"Timo A. Nieminen" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Bill Miller wrote:

May I add my list of Dogmatically accepted physics "laws"

Yes, of course, Bill. Go right ahead.

The near-universal interpretation that Maxwell's "Laws" show that E
*causes*
H and H *causes* E,

Common enough as a just-so story in introductory textbooks. A natural
interpretation of Faraday's experiments, yes?

Hardly near-universal, as it isn't hard to find books (on
electromagnetics) where such claims are not made. Historically, it's been
clear ever since Lorenz's 1867 paper. Also clear in any modern formulation
of electromagnetics as a 4D relativistic field theory (given the Lorenz
gauge, what else would one expect?).

Would publishing (or attempting to) a paper opposing this interpetation
result in attack on one's scientific career?

F=MA as a "law" although there are many well recognized exceptions.

Such as? A "law" doesn't need to be universally applicable. For example,
consider Snell's law: can you use Snell's law when one of the media cannot
be characterised by a refractive index?

Newton's "law" that violates conservation of momentum.

For *every* action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. NOT!

???

Coulomb's "law" that "blows up as r -- zero.

One of the well-know deep problems in classical and quantum
electrodynamics. However, as far as we can tell, Coulomb's law _works_.
The real problem is the implications of this, such as infinite
self-energy, and infinite inertia of point charges.

Thermodynamics "laws" that aren't (except on average.)

Given that statistical mechanics is widely taught to undergrads, making
this point, is this really dogma?

I suspect there are more, but we dare not speak them aloud for fear the
spirit of St. Albert might strike us dead.

Do keep in mind that the original post was equating resistance from within
"establishment science" to the enforced introduction of teaching of
religious dogma in science classrooms with a supposed enforcement of
establishment dogma in science. How is defensive anti-dogmatism meant to
be the same as enforcement of dogma?

Would trying to publish on _any_ of the topics you listed endanger a
scientific career?

The research-end of science is full of dispute and controversy. Many of
the participants in disputes over who is correct are wrong (usually at
least somebody must be, and sometimes everybody is wrong).

The textbook-end of science is rather ossified, and simplified severely at
the introductory level. Witness the usual pattern of teaching classical
mechanics as True, to be followed later by teaching special relativity as
True ("What we have taught you before is wrong!" - an attitude which can
disturb students), when neither is a complete (or we might say, "correct
in a strict sense") theory. OTOH, both are very good theories when applied
appropriately. Given that you can hardly start out by teaching general
relativity (to get the GR - SR - classical mechanics progression) or
quantum field theory (to get a QFT - non-relativistic quantum
mechanics - classical mechanics progression), what can one do? Well, the
transition from CM - SR should emphasise just how little change is
required in the core of CM, and certainly shouldn't be along the lines of
"what we taught you before is wrong". Especially because most of what had
been taught before is _not_ wrong.

Textbooks are a teaching tool, not expositions on current scientific
opinion. That said, they can have lasting influence on students. In
particular, scientific knowledge is in a state of flux, and the
presentation of textbook content as absolute fact is in opposition to
this, encouraging scientism or confusion when scientific dispute is
encountered; not good preparation for modern life. Thus the movements to
include understanding/history/nature/philosophy of science in science
education in the schools.

Given that significant, and politically influential, elements of the
"establishment" are actively working towards education of the public
including the tentativeness of scientific knowledge, where is the
dogmatism of the establishment?

Inferior teachers who adopt "textbook fundamentalism" to avoid questioning
are _not_ members of the scientific establishment.

Timo... you make a number of fine points and my reply to any of them might
be considered as a "quibble."

Taken overall, the ossifiaction in textbooks has benn compounded by
generations of engineers and scientist -- many at th PhD level -- that did
not pay attention to the "tweaks" that you point out in your post.

From personal experience, I have been vilified personally by PhD level folks
for suggesting that Maxwell's Equations are descriptive rather than causal.

BTW a Law, in my NTBHO is always universally applicable. Anything else is a
theory or a hypothesis (or occasionally wild-ass guess!)

For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law" category. Not
anymore.

Bill

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/...,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

Bill Miller wrote:
For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law"
category. Not anymore.

Sorry to quibble Bill,
What law of newtons became not a law anymore?
Perpetual motion designers all over the world would like to know
so they can "break" all of his laws by simply jumping over one.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman

"Spaceman" wrote in message
. ..
Bill Miller wrote:
For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law"
category. Not anymore.

Sorry to quibble Bill,
What law of newtons became not a law anymore?
Perpetual motion designers all over the world would like to know
so they can "break" all of his laws by simply jumping over one.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman


Hello Spaceman. No quibble... just an example of how teaching has not kept
pace with reality. Here goes:

One of the fundamental laws of mechanics is Newton's law of action and
reaction, usually stated as : "Whenever a body exerts a force (action) on a
second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force (reaction)
on the first body."

Suppose that a stationary mass is located in the gravitational field of
another, distant stationary mass.The two masses exert equal and opposite
forces on each other. (Action and reaction) Let us now allow one mass to
move under the action of the field of the other mass. ut the second mass,
being far away, does not yet "know
that the first mass has moved. (gravity -- like light -- cannot propagate
instantaneously.) The second body continues to experience the same force as
before.

In other words, the forces are now unequal in magnitude and direction and
Newton's action/reaction law no longer holds! Further, this situation also
is in conflict with the very basic law of conservation of momentum.

For a detailed analysis of this, and other Newtonian flaws, please see
Jefimenko's "Causality, Electromagnetic Induction and Gravitation" OR
"Gravitation and Cogravitation."

BTW, Timo questioned my assertion that F = MA was also "leaky." I THOUGHT
that the above also affected this equation. After further review... Timo's
right... so far!

I hope this helps!

BTW, yes, a glass is simultaneously 20% empty and 80% full, but entirely too
many people (IMNTBHO) ignore the fullness and concentrate only on the
empitiness. And that's kinda sad!

Bill

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008, Bill Miller wrote:

Taken overall, the ossifiaction in textbooks has benn compounded by
generations of engineers and scientist -- many at th PhD level -- that did
not pay attention to the "tweaks" that you point out in your post.

From personal experience, I have been vilified personally by PhD level folks
for suggesting that Maxwell's Equations are descriptive rather than causal.

Do tell more! Scientists or engineers? Were you a student or a colleague?
It sounds like a defensive reaction to avoid thought, or to preserve the
perceived worth of one's piece of paper on the wall (if only they knew
just how little they really learned in that time!).

I have no doubt that it's easy to find PhD graduates who believe the usual
mythology. They'd be lucky to learn otherwise as undergrads, and they're
too busy as graduate students. Unless they teach during that time, and
teach competently (i.e., not as textbook fundamentalists).

The fresh PhD graduate who goes into science/engineering research is
hardly the Establishment (more like grist for the mill). The fresh PhD
graduate who doesn't is even less so.

BTW a Law, in my NTBHO is always universally applicable. Anything else is a
theory or a hypothesis (or occasionally wild-ass guess!)

"Currently believed to be universally applicable"? Otherwise we'd never
know whether we have any Laws at all. Does this leave us with anything
other than a handful of conservation laws?

Whatever a good definition of Law might be, anything that's been called a
law in the past, or is a single equation or soundbite distillation of an
oldish theory, tends to be called a "law" now. I think there's less of a
tendency to call new results in physics "laws".

For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law" category. Not
anymore.

Which "Newton's Law"?

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/...,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

Bill Miller wrote:
"Spaceman" wrote in message
. ..
Bill Miller wrote:
For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law"
category. Not anymore.

Sorry to quibble Bill,
What law of newtons became not a law anymore?
Perpetual motion designers all over the world would like to know
so they can "break" all of his laws by simply jumping over one.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman


Hello Spaceman. No quibble... just an example of how teaching has
not kept pace with reality. Here goes:

One of the fundamental laws of mechanics is Newton's law of action and
reaction, usually stated as : "Whenever a body exerts a force
(action) on a second body, the second body exerts an equal and
opposite force (reaction) on the first body."

Suppose that a stationary mass is located in the gravitational field
of another, distant stationary mass.The two masses exert equal and
opposite forces on each other. (Action and reaction) Let us now
allow one mass to move under the action of the field of the other
mass. ut the second mass, being far away, does not yet "know
that the first mass has moved. (gravity -- like light -- cannot
propagate instantaneously.) The second body continues to experience
the same force as before.

Bill, I am sorry you have been fooled by the described situation
Newtons force theory has to include every object in between
also.
When every action-reaction of the object is considered, it has never been
wrong.
The example given is "ignoring" action-reaction of all in between
the two objects.

In other words, the forces are now unequal in magnitude and direction
and Newton's action/reaction law no longer holds! Further, this
situation also is in conflict with the very basic law of conservation
of momentum.

Every action/re-action in between have balanced.
Forces have caused "objects that would transfer the force
to transfer to a different direction, and not enough force
was transmitted all the way to cause the re-action you were hoping for.
Newton still holds true if each and every action-reaction is considered
in between.

For a detailed analysis of this, and other Newtonian flaws, please see
Jefimenko's "Causality, Electromagnetic Induction and Gravitation" OR
"Gravitation and Cogravitation."

Again,
This is not a newton flaw, it is a flaw of the understanding of the newton
law.
Each and every single object in between must be considered.
You can not ignore the action-reactions that take place in between
the two objects like such is being done to come up with
the supposed violation.

Try this one in a much simpler form but almost like the gravity
problem...
Lets use air.
Air between two objects on the ground.
Would the air transfer all the motion of an object
that is 5 ft away from another object?
No, simply because all the force of the action-reactions
are diverted by the air but all action re-action of the air
follows Newton's law very well.
the same holds true for gravity.


BTW, Timo questioned my assertion that F = MA was also "leaky." I
THOUGHT that the above also affected this equation. After further
review... Timo's right... so far!

Action-reaction of Newton law still holds true if
all such action-reactions in between are considered.


I hope this helps!

I hope what I babbled probably too many times just now,
helps you understand that Newton still holds fine and no
problem has occured that Newton has been proven wrong
in such.
(Missing forces is the only way he is ever proven wrong)
and missing forces only proves that someone is not following
Newton the way they really should.

After all any force at all, is a force and not only the ones
Newton haters want to pick are the only forces.


BTW, yes, a glass is simultaneously 20% empty and 80% full, but
entirely too many people (IMNTBHO) ignore the fullness and
concentrate only on the empitiness. And that's kinda sad!

Yes, it is sad..
I always try to think of both sides of the story.
It is much safer to do so also.


I am sorry for babbling but I have never seen Newton's
Laws to be wrong.
and that is why I always follow him and think about each
and every force (action-reaction) that could occur.,,
also if I don't follow such being mechanically minded... I could be killed.
Newton has saved my life a few times.
I am sure he probably has saved a lot of peoples lives by coming
up with such beautiful laws that have not actually been broken ever.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman

"Bill Miller" wrote in message
...

"Timo A. Nieminen" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Bill Miller wrote:


Timo... you make a number of fine points and my reply to any of them might
be considered as a "quibble."

Taken overall, the ossifiaction in textbooks has benn compounded by
generations of engineers and scientist -- many at th PhD level -- that did
not pay attention to the "tweaks" that you point out in your post.

From personal experience, I have been vilified personally by PhD level
folks for suggesting that Maxwell's Equations are descriptive rather than
causal.
----------------
You shouldn't have been vilified as you are right. Any set of equations or
"laws" tries to describe, mathematically, what has been observed.
-------

BTW a Law, in my NTBHO is always universally applicable. Anything else is
a theory or a hypothesis (or occasionally wild-ass guess!)
----------
Part of the problem is that back in the 1800's the term "Law" was applied to
many expressions based on observations- without consideration of (unknown
at the time) exceptions. This strict interpretation has hung on. It's the
law, don't question it. They are theories and are acceptable until proven
wrong, and are often acceptable within limits, even then. The problem with
"Laws" is that they are made to be broken.
However, until proven otherwise, and many have tried to do so, conservation
of energy, appears to be holding up pretty well .

Just an opinion on a lazy afternoon.
--

Don Kelly
remove the X to answer
----------------------------


For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law" category.
Bill

--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/...,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008, Bill Miller wrote:

One of the fundamental laws of mechanics is Newton's law of action and
reaction, usually stated as : "Whenever a body exerts a force (action) on a
second body, the second body exerts an equal and opposite force (reaction)
on the first body."

Suppose that a stationary mass is located in the gravitational field of
another, distant stationary mass.The two masses exert equal and opposite
forces on each other. (Action and reaction) Let us now allow one mass to
move under the action of the field of the other mass. ut the second mass,
being far away, does not yet "know
that the first mass has moved. (gravity -- like light -- cannot propagate
instantaneously.) The second body continues to experience the same force as
before.

In other words, the forces are now unequal in magnitude and direction and
Newton's action/reaction law no longer holds! Further, this situation also
is in conflict with the very basic law of conservation of momentum.

Hmm. Newton's 3rd law of motion (along with Newton 2, to relate force and
transfer of momentum) is basically a statement that momentum is conserved.

Yes, if we consider two masses as above (or two electric charges) to be
interacting with each other, we have exactly the problem you point out.

Does this mean Newton 3 is wrong? Does this mean momentum is not
conserved? I would say that it means that we simply don't have a situation
where there are two objects interacting at a distance, but two objects
each interacting with a field. Perhaps the interaction really is as
described by field theory, a local interaction between field and body, and
we should throw away the classical mechanics idea of interaction at a
distance rather than Newton 3.

We know that a force is exerted on each mass. We know that in a static
case, the force is symmetric. We don't know that it is the other body that
is actually exerting the force. The example you give strongly suggests
that it isn't.

It wasn't that long ago that I wrote a lot more about this, so I won't
repeat it here.

But for an example of a "law" by Newton that we know is only an
approximation: Newton's law of universal gravitation.

--
Timo

"Bill Miller" wrote in message
...

"Phil Holman" piholmanc@yourservice wrote in message
. ..

"Bill Miller" wrote in message
...

"Richard Henry" wrote in message
...
Interesting. In order to support your contention that no discussion
of currently-orthodox scientific thories is permitted, you list
several theories that were formerly orthodox and were abandoned when
they were shown to be defective.

Yes. And that is the point. HOW MUCH FARTHER ALONG MIGHT MANKIND BE
if these dogmatic "laws" had not been jammed down the throats of the
"thinking classes?" It took people of intelligence, personal courage
and incredibly high character to FINALLY shake these defective
concepts off of the tree of dogma.

Hmm, I'm not sure that these things were ever a significant pacing
item.
As for "how much farther along might mankind be?" Well, if you
subscribe to the notion that there would have been rapid
technological development, how about...... closer to extinction!

I'm afraid I do not share your nihilistic viewpoint. Free men, through
free enterprise and free expression have accomplished more FOR
humanity in the last century than was accomplished by all the
dogma-restricted centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed.

That was more to do with many, many series of technological innovations
from the industrial revolution rather than your so-called lifting of
restrictions. "HOW MUCH FARTHER ALONG MIGHT MANKIND
BE?"..........you tell us.


I'm personally sorry for anyone that looks at the glass of human
accomplishment and sees it 20% empty rather than 80% full.

Where do you get that? I'm not the one dissatisfied with the rate at
which science and technology have progressed. I'm happy with a glass
that is 80% full. You on the other hand appear to be disappointed
because it isn't 90% full.

Phil H

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:35:15 GMT, Bill Miller wrote:

Suppose that a stationary mass is located in the gravitational field of
another, distant stationary mass.The two masses exert equal and opposite
forces on each other. (Action and reaction) Let us now allow one mass to
move under the action of the field of the other mass. ut the second mass,
being far away, does not yet "know
that the first mass has moved. (gravity -- like light -- cannot propagate
instantaneously.) The second body continues to experience the same force as
before.

In other words, the forces are now unequal in magnitude and direction and
Newton's action/reaction law no longer holds! Further, this situation also
is in conflict with the very basic law of conservation of momentum.

Either you forgot to say something that I can't reverse engineer at the
moment, or, in the case you described, the forces are still always equal
instant per instant.

The fields are time and space continous and both of the masses move with
trajectories that are of class Cinf and with speeds below those of the
fields. How can the forces possibly be unequal? I assume you know what
you're talking about, so please tell me more, because I don't get it.

Regards,

kl31n

"Spaceman" wrote in message
...
Bill Miller wrote:
"Spaceman" wrote in message
. ..
Bill Miller wrote:
For example, for many years, Newton's Law fell into the "Law"
category. Not anymore.

Sorry to quibble Bill,
What law of newtons became not a law anymore?
Perpetual motion designers all over the world would like to know
so they can "break" all of his laws by simply jumping over one.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman


Hello Spaceman. No quibble... just an example of how teaching has
not kept pace with reality. Here goes:

One of the fundamental laws of mechanics is Newton's law of action and
reaction, usually stated as : "Whenever a body exerts a force
(action) on a second body, the second body exerts an equal and
opposite force (reaction) on the first body."

Suppose that a stationary mass is located in the gravitational field
of another, distant stationary mass.The two masses exert equal and
opposite forces on each other. (Action and reaction) Let us now
allow one mass to move under the action of the field of the other
mass. ut the second mass, being far away, does not yet "know
that the first mass has moved. (gravity -- like light -- cannot
propagate instantaneously.) The second body continues to experience
the same force as before.

Bill, I am sorry you have been fooled by the described situation
Newtons force theory has to include every object in between
also.
When every action-reaction of the object is considered, it has never been
wrong.
The example given is "ignoring" action-reaction of all in between
the two objects.

In other words, the forces are now unequal in magnitude and direction
and Newton's action/reaction law no longer holds! Further, this
situation also is in conflict with the very basic law of conservation
of momentum.

Every action/re-action in between have balanced.
Forces have caused "objects that would transfer the force
to transfer to a different direction, and not enough force
was transmitted all the way to cause the re-action you were hoping for.
Newton still holds true if each and every action-reaction is considered
in between.

For a detailed analysis of this, and other Newtonian flaws, please see
Jefimenko's "Causality, Electromagnetic Induction and Gravitation" OR
"Gravitation and Cogravitation."

Again,
This is not a newton flaw, it is a flaw of the understanding of the newton
law.
Each and every single object in between must be considered.
You can not ignore the action-reactions that take place in between
the two objects like such is being done to come up with
the supposed violation.

Try this one in a much simpler form but almost like the gravity
problem...
Lets use air.
Air between two objects on the ground.
Would the air transfer all the motion of an object
that is 5 ft away from another object?
No, simply because all the force of the action-reactions
are diverted by the air but all action re-action of the air
follows Newton's law very well.
the same holds true for gravity.


BTW, Timo questioned my assertion that F = MA was also "leaky." I
THOUGHT that the above also affected this equation. After further
review... Timo's right... so far!

Action-reaction of Newton law still holds true if
all such action-reactions in between are considered.


I hope this helps!

I hope what I babbled probably too many times just now,
helps you understand that Newton still holds fine and no
problem has occured that Newton has been proven wrong
in such.
(Missing forces is the only way he is ever proven wrong)
and missing forces only proves that someone is not following
Newton the way they really should.

After all any force at all, is a force and not only the ones
Newton haters want to pick are the only forces.


BTW, yes, a glass is simultaneously 20% empty and 80% full, but
entirely too many people (IMNTBHO) ignore the fullness and
concentrate only on the empitiness. And that's kinda sad!

Yes, it is sad..
I always try to think of both sides of the story.
It is much safer to do so also.


I am sorry for babbling but I have never seen Newton's
Laws to be wrong.
and that is why I always follow him and think about each
and every force (action-reaction) that could occur.,,
also if I don't follow such being mechanically minded... I could be
killed.
Newton has saved my life a few times.
I am sure he probably has saved a lot of peoples lives by coming
up with such beautiful laws that have not actually been broken ever.


--
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman


I think I understand your point, but in the case that I described, there is
nothing in between the two masses but vacuum. Are you postulating some
special property of vacuum that instantaneously transmits force vector
information from a perturbed mass to a mass in the same field? If so, I'd
like to learn more about that!

If not, then there will be a delay between when a mass is perturbed and when
the perturbation is sensed..And that delay is not explicit in any of
Newton's laws.