(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Patrick Reany wrote:
(Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jamieson Christie wrote:
[snip]

Like many experimental physicists, Essen did not want to touch
relativity with a bargepole. But since he was the world's leading atomic
clock expert and at the time investigating relativity was effectively
the only practical application for an atomic clock, he decided to get
involved. He was not impressed by what he saw, he thought Einstein's
1905 paper on SR was one of the worst he had ever read, it confirmed a
disparaging viewpoint he had about theoretical physicists and was
apalled by the idea of a "thought experiment". His views on relativity
are given in this link--
http://www.btinternet.com/~time.lord/Relativity.html
(the website is run by Ray Essen, presumably a relative; the "timelord"
bit is a reference to Essen's nickname in the British press)

It's full of errors and misunderstandings. Essen criticised relativity
because he did not understand it. He describes the assumption that the
velocity of light is constant as "contrary to the foundations of science"
(without saying why), and provides an unclear explanation based on units.

After seeing crackpot detracters of relativity on Usenet for years I've
decided they're not crackpot detracters because they don't understand the
theory. Rather, they don't understand the theory because they have
metaphysical issues with it, and are therefore not even interested in
putting a lot of study into it or resolving apparant problems. I used to
think a few misconceptions could be cleared up and the problem would be
resolved. But the misconceptions are a symptom, not a cause.

And I've qualified the type of detracters because there can certainly be
the other kind that don't like relativity but won't base their arguments
on semi-Newtonian analyses of thought experiments, or giving precedence to
how they think experiments should turn out rather than results as
measured. There can be non-crackpot detracters of relativity.

What would you say is the real cause of this prevalent resistence to
relativity based on "metaphysics," rather than the mere symptoms of
it?

I'd say that there are profound misconceptions not only about
relativity, but also about physics, science, and epistemology that are
the real reasons why people wrongly think that physics is supposed to
be about finding the TRUTH about REALITY.

Broadly speaking, something along the lines of "I know something about how
the universe REALLY works, and [insert theory here] ain't it." Usually
relativity, sometimes QM, rarely anything else. A variation is
"Einstein's math makes all the right predictions, but the theory is wrong
because that's not how nature REALLY works."

To go farther than that is probably to dive into bad pop psychology.
Once something is figgered out it stays figgered out. The extrapolation
of "common sense" far beyond common experience. Whatever.

Maybe it has something to do with philosophical training. But they're
looking for the TRUTH about REALITY. They want certainty. The claim of
special knowledge about how the universe REALLY works, a sort of revealed
knowledge. Even if the Newtonian picture is demonstrably falsified
there's a certain faith that "unknown forces and influences" (I believe
that's how Spaceman put it) cause those phenomena while the Newtonian, or
Newtonian-like, picture is preserved. Even if it looks non-Newtonian,
it's really Newtonian. It's no longer an experimental conclusion, it's an
assumption by which experimental results are interpreted.

There's a lot of analogs with religion there. And some of the greats of
philosophy were deeply religious. Add maybe no sort of philosophical
training will "take" in their minds; they might be able to recite the
material, but still tell you why it's as wrong as relativity is.

I have no idea, I'm just babbling. But it might be more ingrained and
harder to dislodge than you think.

I sometimes wonder if these people are more or less prone outside of
science (e.g. in social situations) to hang on to first impressions, to
hold grudges, to resist change or training at work and to do things the
old way because "that's the way we've always done 'em", etc. But I have
absolutely no data. I can imagine it going either way, actually.

When a student who is by nature inclined to be interested in physics
gets a good look at the wide applicability of Newtonian physics, and
who fails to receive from that school a warning that, despite enormous
effort on the part of classically trained physicists to apply Newton's
program to all of physics, those physicists failed to get Newton's
theory to cover every phenomena we know of, then as a result some of
those students have been so strongly IMPRINTED implicitly with the
profound misconception of "Newton Rules" that I doubt that any form of
re-education is ever going to disabuse them of it. Newtonian physics
becomes the religion of all such conceptually damaged people.

If the Educational System in the West doesn't teach this stuff right
the first time, it's just too late for most of them. The educational
system creates cranks and crackpots. The most important truth revealed
on this newgroup is this: It is impossible to justifiy one's formal
point of view based only on the facts; one has to present a
philosophical argument to justify why one has chosen the viewpoint one
has. The educational system post WWII thinks that the facts speak for
themselves and so offers no philosophical justification to students
for its acceptance of modern physics. The student can only rightfully
view this as baldface dogmatism. It's all so unnecessary as there are
wonderful and powerful justifications to accept modern physics that
were invented by the greats such as Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg,
but which to today's physics students lay unknown in unread essays in
long unopened books and which are virtually never reference in
textbooks, not never noted by instructors as essays that should be
read by the student. (In fact the modern official attitude by the
Physics Establishment is that the student should hold such quaint
"philosophizing" in contempt!) Such students have every right to see
the resulting dogmatism of the Establishment as the "religion" of the
Physics Establishment. If we would at least present the rationales
given by Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg then the student would not go
away with the false impression that the final doctrines held by these
physicists are completely "arbitrary." They may never accept the same
rationales as those physicists did, but at least they can understand
why those physicists adopted the viewpoints that they did adopt! Why
do you suppose that those top physicists took the time to write and
publish essays to explain their rationales if not to have a record of
their philosophies for later generations to read? Why then don't we
encourage physics students to read them? What does our silence on this
suggest to students about the worth of reading such essays?

So I leave you with this question: In hindsight, is it really so wise
a decision by the Establishment post WWII to strip out virtually all
historical and philosophical matters relating to the education of
physics students?

Physics without philosophy is just engineering.

Patrick