🚀 go-pugleaf

On Jan 31, 5:20 am, Eric Baird wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:03:23 -0800 (PST), Pentcho Valev
> <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote <in part>:
> >Translation from French: "Moreover, if one admits that light consists
> >of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his first paper, 13 weeks
> >earlier, the second principle seems absurd: a stone thrown from a fast-
> >moving train causes much more damage than one thrown from a train at
> >rest. Now, according to Einstein, the speed of a particle would not be
> >independent of the state of motion of the emitting body! If we
> >consider light as composed of particles that obey Newton's laws, those
> >particles would conform to Newtonian relativity. In this case, it is
> >not necessary to resort to length contration, local time and Lorentz
> >transformations in explaining the negative result of the Michelson-
> >Morley experiment. Einstein however, as we have seen, resisted the
> >temptation to explain the negative result in terms of Newton's ideas,
> >simple and familiar. He introduced his second postulate, more or less
> >evident as one thinks in terms of waves in aether."
>
> >Pentcho Valev
> >pva...@yahoo.com
>
> I think Einstein is supposed to have worked on emission theory himself
> for a while, but he couldn't find a satisfactory way to reconcile the
> idea of emission theory with the idea that lightspeed would be
> constant for the observer as well as for the emitting body.
>
> Lorentz had been framing his equations in terms of wave theory, and
> when Einstein produced his electrodynamics paper, he followed
> Lorentz's lead.

Yes. The fundamental contradiction is always between Einstein's 1905
false light postulate (c'=c) and the true equation c'=c+v given by
Newton's emission theory of light. Unlike his sycophants, Einstein
fully realized the importance of this contradiction:

Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the
speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and
theory of gravity is false."

However the fundamental contradiction often appears in different
terms, e.g. as a contradiction between continuum and discontinuum,
between the field concept of light and the particle concept of light
etc. For instance, John Norton presents the fundamental contradiction
in this way:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: ""The principle of relativity, if implemented in Galilean
kinematics, dictated that the modified theory must embody an emission
theory of light. We know that Einstein entertained such a
theory.....Einstein leveled objections against all theories of this
type. Some were technical complications. The most fundamental,
however, was that these EMISSION THEORIES ADMITTED NO FIELD THEORY."

Einstein's 1954 confession is also an expression of the fundamental
contradiction:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
John Stachel: "It is not so well known that there was "another
Einstein," who from 1916 on was skeptical about the CONTINUUM as a
foundational element in physics..." Einstein 1954: "I consider it
entirely possible that PHYSICS CANNOT BE BASED UPON THE FIELD CONCEPT,
that is on CONTINUOUS structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole
castle in the air, including the theory of gravitation, but also
nothing of the rest of contemporary physics."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com