Lately, I have been having a series of
email and Blog exchanges with a delightful chap who goes by the handle of
Captain Bligh. We agree on a lot of things, but one of his ideas is especially
baffling to me. That is his suggestion that matter can be produced out of
motion. In other words, he believes that I am too strict in
adhering to the Fourth Assumption
of Science, inseparability (Just
as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion).[1] My
bafflement can be summarized in this simple question: How can there be motion
unless something moves? What the good Captain is proposing is what I call
“matterless motion.” How anyone could entertain such a preposterous idea is of
interest to me, as I am always interested in the root causes of things. Now, I
think I have it figured out, although Bligh and compatriots probably would not
agree.
Life is so wonderful that most of us
wish to continue far longer than our mortal life expectancy says we should
expect. The matter of which our bodies consist tends to lose integrity as we
age, with the ultimate insult occurring at death. Religions have offered a
solution to this problem in the form of a “soul,” that supposedly continues our
existence after we die. Many imagine that this “entity” will travel to a place
of immeasurable happiness or torment. Believe it or not, this idea of the soul
played a far greater part in the “regression” in physics that occurred at the
beginning of the 20th century than is generally acknowledged.
Einstein’s overthrow of classical
mechanics was not a revolution in physics—it was a counterrevolution. Per inseparability,
mechanics assumed that the universe consists only of matter in motion. The
opposing indeterministic assumption, separability,
accepts the idea that motion might occur independently of matter, much in the
way religious followers might imagine their immaterial souls leaving their physical
remains. The shock endured by religion in the latter half of the 19th
century via Darwin, Marx, and science in general swung the
determinism-indeterminism pendulum too far to suit the faithful. The
“overthrow” of classical mechanics by Einstein really was a step backward, away
from the principle that all was matter in motion. By avoiding strict adherence
to that principle and accommodating religious (i.e., indeterministic)
assumptions, Einstein’s relativity gained wide acceptance among the faithful, formerly
faithful, and credulous.
Most of the best scientists are
atheists,[2] but many were
indoctrinated in various religions as children, with the concept of the soul
being unquestioned. The mechanical details involving the soul always are vague.
Souls, being only imaginary, are not amenable to scientific investigation or
even clear thinking. Those supporting the soul hypothesis certainly would not
agree that the universe displays only two phenomena: matter and the motion of
matter. Unfortunately, there are vestiges of the idea of separability even among the most staunch atheists. Once we have
dimly accepted the matter-motion estrangement, even if it was in the distant
past, it can always rise again as a subconscious notion. Thus, when Einstein
proposed his theory of relativity, it was welcomed with open arms by the
religious, the anti-materialists, and the naïve popular press. Its inherent
contradictions and lack of common sense apparently were not a problem for those
used to such in their sabbatical lives. Experiments claiming to support the
theory were always interpreted from the indeterministic point of view (e.g.,
starlight passing the Sun bent due to refraction was seen instead as proof of
its particulate nature being influenced by gravitation caused by curved empty
space and clocks flying around Earth in jets).[3]
The regression produced by relativity
involved “immaterial fields,” “mass-less particles,” and objectified light and
time.[4] Like ghosts and souls,
these were envisioned as things that are not things. They do not contain
matter, but are envisioned to be localized, being here and not there and
capable of movement. In particular, the motions exhibited by gravitation and
magnetism were not produced by material objects one could see or easily detect.
In regressive physics, separability
reigned supreme.
The Soul Barrier
To progress beyond relativity, we must
overcome the “Soul Barrier,” which like the Great Wall of China, prevents
critics from rejecting the indeterministic assumption of separability and its claim that motion can occur without matter.
When I was religious, I never even considered what a soul actually could be.
True, we learned some mechanics in physics class, but we certainly were not
encouraged to apply that approach to everything.
Although anyone with eyes can see that our surroundings consist of things and
that many of these things are in motion, it took me a long time to truly
realize how the universe works. As a mental construct, the Soul Barrier fades
when we hold fast to our belief that there are only two basic phenomena: matter
and the motion of matter. Then, endless debates about whether or not Einstein’s
mathematically defined fields actually are immaterial and therefore
devoid of aether, whether a particle could be mass-less, whether time was a
thing or dimension, and whether light was both a wave and a particle at the
same time become pointless.
Once more, the antidote to the “Soul
Barrier” is the deterministic assumption of inseparability.
Along with it and the rest of the “Ten Assumptions of Science,” you can better
understand physics and avoid the silly proclamations currently being foisted on
the populace. At least, you will be able to steer clear of the craziness to
which believers in relativity are prone. Hopefully, you will not be as extreme
as the physicist from Mexico who once told me that I did not exist, but that the event of my birth did.
You won’t believe that mass can be turned into energy, construed as matterless
motion, travelling ghost-like through aetherless empty space.[5] You won’t believe, as does
Lawrence Krause,[6]
a leading cosmogonist, that motion could produce matter out of nothing via
“quantum fluctuations.” In other words,
you won’t believe in the creation of
the entire universe out of nothing, in opposition to the long-standing Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion
of matter can be neither created nor destroyed). If you wish to rid the world
of relativity and the Big Bang Theory, you must cross the Soul Barrier first.
Dawdling behind that barrier is a pointless waste of precious time. In
particular, you must choose between the deterministic concept of aether and the
indeterministic concept of matterless motion.
[1]
Borchardt, Glenn, 2004, Ten assumptions of science and the demise of 'cosmogony'
( http://www.scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/TTAOSATDOC.pdf
): Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, v. 1, no. 1, p. 3-6.
---, 2004, The ten assumptions of science: Toward a new
scientific worldview: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 125 p.
[2]
Larson, Edward J., and Witham, Larry, 1998, Leading scientists still reject God
( http://www.scribd.com/doc/2430168/Leading-scientists-still-reject-God#scribd
): Nature, v. 394, no. 6691, p. 313; Stirrat, Michael, and Cornwell, R, 2013,
Eminent scientists reject the supernatural: a survey of the Fellows of the
Royal Society: Evolution: Education and Outreach, v. 6, no. 1, p. 33. (http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/6/1/33)
[3]
Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Einstein's most important philosophical error, in
Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 18th Conference of the NPA, 6-9
July, 2011 ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5991.pdf
), College Park, MD, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, p. 64-68.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Borchardt, Glenn, 2009, The physical meaning of
E=mc2 ( http://scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/The%20Physical%20Meaning%20of%20E=mc2.pdf
): Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, v. 6, no. 1, p. 27-31.
[6]
Krauss, Lawrence Maxwell, 2012, A universe from nothing : why there is
something rather than nothing: New York, Free Press.