Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Would Galileo pass peer review today?

The case of Galileo Galilei, who was condemned for promotion of heliocentric model is usually interpreted by propaganda of mainstream science as a manifestation of superiority of so called scientific method over reactionary stance of Holy Church up to level, every notion of Galileo in different context is considered a direct manifestation of crackpotism. But under more thorough view we can identify many common points between reactionary stance of Holy Church and approach, which proponents of mainstream science are applying against promoters of Aether concept:
  1. Heliocentrism was as an ancient Greek model by the same way, like Aether concept, so called plenum. It was thrown away later mostly from ideological reasons in both cases.
  2. Holy Church was dominant meritocratic organization in Galileo era by the same way, like mainstream science today. Quantity criterion plays a role in AWT models of sociology, because majority mostly adheres to more conservative stance, then isolated souls due at the beginning of social cycle due the mutual compensation of progressive ideas (mutations) inside of larger groups.
  3. Mr. Galileo has used an intuitive logical arguments without formal math to support heliocentric model (i.e. the order of Venus phases, orientation of lunar craters shadows, etc.), but they were ignored by his opponents on behalf of formal models by the same way, like mainstream science ignores logical arguments of Aether proponents on behalf of formal models - just because of their lack of formal math.
  4. From the above reasons, Galileo was considered a controversial - if not naive - crackpot by the rest of people of his time by the same way, like many proponents of Aether concept today.
  5. Both Holy Church at Galileo era, both mainstream science today have developed a tools for fast classification of renegades and crackpots without deeper analysis of their ideas, for example Malleus maleficarum handbook or famous crackpot index.
  6. Heliocentric model was opposed by lack of stellar parallax regarding to Earth absolute motion, Aether model was opposed by lack of reference frame motion regarding to Earth absolute motion. This connection renders Aether model controversy as a direct analogy of heliocentric model controversy, just at different space-time scale.
  7. While lack of parallax is was quite relevant argument against heliocentrism, the lack of Aether reference frame is result of pure misunderstanding of particle environment concept, as the motion of no environment can be observed by its own waves. This point renders mainstream science even more biased against logic and confused, then the proponents of geocentricism at Galileo time.
  8. Geocentrists have ignored real life physics, the inertial physics in particular, which excludes the motion of heavier Sun around Earth on behalf of epicycles model by the same way, like space-time oriented model of contemporary physics ignores many real life connections of inertial character of vacuum, leading to wave character of light and many other phenomena.
  9. Geocentric model was Platonism based on ad-hoced numerical regression of observation and ad-hoced geometrical constructs (deferents and epicycles) without deeper understanding by the same way, like mainstream physics today, which prefers formal theories based on ad-hoced postulates, abstract geometric constructs (strings, manifolds and branes of M-theory) and overly complex formal regression of reality, which nobody can understand at intuitive level too.
  10. Geocentric model was used for calculations of motion of planets in Galileo times, although we know by now, these observations belongs into dual, i.e. heliocentric model. Analogously, mainstream science is blindly using relativity for interpretations of many phenomena (like gravitational lensing), which belongs into dual models by their very nature. We can consider this paradox a sort of supersymmetry phenomena (a formal model of theory is serving for confirmation of T-dual theory).
  11. Formal models of geocentrists were of infinitesimal practical significance at Galileo times, they served mostly for calculations of horoscopes, based on periods of solar eclipses and planetary conjunctions, which gaved them the sign of authenticity. Many scientists today are using an Aether based models on background and Newtonian physics formalism (the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian calculus in particular) to give the predictability and notion of authenticity to their theories.
  12. Many astronomers earned money like astrologers by bullshitting of layman people by their calculations without deeper understanding of their subject by the same way, like promoters of many scientific theories today, the promoters of string theory in particular.
  13. Background motivation of negativistic stance of promoters of geocentric model was the fear for lost of their informational monopoly for interpretation of reality by mainstream paradigm (a theology in particular). The motivation of the negativism of mainstream scientists toward Aether model is the lost of their monopoly for interpretation of reality by so called scientific method.
  14. The sectarian approach of both mainstream science, both Holy Church and other closed communities is characterized by so called novitiate period, during which new adepts are brainwashed by mainstream approach, before they're allowed to continue in further education and productive work. We can face this in contemporary educational system, where the formal approach to physical lectures prevails instead of more intuitive nonformal one.
It's apparent, history of science just repeats in social cycles at more advanced level of human understanding. Science just switched its progressive role with Holy Church of Galileo era. AWT explains this stance switching by inertial model of nested phase transforms, which is occurring inside of every large particle system during its gradual condensation/compactification.

When such system becomes sufficiently dense, its free-thinking particles will change into correlated, self-censored continuum, i.e. fluid or waves of energy. After then the density fluctuations of this fluid will behave like new generation of particles, while the former generations of particles are behaving like space-time or like energy wave by now. It means, the matter/particles and energy/space will switch their roles gradually and this evolution can repeat many times.

It may be interesting to follow, whether proponents of Aether theory will become such a brake of further evolution of science by the same way, like Holy Church of Galileo era or the proponents of mainstream science today. Thorough understanding of AWT pluralism should prohibit the formation of bias in ideology, though. We'll see. If nothing else, dense Aether concept could define a new era of ethics, tolerance and humanity understanding.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

live:
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=25111
others:
AWT on PhysOrg (closed) -banned
AWT on SciForums (closed)-banned
AWT on BautForum (closed) - banned

Zephir said...

If I calculate well (..easy, just kidding) - I was banned on about twentyfive forums till now.

Anonymous said...

The scientific world sees reason for math. Without math, you cannot make falsifiable statements.Without falsifiable statements you do not have a theory since whatever you have cannot be tested experimentally.So, since by your own admission you have no math, it means that you do not have any theory!

Zephir said...

...without math, you cannot make falsifiable statements....

It would mean, the above statement of yours is not falsifiable too. Why I should care about it, after then? Please explain....

Anonymous said...

"he above statement of yours is not falsifiable too. Why I should care about it, after then?"..Hmm..What a silly question. My statement isn`t any theory !

Ciudadano Kane said...

without math, you cannot make falsifiable statements

Dear Anonymus, nope.

What you're saying is wrong. Maybe your intentions are good, but your arguments are completely misguided. And there are very clear examples.

On the one hand, exist a fundamental model, called string theory, which his aim is to explain the nature using the philosophy of the high energy physics. This model is characterized by having a lot of math. A quotation from wikipedia:

"(...) results from physics are used to help prove facts in abstract mathematics which themselves have nothing particular to do with physics. This phenomenon has become increasingly important, with developments from string theory research breaking new ground in mathematics. Eric Zaslow coined the phrase physmatics to describe these developments[2], although other people would consider them as part of mathematical physics proper. (...)"

However, at the moment, String Theory doesn't make falsifiable predictions. At least, she doesn't make predictions which could be tested by the experiments that are going to be perform in the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (MES), is the best theory available to describe the fact that is called evolution. In the same way that General relativity (GR) is the best theory to describe the gravity. But while, GR can be exactly described using the language of the differential geometry, namely using math, there is not a math formulation to describe MES. Nevertheless, both theories make predictions that have been confirmed in many experiments.

AWT is the third way to describe the fundamental laws of nature. Not like the particle physics, because this method has clearly failed (and string theory is the proof), but with another philosophy. Although, the math are not necessary for AWT, AWT is other sort of theory as well.

Anonymous said...

sorry, El Cid don`t give me that crap. You got that all wrong.

Ciudadano Kane said...

What is the best method to explain the Nature, for you? Do you think String Theory is useful for someone or something? What do you think about the Multiverse? What do you think about the 10^500 vacua found in the Landscape of the String Theory which could be the vacuum of new universes with other systems of physical laws? What is the interpretation of the n-dimensional branes for you? What is the number of dimensions of our universe? Even, For what is useful the high energy physics? Why do you think the 'orthodox theories of high energy physics (hep)' are more useful than AWT?

On the other hand, AWT is an alternative explanation for the Nature, It is the vision of nature as Zephir thinks, but, at least for me is not less useful than the orthodox theories. By the way, I've got very little time, due to work, but I am trying to study quantum field theory and general relativity. Math and Physics are my fun, and the Zephir's blog is really fun, too. ;-)

Ciudadano Kane said...

According with Wikipedia

In one version of M-theory our universe and others are created by collisions between membranes in an 11-dimensional space.'

According with Susskind, one of the fathers of String Theory and a prominent theoretical physicist (Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University):

Based on the recent work of a number of authors, it seems plausible that the lanscape is unimaginably large and diverse. Whether we like it or not, this is the kind of behaviour that gives credence to the Anthropic Principle

Why do you think these claims are more correct than the claims made by Zephir?

Zephir said...

In fact, there are many mechanisms, which are making scientists even more conservative under contemporary educational and grant system, then the Holy Church of Galileo era.

Just try to imagine, you should learn some paradigm many years and to plan experiments in many years in advance to become "productive" in mainstream science environment.

As the number of knowledge increases and the cost of experiments increases, the evolution of mainstream science will effectivelly freeze due the limited timespan of human life -

We are facing supersymmetric "dark matter" phenomena here - scientists like internal observers of this evolution can get feeling, their universe of knowledge expands - but from perspective of surrounding society their approach becomed a brake of further evolution already.

Zephir said...

The final direct confirmation of heliocentric model has come just after two hundred years with observation of stellar parallax by Friedrich Bessel in 1838.

From this perspective, the stance of Holy Church didn't differ from contemporary mainstream science - both they're ignoring Occam's razor, but they're following atemporal Popper's methodology: two or more indirect indicia doesn't count here, only single complete chain of logics. This results into delay of scientific acceptation of new findings.

Zephir said...

People who are unsure of their own beliefs are less likely to entertain opposing views
People hate the unsure situations, so they prefer to occupy stance, based on firm belief, rather then weak/new understanding. The problem in acceptation of aether theory is in point, everyone remembers from school, such thing is BS, but he is unsure by it, because he feels, such trivial thing could still be somehow working. He is confused and angry / aggressive toward opposite ideas as the result. It means, acceptation of new ideas exhibits a hysteresis and spreading of new ideas appears like phase transition.

Another point is, the deep understanding usually involves the ability to comprehend problem from many directions (observational perspectives) at the same moment. It means, when I consider theory, which is able to explain both aether, bot relativity, both quantum mechanics, I'd have less problem in acceptation of particular view, then the person, which understands particular theory only
Want to convince? Use abstract rather than concrete language
People are creatures of deeply religious nature and they just want to hear abstract things, which they cannot comprehend. For example, when I say, Universe appears like fluctuations of dense gas, everyone is starring on me like idiot. But when I say, it's a giant hologram, everyone is impressed - although it cannot have a slightest idea, how such thing should be really working.

Zephir said...

Who Refused to Look through Galileo's Telescope?

Cold fusion experiments were replicated many people in peer reviewed journals. In this case, rest of mainstream plays a role of Galileo opponents


scientists-confirm-cold-fusion-experiment

Zephir said...

Features of crackpot science -  a nice characteristic of common points of crackpots
1. All crackpottery is foundational. Crackpots do not go for the small problems, for what Kuhn called the puzzle-solving of normal science, they invariably shake the foundations of modern physics. They provide a new structure for the atom, a new unified theory of field and energy, a complete alternative to general relativity, an entirely novel cosmology, etc.
2. Most physics crackpots are engineers. More than 95% of my sample boast engineering degrees, or combine an undergraduate maths/physics degree followed by an engineering PhD or equivalent. This is not too surprising, as this may be the only kind of cursus that provides one with enough math background to understand the equations and formulae in the textbooks without actually studying maths and physics - which would show the crackpot why he’s misguided.
3. All crackpots are male. There used to be the one lady valiantly posting ‘quantum physics disproved’ webpages but she recently died. Perhaps this extraordinary sex-ratio is explained by point [2] above.
4. Crackpots ignore other crackpots. For a long time, physicists pursued by cranks used the time-honored strategy of forwarding those messages to other ones, in the hope that the cooks would exhaust their energies in reciprocal refutations. In fact, practically none of the websites in my collection makes any mention of any other one. In the crackpot’s worldview, there is ego (with an enormously important discovery) vs. the monolithic community of “establishment physics”, and that’s it.
5. The crackpot theory is invariably more intuitive than the standard one. The alternatives to special relativity (which is a favourite crackpot target - about 4/5 of my sample are about that) are invariably “better”, at least in the eyes of the authors, in that they do not result in deeply non-intuituive notions, eg time-dilation. Similarly, alternatives to general relativity eschew the notion of time-space distortion as an account of gravitation. Alternative to the standard model of elementary particles are generally fonded on material particles with known or knowable position and velocity, rather than the standard uncertainty picture.
6. Crackpot alternative is less mathematically challenging than the standard account. For instance, tensors and other complicated tools of SR are replaced with college-level calculus, and in many cases with high-school algebra.
7. The crackpot theory is based on textbooks. Most of my cranks cite virtually no recent publications in physics. Almost all of them rely, for their understanding of modern physics, on what is in the textbooks. This explains some quaint, often comical aspects of their prose. For instance, the sites I observed contain extensive and meticulous analyses of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, demonstrating identical speed of light in all directions, often cited as the princeps refutation of the notion of ether and vindication of relativistic models. The cranks go on and on about possible aspects of that particular study that standard physics may have neglected. Or they fill pages with the 1919 eclipse and the demonstration of Einsteinian “light-bending” by gravity, trying to show that the observation was not so conclusive, etc. The reason for this obsession with particular studies is that those are invariably cited by textbooks - and that is where the cranks get their scientific training.

Zephir said...

The corruption of science?

Zephir said...

400 years later, Galileo is still giving
religion the finger
. A museum display of Galileo has a saintly feel..

Zephir said...

Is Academia Inhospitable to Big Discoveries? You can't write a grant proposal whose aim is to make a theoretical breakthrough.

Zephir said...

String Theory has many aspects of theology, except the need for a belief in a creator. It has made no realistically testable predictions that other hypotheses cannot make (like a religion), its proponents believe that non-believers are heretics (like a religion), it is claimed to be infallible yet is full of inconsistencies (like a religion), when aspects of it are proved to be untrue, they morph to match (god of the gaps). In fact, to call it a theory misuses the term in the same way as creationists who disparage evolution as "just a theory"

Zephir said...

The large influence of epicycles to recently revealed rectangular shape of Milky Way galaxy is indicating, the Ptolemaic model of solar system wasn't conceptually wrong - it was just related to intrinsic perspective, which becomes more and more relevant, when the number of objects in solar system increases, so that the gravitational interactions mediated with longitudinal waves of emergent object density are getting pronounced.


At the very large number of objects such epicycle model transforms into quantum-mechanical description of quantum mechanical orbitals, which means, large galaxies are exhibiting signs of quantum mechanical behavior, thus serving as another example of AdS/CFT correspondence.

[image]

In AWT the relativistic view is based on intrinsic perspective of emergent behavior of many particle systems, whereas the quantum mechanics is based on extrinsic perspective.

Zephir said...

BS Detectors
What science ed should really teach.
- it is time to stop cramming kids’ heads with the Krebs cycle, Ohm’s law, and the myriad other facts that constitute today’s science curricula...

Zephir said...

The science is becoming authoritative and religious in measurable way.


[image]

Zephir said...

The first analysis of the term pseudoskepticism was conducted by Marcello Truzzi, Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who in 1987 claimed that pseudoskeptics show the following characteristics:

The tendency to deny, rather than doubt
Double standards in the application of criticism
The making of judgements without full inquiry
Tendency to discredit, rather than investigate
Use of ridicule or ad hominem attacks
Presenting insufficient evidence or proof
Pejorative labelling of proponents as 'promoters', 'pseudoscientists' or practitioners of 'pathological science
Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof
Making unsubstantiated counter-claims
Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence
Suggesting that unconvincing evidence is grounds for dismissing it
Tendency to dismiss all evidence

Zephir said...

We can paraphrase Wittgenstein, who once asked his friend "Tell me, why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was
rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as
though the Earth was rotating?"
So, now we "know" for sure, the vacuum is just free space-time, because it definitelly looks so... But would it have looked like if it had looked as particle environment?

Zephir said...

How skepticism is working.

[image]

Zephir said...

Philosophers who refused to look through Galileo's Telescope? Cesare Cremonini, [1550 – 1631] was a friend and rival of his colleague Galileo Galilei at the University of Padua, Italy. When Galileo announced he had seen mountains on the Moon, Cremonini and others denounced the claim but refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.  Cremonini was later quoted as saying “I do not wish to approve of claims about which I do not have any knowledge, and about things which I have not seen … and then to observe through those glasses gives me a headache. Enough! I do not want to hear anything more about this." Giulio Libri, was Professor of Aristotelian Philosophy at Pisa and an opponent of Galileo. After he died, Galileo commented wryly that Libri "never having wanted to see [the Medicean Stars (Moons of Jupiter)] on Earth, perhaps he'll see them on the way to heaven?"

Zephir said...

IMO it's worth recalling Wittgenstein's remark on the aether subject. "Tell me," he asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?" We can now ask as well: "How the vacuum would behave, if it had looked like being formed with massive particle environment"?

Apparently, many people today aren't willing to even think about it at all, thus effectively behaving like the opponents of Galileo in his era.

Zephir said...

Hannes Alfven "I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory [Big Bang]. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing."