or even proactivelly denying the introduction of new ideas into mainstream from outside, especially from so-called cranks. These proponents are labeling the opponents purportedly by this (often quite rude) way, and they've developed a various lists of ad-hoced criterions (1, 2), analogous to Malleus maleficarum handbook from medieval times, which could help them to distinguish the harmful people violating the scientific integrity without having familiar with their ideas at all. These proponents are often masquerading like proper skeptics, while exhibiting one or more symptoms of pathological disbelief. The sectarian character of mainstream community is feeded by educational system, as we can demonstrate somewhat later.
Unfortunately mainstream science - the theoretical physics in particular - is rather close to sectarian society being the non-profit organization dependent on mandatory fees more, then other parts of free market society. But the stance, the science is dependent to inter-subjective meaning like democracy follows directly from so-called scientific method based on peer-review and Popper's methodology, by which theories simply have no place in science, only facts - because theories could be never considered proven with certainty. But the decision, what is still fact and what is just a theory is fully arbitrary here and it depends on the inter-subjective consensus of scientific community. It can be demonstrated easily by number of boundary phenomena, like the homeopathy, various psychic phenomena or cold fusion, which are refuted by mainstream science proponents for years - not saying about Aether concept and many others.
For example, mainstream science decided before years, Aether doesn't exist, because its motion should be observable by using of light - which wasn't confirmed experimentally with sufficient precision. But the analogy of light waves in vacuum are waves at wave surface and by using of such waves surface can be never observed, because is serving as a space for them already. Therefore the negative result of M-M experiment and others cannot serve as a ultimate evidence against Aether concept.
Therefore, Mr. Smolin is right in large extent and mainstream science still depends on inter-subjective opinion heavily, thus exhibiting a character of democracy or even meritocracy. Simply because facts are rarely considered by science, only interpretations of facts - exactly the opposite, what the scientific method should be. This is logical consequence of tautological character of symmetry in Poppers methodology, where each negation of some theory becomes another theory, which should be tested independently. From this perspective Poppers methodology doesn't bring any ultimate criterion of the validity of so-called scientific approach and Mr. Smolin is quite right in his point, something like scientific method doesn't exists, in fact.
In analogy to previous example, the famous M-M experiment "proving the absence of Aether reliably" should by still handled with caution, because the absence of Aether wasn't, what the M-M experiment has measured, exactly - such conclusion is just a weak interpretation of its result and this interpretation can be mistaken by the same way, like whatever other interpretation or theory. Unfortunately, many mainstream science proponents are driven by tendency of pathological disbelief to deny, rather than doubt, their approach to reality is biased - so that Aether concept was thrown out of science for more then one century.
Therefore, Mr. Smolin is right in large extent and mainstream science still depends on inter-subjective opinion heavily, thus exhibiting a character of democracy or even meritocracy. Simply because facts are rarely considered by science, only interpretations of facts - exactly the opposite, what the scientific method should be. This is logical consequence of tautological character of symmetry in Poppers methodology, where each negation of some theory becomes another theory, which should be tested independently. From this perspective Poppers methodology doesn't bring any ultimate criterion of the validity of so-called scientific approach and Mr. Smolin is quite right in his point, something like scientific method doesn't exists, in fact.
In analogy to previous example, the famous M-M experiment "proving the absence of Aether reliably" should by still handled with caution, because the absence of Aether wasn't, what the M-M experiment has measured, exactly - such conclusion is just a weak interpretation of its result and this interpretation can be mistaken by the same way, like whatever other interpretation or theory. Unfortunately, many mainstream science proponents are driven by tendency of pathological disbelief to deny, rather than doubt, their approach to reality is biased - so that Aether concept was thrown out of science for more then one century.
With compare to above, AWT introduces a concept of so-called pluralities, which are generalization of dualities used in quantum field theories. Dualities are originally a concept of projective geometry, which can be called an "perspective of interpretation" or "point of view". The significant point here is, the things often appear reciprocal from reciprocal perspective. The simplest example is Maldacena duality: when you're sitting inside of gravitational lens, the path of light appears straight, the space-time appears curved for you and everything appears OK from relativity perspective.
But whenever we are observing the same phenomena from outside, everything will change: here no signs of time dilatation and curved space - but the path of light appears curved, instead. This leads to the Lorentz symmetry violation, the causality violation (you can see a multiple images/consequences of the same phenomena) and other effects following from quantum mechanics. The nested Aether foam concept introduces a concept of pluralities here. This doesn't mean, the causality of scientific thinking is violated - it just means, it strictly depends on the observational perspective, the postulate set chosen in particular. By AWT every rule violates itself in less or more global scale, the progressive approach of mainstream science becomes brake of the further evolution less or more lately and the roles of intuitive and formal thinking alternates during such evolution, thus forming a nested phases of Aether foam. Such behavior can be demonstrated by relation of interactions inside of nested fields of density gradients to Goedel incompleteness theorem and the liar paradox. By such way, AWT reconciles the positivistic philosophy of many mainstream proponents with constructivism of Lee Smolin and others independent scientists.
Mr. Lee Smolin basically said, most difficult thing in science is to admit, someone else could have his piece of truth. By AWT the theories is behaving like condensate of neural waves inside of human brains, which are intensifying the information spreading by such a way, we can compare it to density blob, focusing the information spreading around it like optical lens. But the very same effect makes a communities of different theorists mutually intolerant, because such gradient exhibits a "surface tension", which leads to repulsive interactions, which we can observe at the case of mercury droplets easily. Occasionally, such community can close itself into sectarian informational singularity due total reflection phenomena, occurring at the surface of such causality blob. thus changing itself into boson condensate. Such singularity is formed by systematic censorship and personal relationships (a biased view attracts another people with biased view and their actions are synergistic) - so that only single-minded opinions will prevail at the end by selection. Such selection occurs even during fall of matter into black holes, which are collecting just a denses parts of matter, while radiating the rest at the form of so called accretion radiation. Most groups in blogosphere exhibit the very same behavior.
"Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit," Albert Einstein, 1901
If it's so, isn't it strange, why just mainstream science is meritocracy driven?
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