On Apr 25, 9:52 am, John Kennaugh
wrote:
Authors trying to sell Relativity to a student have a problem. They
cannot go through a logical sequence of historical events - the history
of relativity is quite frankly embarrassing. Neither can they appeal to
common sense, relativity is of course counter intuitive.

Right or wrong, the basis of SR is not counter intuitive to me, and
I'm sure to many other people. I guess it's a question of attitude. If
you tried very hard one of these days to view elctromagnetism as
preeminent over dynamics and mechanics you might start to feel it
right. However, the equations and conclusions that emanate from that
basis are indeed counter-intuitive, although they do follow
mathematically.

Some text books
use semantic trickery. The most honest I have seen is an on-line Harvard
university text book where the author says in effect "it may seem daft
but it works". I would point out however that the same could be said of
the geocentric theory of the solar system. A dominant belief that the
earth was at the centre forced the maths to be transformed in such a way
that they gave the right answer.

"If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking on creation I
should have recommended something simpler." Alfonso 'the wise' of
Castile (1221-1284) having studied the Ptolemaic system.

As I will explain later I see parallels in the history of relativity
where I will show that a dominant belief played a part in distorting our
way of viewing things.

If you are a follower of Occam then the MMX shows that the speed of
light is not constant w.r.t the aether as had been supposed and so must
therefore be constant w.r.t the source - there being no plausible
causality by which 'where it ended up' could be responsible for the
speed at which it travelled to get there. Ritz's emission theory of
light published in 1908 and Waldron's Ballistic theory of light
published in 1977 are both based on the assumption that the speed of
light is source dependent. Both theories were suppressed, not by any act
of censorship but by totally ignoring them - which is much more
effective.

I don't dispute (nor agree with) the overall validity of your view,
but some would argue that you are not pushing Occam's razor far
enough. They would say that MMX makes the ether irrelevant. Hence your
"so must therefore" reasoning becomes invalid.