Censorship in Regressive Physics

PSI Blog 20120118 Censorship in Regressive Physics

As expected, we have had some recent negative critiques by various modern physicists on the Amazon website where UCT (see below for acronyms) is sold. So far, none has been substantial—mostly just complaints about TTAOS. These exchanges remind me of the one that was related by John Chappell as #3 in the founding principles of the NPA:

"#3    DO NOT ASSUME THAT IF SPECIAL RELATIVITY WERE INVALID, THIS FACT WOULD LONG AGO HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED WITHIN ESTABLISHMENT PHYSICS.

The reason it has not been is that almost everyone with a sufficiently bold and critical view of the subject to develop sound arguments against SR has not been allowed to flourish within the establishment. Great numbers of reliable accounts of such intolerance have been told.

One of the most recent comes from a new NPA member who, when doing graduate work in physics around 1960, heard the following story from his advisor: While working for his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California in Berkeley in the late 1920s, this advisor had learned that all physics departments in the U.C. system were being purged of all critics of Einsteinian relativity. Those who refused to change their minds were ordered to resign, and those who would not were fired, on slanderous charges of anti-Semitism. The main cited motivation for this unspeakably unethical procedure was to present a united front before grant-giving agencies, the better to obtain maximal funds. This story does not surprise me. There has been a particularly vicious attitude towards critics of Einsteinian relativity at U.C. Berkeley ever since. I ran into it in 1985, when I read a paper arguing for absolute simultaneity at that year’s International Congress on the History of Science. After I finished, the Danish chairman made some courteous remarks about dissidents he had learned about in Scandinavia, and then turned to the audience for questions. The first speaker was one of a group of about 4 young physics students in the back. He launched immediately into a horrible tirade of verbal abuse, accusing me of being entirely wrong in my analysis, a simplification of the Melbourne Evans analysis–”Evans is wrong; you are wrong,” he shouted. He accused me of being way out of line to present my “faulty” arguments on his prestigious campus. When I started to ask him “Then how would you explain…”, he loudly interrupted me with “I don’t have to explain anything.” The rest of the audience felt so disturbed by all this, that the question session was essentially destroyed."

As far as I can tell, the story above still is an accurate reflection on the deplorable state of physics at UC Berkeley, "the world's greatest public university." This hits me pretty hard since I was a visiting prof there in 1990, founded PSI in Berkeley, used UC libraries for researching TSW, and announced its publication there on March 13, 2007. That was the day Hawking gave his talk on his book, "A Briefer History of Time". All 3,800 freshmen were given free copies of the book by some kindly benefactor. They were supposed to read it during the holidays and get ready for the great man himself. A splendid gang of suits from the university guided him into Dwinelle Hall. Unfortunately, due to the deplorable state of his health, the entire presentation was just a recording--I didn't see him move more than a centimeter. To his credit, the recording did spend some time stumbling over what came before the Big Bang. About the only thing I got out of the whole thing was his quote from Woody Allen: "Infinity is a very long time, especially near the end." The questions and answers were also canned, so I never got a chance to ask him about the contradiction between the BBT and the First Law of Thermodynamics. He was quickly hustled out of the auditorium, surrounded by guards, so I never got the chance to give him my signed copy of TSW either.

I think the key to all this is John's implication that, like Woodward and Bernstein, all we need to do is "follow the money." One does not simply go to a Congress of indeterminists with hat in hand along with opposing assumptions that eventually will destroy their cherished, mutually agreed upon cosmogony. We should not kid ourselves. The monetary corruption in the electoral system also extends to our great universities. It is all bought and paid for.

What is to be done? We must realize that the revolution proposed by TSW and UCT requires great macrocosmic changes in society, which will come about very slowly. My prediction is that the BBT will be viable for at least another 30 years (TSW, p. 290). Our logic and their logic are founded on opposing assumptions. To the indeterminist, our assumptions make no sense; they are "delusional," "unbelievable," "crazy," "pseudoscience," and still to come: "crackpot." Regressive physicists have already conquered the intellectual (and financial) territory; now they only have to defend it. That's why they commonly say such things as "I don't have to explain it!" and "I don't have to read your unbelievable book!" Most are just repeating what Berkeley stuffed in their heads. What we must do is to continually point out the contradictions: 

1. How could the universe explode out of nothing?

2. How could there be more than 3 dimensions?

3. How can a thing or a motion be both a particle and a wave?

4. How can a photon be massless?

5. If time is not an object, how can it be said to dilate?

6. Add more here.

There will always be a few extremely curious, especially young physicists who are working on these contradictions. Like the graduate students who switched majors to something more believable, they will be the ones most likely to seek solutions outside the Ivory Tower.

References and Acronyms

TTAOS is:

Borchardt, Glenn, 2004, The ten assumptions of science: Toward a new scientific worldview, Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 125 p.

TSW is:

Borchardt, Glenn, 2007, The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein, Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 411 p.

Hawking, S. W., and Mlodinow, L., 2005, A briefer history of time, New York, Bantam Books.

UCT is:

Puetz, S. J., and Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Universal cycle theory: Neomechanics of the hierarchically infinite universe, Denver, Outskirts Press (www.universalcycletheory.com), 626 p.