This is a blog that takes the name of my magnum opus on scientific philosophy called "The Scientific Worldview." Reviewers have called it “revolutionary,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent,” “fascinating,” and even “a breathtaking synthesis of all understanding.” There is very little math in it, no religion, no politics, no psycho-babble, and no BS. It provides the first outline of the philosophical perspective that will develop during the last half of the Industrial-Social Revolution.
PSI
Blog 20190130 Still more light found at the “end of the universe”
The observable “end of the universe” is the farthest
we can see with our present telescopes, with the Hubble Space Telescope the
current far-out leader. In “Infinite Universe Theory” I included this photo,
pointing out that the spiral galaxies at a distance of 13.2 billion light years
were no different than our own Milky Way, which is 13.7 billion years old:
IUT, Figure 9.Close-up of a small portion of the
HUDF [Hubble Ultra Deep Field]. Note that these objects are various colors.
Most are not red as implied by the misnomer “cosmological redshift.” Color is
determined by frequency, not wavelength. Credit: NASA.
Of course, the Big Bang Theory claims that we should
see younger and younger objects the farther we look out into space:
IUT, Figure 7. NASA’s official view of what the Big Bang
universe should look like (seriously). Credit: NASA.
So far, there is no evidence to support that conjecture.
Instead, the presence of the “elderly galaxies” in IUT Figure 9 above falsifies
the theory. Now, Borlaff and others[1]
have done a computer analysis of the Hubble photos, coming up with this:
“The new version of Hubble's deep image. In dark grey is the
new light that has been found around the galaxies in this field. That light
corresponds to the brightness of more than 100 billion suns. Credit: A. S.
Borlaff and others, 2019.” (Courtesy Mike Wall, Space.com).
Once again, it looks like there is more to the
universe than previously recognized. In Infinite Universe Theory (p. 289), I
predicted that “Improvements in instrumentation soon will result in the discovery of
cosmological objects older than 13.8 billion years.” That is the currently
accepted “age of the universe.” IUT Figure 7 will be severely tested when the Webb
telescope replaces the Hubble after March 2021. Will that put the kibosh on the
BBT? Unlikely. Cosmogonists no doubt will invent some new ad hocs to rescue the
theory one more time. Readers might remember that my prediction is that the BBT
will not be discarded until 2050.
[1]Borlaff and others,
2019, The missing light of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, v. 621, p. A133.
PSI
Blog 20190123 Nikola Tesla and the Correct Scientific Worldview
From George Coyne:
Glenn, these two quotes from Nikola Tesla indicate
that he had a similar scientific worldview as you. The Wikipedia entry on Tesla
states: Tesla was generally antagonistic towards theories about the conversion
of matter into energy.He was also critical of Einstein's theory
of relativity saying:
“I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple
reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has
properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of
properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say
that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to
stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to
such a view.”
"To me, the universe is simply a great machine
which never came into being and never will end" and "what we call
'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the
body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise."
[GB: Amen]
[GB: George, thanks so much for the heads up. This
shows nicely that we are all heading toward the same conclusions in science.
The universe is the final arbiter, regardless of what we say about it. Humanity
is continually under the “sifting and winnowing” of ideas and the destruction
of the unfittest. Einstein’s idealism eventually will fall by the wayside along
with the religious notions responsible for his popularity.
Readers will remember that “perfectly empty space” is
one end member of the “empty space-solid matter continuum.” Both empty space
and solid matter are only ideas. Such idealizations do not and cannot exist.
Reality always is something in between. The “empty space” idea may help us find
a seat in the auditorium, but, thankfully, it does not describe a reality in
which there is no oxygen allowing us to survive the performance.
In addition to the vacuous “curved empty space” idea
Einstein assumed intergalactic space to be perfectly empty. This enabled his
imaginary photons to travel from galaxy to eyeball without losing energy, contradicting
the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nothing travels from point A to point B without
losing energy. The idea that light could avoid that natural phenomenon is responsible for the ridiculous hypothesis that the universe
is expanding.]
PSI Blog 20190116 Open-Access Plan in Europe Bans Publishing in
Paywalled Journals
One
of the irritating characteristics of the establishment is its tendency to
profit from the tax dollars we contribute to scientific research. True,
publishing used to be extremely expensive. No longer. Even though publishers
now contribute little to the process, they still want their money. Peer
reviewers check for errors—for free, authors do the formatting—for free, and
“publishers” provide the website amenable to downloading—for money. If you do
not have a subscription or belong to an institution that has one, you have to
pay around $35 for a digital copy of a single journal article.
If
you are an independent researcher or belong to a struggling institution in a
developing country, you are out of luck.
All
this flies in the face of a basic scientific principle: Scientific knowledge
is the property of all humanity and should be available to all. Enter the
“Open Access” movement, which is trying to make this principle a reality. As a
result, an increasing number of scientific papers are now available as free digital
versions. Unfortunately, authors often have to pay thousands of dollars to make
a paper available as Open Access.
On
the other hand, research performed by U.S. government employees generally is
not copywrited and pdf versions of the original government press copies are
becoming increasingly available. For over a decade, NIH grantees have been
required to provide copies of their peer-reviewed, published works to Pub Med
Central, which charges no download fee. Now, the Open Access movement is
gathering steam in Europe where the usual “paywall scheme” is the target of
attack:
Of course, that is of dubious value to
those of us who challenge the absurdities of the Big Bang Theory. The guardians
of the current paradigm supposedly use a “peer review” process that nonetheless
allows all sorts of illogical inanities. If you do not attack the BBT directly
or mention the A-word (aether), you can publish on the explosion from nothing,
universal expansion, extra-Euclidean dimensions, wormholes, immaterial fields, massless
particles and their perpetual motion, etc. We should not be surprised that
demands for payment are critical for maintaining the cosmogonical elite that
accepts such “junk science.” In this case, the peer review system has failed
miserably.
Don’t get me wrong. Peer
review generally adds value to almost every investigation. Adequate review can
catch mistakes in logic, interpretation, and math before they mislead a wider
audience. That is why we consider “predatory journals” to be so pernicious.
They typically charge exorbitant fees for publication without suitable review.[1]
Most researchers have never heard of these journals and they are seldom cited.
Even legitimate websites have been hijacked, with unsuspecting researchers
submitting payments to fraudsters and papers that will never be published.[2]
With all the censorship accorded those who dare to oppose the BBT, how is
anyone able to publish legitimate work?
Publishing for Free
That is a good question. The
Open Access movement and the attack on pay walls are obvious products of the
digital age. This will continue until all research is freely available. Don’t hold
your breath. In the meantime, there are plenty of places to publish on the Internet.
You can follow the guidelines for a suitable website (e.g., www.scientificphilosophy.com), or
put your work on viXra (e.g., http://vixra.org/abs/1806.0165),
www.ResearchGate.net , or www.Academia.edu, etc. EBooks
and paperbacks now can be published for free on Amazon (https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/). All this is possible without having to deal with peer reviewers
who think the universe exploded out of nothing!
BTW: A few journals encourage
authors opposed to the current nonsense. You might try: General Science Journal
(free) or Physics Essays ($137 page charge for you and $17 pay wall fee for your readers).
[1]Dadkhah, Mehdi, and
Borchardt, Glenn, 2016, Guidelines for selecting journals that avoid fraudulent
practices in scholarly publishing: Iranian Journal of Management Studies, v. 9,
no. 3, p. 529-538. [http://ijms.ut.ac.ir/article_57540_c9dfe9455568d200e6c29a923ecdf887.pdf].
Dadkhah, M., and Borchardt,
G., 2016, Victimizing Researchers by Phishing: Razavi Int J Med, v. 4, no. 3,
p. e40304. [10.17795/rijm40304].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Borchardt,
Glenn, Lagzian, Mohammad, and Bianciardi, Giorgio, 2017, Academic Journals
Plagued by Bogus Impact Factors: Publishing Research Quarterly, p. 1-5.
[10.1007/s12109-017-9509-4].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Borchardt,
Glenn, and Maliszewski, Tomasz, 2016, Fraud in Academic Publishing: Researchers
Under Cyber Attacks: The American Journal of Medicine [10.1016/j.amjmed.2016.08.030].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Kahani,
Mohsen, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, A Method for Improving the Integrity of
Peer Review: Science and Engineering Ethics [10.1007/s11948-017-9960-9].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Lagzian,
Mohammad, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, Identity Theft in the Academic World
Leads to Junk Science: Science and Engineering Ethics, p. 1-4.
[10.1007/s11948-016-9867-x].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Mohammad,
Lagzian, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2016, Is retraction sufficient for medical
papers?: Pol Arch Med Wewn, v. 126, p. 1017-1018. [10.20452/pamw.3727.].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Mohammad,
Lagzian, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, Questionable Papers in Citation Databases
as an Issue for Literature Review: Journal of Cell Communication and Signaling,
p. 1-5. [10.1007/s12079-016-0370-6].
[2]Andoohgin Shahri,
Mona, Jazi, Mohammad Davarpanah, Borchardt, Glenn, and Dadkhah, Mehdi, 2017,
Detecting Hijacked Journals by Using Classification Algorithms: Science and
Engineering Ethics, p. 1-14. [10.1007/s11948-017-9914-2].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, and
Borchardt, Glenn, 2016, Hijacked Journals: An Emerging Challenge for Scholarly
Publishing: Aesthetic Surgery Journal, p. 1-3. [10.1093/asj/sjw026].
Dadkhah, M., and Borchardt,
G., 2016, Victimizing Researchers by Phishing: Razavi Int J Med, v. 4, no. 3,
p. e40304. [10.17795/rijm40304].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Borchardt,
Glenn, and Lagzian, Mohammad, 2017, Do You Ignore Information Security in Your
Journal Website?: Science and Engineering Ethics, v. 23, no. 4, p. 1227-1231.
[10.1007/s11948-016-9849-z].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Mohammad,
Lagzian, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2016, The Game of Hacking Academic Websites:
World Digital Libraries, v. 9, no. 2, p. 131-133.
[10.18329/09757597/2016/9210].
Dadkhah, Mehdi, Seno, Seyed
Amin Hosseini, and Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, Current and potential cyber attacks
on medical journals; guidelines for improving security: European Journal of
Internal Medicine, v. 38, p. 25-29. [10.1016/j.ejim.2016.11.014].
PSI
Blog 20190109 Yes, there is a war
between science and religion
By
Jerry Coyne
[GB:
Via "The Conversation" and its Creative Commons policy, I reprint
this interesting article
by Jerry Coyne, who summarizes his point of view on the science/religion
debate. As readers may know, I don't entirely agree with Jerry's "Fact vs.
Faith" dichotomy. As scientists, we rely on faith all the time. For
instance, we have the faith (or assumption) that "there are physical
causes for all effects". We could not prove that completely until we
discover all the causes for all effects, which is impossible. Nonetheless,
there is not a single instance in which that assumption
has failed. Of course, there is a dichotomy, but it is between determinism and
indeterminism, based on opposed assumptions as I put forth in "The Ten
Assumptions of Science." Some folks claim that this necessity to have “faith
in science” makes science a religion. That is false, because religion assumes
there is a god and science does not.]
Yes,
there is a war between science and religion
Doubting Thomas needed the proof, just
like a scientist, and now is a cautionary Biblical example.
As
the West becomes more
and more secular, and the discoveries of evolutionary biology and
cosmology shrink the boundaries of faith, the claims that science and religion
are compatible grow louder. If you’re a believer who doesn’t want to seem
anti-science, what can you do? You must argue that your faith – or any faith –
is perfectly compatible with science.
But
I argue that this is misguided: that science and religion are not only in
conflict – even at “war” – but also represent incompatible ways of viewing the
world.
Opposing
methods for discerning truth
The scientific method relies on observing, testing
and replication to learn about the world.
My
argument runs like this. I’ll construe “science” as the set of tools we use to
find truth about the universe, with the understanding that these truths are
provisional rather than absolute. These tools include observing nature, framing
and testing hypotheses, trying your hardest to prove that your hypothesis is
wrong to test your confidence that it’s right, doing experiments and above all
replicating your and others’ results to increase confidence in your
inference.
And
I’ll define religion as
does philosopher Daniel Dennett: “Social systems whose participants
avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.”
Of course many religions don’t fit that definition, but the ones whose
compatibility with science is touted most often – the Abrahamic faiths of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam – fill the bill.
Next,
realize that both religion and science rest on “truth statements” about the
universe – claims about reality. The edifice of religion differs from science by
additionally dealing with morality, purpose and meaning, but even those areas
rest on a foundation of empirical claims. You can hardly call yourself a
Christian if you don’t believe in the Resurrection of Christ, a Muslim if you
don’t believe the angel Gabriel dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad, or a Mormon if
you don’t believe that the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smith the golden plates
that became the Book of Mormon. After all, why accept a faith’s authoritative
teachings if you reject its truth claims?
Indeed,
even
the Bible notes this: “But if there be no resurrection of the dead,
then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain,
and your faith is also vain.”
Many
theologians emphasize religion’s empirical foundations, agreeing with the
physicist and Anglican priest John
Polkinghorne:
“The
question of truth is as central to [religion’s] concern as it is in science.
Religious belief can guide one in life or strengthen one at the approach of
death, but unless it is actually true it can do neither of these things and so
would amount to no more than an illusory exercise in comforting
fantasy.”
The
conflict between science and faith, then, rests on the methods they use to
decide what is true, and what truths result: These are conflicts of both
methodology and outcome.
In
contrast to the methods of science, religion adjudicates truth not empirically,
but via dogma, scripture and authority – in other words, through faith, defined
in Hebrews 11 as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.” In science, faith without evidence is a vice, while in
religion it’s a virtue. Recall what
Jesus said to “doubting Thomas,” who insisted in poking his fingers
into the resurrected Savior’s wounds: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou
hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Two ways to look at the same thing, never the
twain shall meet.
And
yet, without supporting evidence, Americans
believe a number of religious claims: 74 percent of us believe in
God, 68 percent in the divinity of Jesus, 68 percent in Heaven, 57 percent in
the virgin birth, and 58 percent in the Devil and Hell. Why do they think these
are true? Faith.
But
different religions make different – and often conflicting – claims, and
there’s no way to judge which claims are right. There are over 4,000 religions on this
planet, and their “truths” are quite different. (Muslims and Jews,
for instance, absolutely reject the Christian belief that Jesus was the son of
God.) Indeed, new sects often arise when some believers reject what others see
as true. Lutherans
split over the truth of evolution, while Unitarians rejected other
Protestants’ belief that
Jesus was part of God.
And
while science has had success after success in understanding the universe, the
“method” of using faith has led to no proof of the divine. How many gods are
there? What are their natures and moral creeds? Is there an afterlife? Why is
there moral and physical evil? There is no one answer to any of these
questions. All is mystery, for all rests on faith.
The
“war” between science and religion, then, is a conflict about whether you have
good reasons for believing what you do: whether you see faith as a vice or a
virtue.
Compartmentalizing
realms is irrational
So
how do the faithful reconcile science and religion? Often they point to the
existence of religious scientists, like NIH
Director Francis Collins, or to the many religious people who accept
science. But I’d argue that this is compartmentalization, not compatibility,
for how can you reject the divine in your laboratory but accept that the wine you
sip on Sunday is the blood of Jesus?
Can divinity be at play in one setting but not
another?
Others
argue that in
the past religion promoted science and inspired questions about the
universe. But in the past every Westerner was religious, and it’s debatable
whether, in the long run, the progress of science has been promoted by
religion. Certainly evolutionary biology, my
own field, has been held
back strongly by creationism, which arises solely from
religion.
What
is not disputable is that today science is practiced as an atheistic discipline
– and largely by atheists. There’s a
huge disparity in religiosity between American scientists and
Americans as a whole: 64 percent of our elite scientists are atheists or
agnostics, compared to only 6 percent of the general population – more than a
tenfold difference. Whether this reflects differential attraction of
nonbelievers to science or science eroding belief – I suspect both factors
operate – the figures are prima facie evidence for a science-religion
conflict.
The
most common accommodationist argument is Stephen Jay
Gould’s thesis of “non-overlapping magisteria.” Religion and science,
he argued, don’t conflict because: “Science tries to document the factual
character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and
explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally
important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings and values
– subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never
resolve.”
This
fails on both ends. First, religion certainly makes claims about “the factual
character of the universe.” In fact, the biggest opponents of non-overlapping
magisteria are believers and theologians, many of whom reject the idea that
Abrahamic religions are “empty of any
claims to historical or scientific facts.”
Nor
is religion the sole bailiwick of “purposes, meanings and values,” which of
course differ among faiths. There’s a long and distinguished history of
philosophy and ethics – extending from Plato, Hume and Kant up to Peter Singer,
Derek Parfit and John
Rawls in our day – that relies on reason
rather than faith as a fount of morality. All serious ethical
philosophy is secular ethical philosophy.
In
the end, it’s irrational to decide what’s true in your daily life using
empirical evidence, but then rely on wishful-thinking and ancient superstitions
to judge the “truths” undergirding your faith. This leads to a mind (no matter
how scientifically renowned) at war with itself, producing the cognitive
dissonance that prompts accommodationism. If you decide to have good reasons
for holding any beliefs, then you must choose between faith and reason. And as
facts become increasingly important for the welfare of our species and our
planet, people should see faith for what it is: not a virtue but a
defect.
PSI Blog 20190105 "Zones
of Avoidance” and photons with wavelength?
By
Jesse Witwer:
I
must admit that I keep being more and more shocked at the ability of the church
of Relativity to ignore the obvious.
So,
they discover "Zones of Avoidance" where visible light doesn't
penetrate which they then acknowledge that dust is preventing it by blocking
"shorter wavelength photons". Again, I just don't even understand how
photon's have wavelengths....do cannon balls have wavelengths? At any rate, if electromagnetic radiation (EMR) travels
through perfectly empty space ad infinitum, it is impossible that certain
wavelengths will be blocked and not others. I mean, either the
"photons" hit the dust and refract in a diffuse manner or they don't.
Wavelengths only make sense for waves and you cannot have wave/particle
duality.
Sigh.
Even trying to understand the logic of photons with "wavelengths" is
really just too idiotic. A quick glance at Quora answers trying to explain
how photons have wavelengths is enough to turn one’s stomach (https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-photon-have-a-wavelength). Only one guy had a clue,
saying you have to consider one or the other.....a prime indicator that you
have a fundamental error:
“Your
question is actually a very interesting one. One of the basic concepts of
quantum mechanics is that particles and waves are actually the same thing : we
call this wave-particle duality (Wave–particle duality - Wikipedia) At our
macroscopic lev...”
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