🚀 go-pugleaf

On Feb 5, 1:01 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Open Letter to: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society
>
> Copy to: Professor John Pethica, Physical Secretary and Vice-
> President, Professor Sir Michael Berry, Sir Peter Williams CBE,
> Treasurer and Vice-President, Professor Lorna Casselton, Foreign
> Secretary and Vice-President
>
> Dear Dr. Rees,
>
> Classical thermodynamics has been dead for a long time so when in 2001
> a respected scientist, Jos Uffink, declared that a version of the
> second law of thermodynamics ("Entropy always increases") is a RED
> HERRING, this sounded like an epitaph officially putting an end to any
> further discussion:
>
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
> Jos Uffink: "The historian of science and mathematician Truesdell made
> a detailed study of the historical development of thermodynamics in
> the period 1822-1854. He characterises the theory, even in its present
> state, as 'a dismal swamp of obscurity' and 'a prime example to show
> that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds'. He is
> outright cynical about the respect with which nonmathematicians treat
> the Second Law: "Clausius verbal statement of the second law makes no
> sense [. . . ]. All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition; a century of
> philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment; a
> century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
> the unclean. Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
> follow the argument Clausius offers [. . . ] and seven times has it
> blanked and gravelled me. [. . . ] I cannot explain what I cannot
> understand." From this anthology it emerges that although many
> prominent physicists are firmly convinced of, and express admiration
> for the Second Law, there are also serious complaints, especially from
> mathematicians, about a lack of clarity and rigour in its formulation.
> At the very least one can say that the Second Law suffers from an
> image problem: its alleged eminence and venerability is not perceived
> by everyone who has been exposed to it. What is it that makes this
> physical law so obstreperous that every attempt at a clear formulation
> seems to have failed? Is it just the usual sloppiness of physicists?
> Or is there a deeper problem? And what exactly is the connection with
> the arrow of time and irreversibility? Could it be that this is also
> just based on bluff? Perhaps readers will shrug their shoulders over
> these questions. Thermodynamics is obsolete; for a better
> understanding of the problem we should turn to more recent,
> statistical theories. But even then the questions we are about to
> study have more than a purely historical importance. The problem of
> reproducing the Second Law, perhaps in an adapted version, remains one
> of the toughest, and controversial problems in statistical
> physics.....This summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful
> to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second
> law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued
> statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained
> attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-
> Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion about the
> arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is
> actually a RED HERRING."
>
> Einstein's relativity is younger than thermodynamics so its own
> epitaph came only recently:
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-uni...
> "General relativity knits together space, time and gravity.
> Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe
> depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster
> when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you
> age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground
> floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General
> relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo
> Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the
> Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....It is still not clear who is
> right, says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of
> Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his
> instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and
> time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that
> it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a
> malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of
> stars, planets and matter."
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/passage/index.html
> John Norton: "A common belief among philosophers of physics is that
> the passage of time of ordinary experience is merely an illusion. The
> idea is seductive since it explains away the awkward fact that our
> best physical theories of space and time have yet to capture this
> passage. I urge that we should resist the idea. We know what illusions
> are like and how to detect them. Passage exhibits no sign of being an
> illusion....Following from the work of Einstein, Minkowski and many
> more, physics has given a wonderfully powerful conception of space and
> time. Relativity theory, in its most perspicacious form, melds space
> and time together to form a four-dimensional spacetime. The study of
> motion in space and and all other processes that unfold in them merely
> reduce to the study of an odd sort of geometry that prevails in
> spacetime. In many ways, time turns out to be just like space. In this
> spacetime geometry, there are differences between space and time. But
> a difference that somehow captures the passage of time is not to be
> found. There is no passage of time. There are temporal orderings. We
> can identify earlier and later stages of temporal processes and
> everything in between. What we cannot find is a passing of those
> stages that recapitulates the presentation of the successive moments
> to our consciousness, all centered on the one preferred moment of
> "now." At first, that seems like an extraordinary lacuna. It is, it
> would seem, a failure of our best physical theories of time to capture
> one of time's most important properties. However the longer one works
> with the physics, the less worrisome it becomes....I was, I confess, a
> happy and contented believer that passage is an illusion. It did
> bother me a little that we seemed to have no idea of just how the news
> of the moments of time gets to be rationed to consciousness in such
> rigid doses.....Now consider the passage of time. Is there a
> comparable reason in the known physics of space and time to dismiss it
> as an illusion? I know of none. The only stimulus is a negative one.
> We don't find passage in our present theories and we would like to
> preserve the vanity that our physical theories of time have captured
> all the important facts of time. So we protect our vanity by the
> stratagem of dismissing passage as an illusion."
>
> The problem is that, despite Thomas Kuhn's revolutionary dreams, there
> is no tumultuous "paradigm change"; rather, false theories just
> silently die, burying with themselves an essential part of human
> culture:
>
> ftp://ftp.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/SISTA/markovsky/reports/06-46.pdf
> "From the pedagogical point of view, thermodynamics is a disaster. As
> the authors rightly state in the introduction, many aspects are
> "riddled with inconsistencies". They quote V.I. Arnold, who concedes
> that "every mathematician knows it is impossible to understand an
> elementary course in thermodynamics". Nobody has eulogized this
> confusion more colorfully than the late Clifford Truesdell. On page 6
> of his book "The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics" 1822-1854
> (Springer Verlag, 1980), he calls thermodynamics "a dismal swamp of
> obscurity". Elsewhere, in despair of trying to make sense of the
> writings of some local heros as De Groot, Mazur, Casimir, and
> Prigogine, Truesdell suspects that there is "something rotten in the
> (thermodynamic) state of the Low Countries" (see page 134 of Rational
> Thermodynamics, McGraw-Hill, 1969)."
>
> http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/080616
> "Like bronze idols that are hollow inside, Einstein built a cluster of
> "Potemkin villages," which are false fronts with nothing behind them.
> Grigori Potemkin (17391791) was a general-field marshal, Russian
> statesman, and favorite of Empress Catherine the Great. He is alleged
> to have built facades of non-existent villages along desolate
> stretches of the Dnieper River to impress Catherine as she sailed to
> the Crimea in 1787. Actors posing as happy peasants stood in front of
> these pretty stage sets and waved to the pleased Empress. This
> incident reminds me of the story of Eleanor Roosevelt's Moscow tour
> guide who showed her the living quarters of communist party bosses and
> claimed that these were the apartments of the average Russian worker.
> The incredibly gullible first lady was delighted. Like Catherine, the
> sentimental Eleanor was prone to wishful thinking and was easily
> deceived. What has all this to do with Einstein? The science
> establishment has a powerful romantic desire to believe in Einstein.
> Therefore, they are not only fooled by Einstein's tricks, they are
> prepared to defend his Potemkin villages."
>
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880
> Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock
> Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages
> 57-78
> "The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and
> research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who
> raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A
> winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of
> Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are
> then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics.
> Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of
> elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing
> question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these
> circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on
> scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of
> realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the
> theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of
> professional discourse."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education
> Harry Kroto: "The wrecking of British science....The scientific method
> is based on what I prefer to call the inquiring mindset. It includes
> all areas of human thoughtful activity that categorically eschew
> "belief", the enemy of rationality. This mindset is a nebulous mixture
> of doubt, questioning, observation, experiment and, above all,
> curiosity, which small children possess in spades. I would argue that
> it is the most important, intrinsically human quality we possess, and
> it is responsible for the creation of the modern, enlightened portion
> of the world that some of us are fortunate to inhabit. Curiously, for
> the majority of our youth, the educational system magically causes
> this capacity to disappear by adolescence.....Do I think there is any
> hope for UK? I am really not sure."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/nov/22/schools.g2
> "We are nearing the end of the "World Year of Physics", otherwise
> known as Einstein Year, as it is the centenary of his annus mirabilis
> in which he made three incredible breakthroughs, including special
> relativity. In fact, it was 100 years ago yesterday that he published
> the most famous equation in the history of physics: E=mc2. But instead
> of celebrating, physicists are in mourning after a report showed a
> dramatic decline in the number of pupils studying physics at school.
> The number taking A-level physics has dropped by 38% over the past 15
> years, a catastrophic meltdown that is set to continue over the next
> few years. The report warns that a shortage of physics teachers and a
> lack of interest from pupils could mean the end of physics in state
> schools. Thereafter, physics would be restricted to only those
> students who could afford to go to posh schools. Britain was the home
> of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-
> class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and
> electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing
> extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so
> WHO CARES IF WE DISAPPEAR?"
>
> Dr. Rees, the Royal Society bestowed Einstein on humankind in 1919;
> now it is time for redemption. I am sure you are considering some kind
> of redemption:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6057362/Give-scientists-the-freedo...
> Martin Rees: "Over the past week, two stories in the press have
> suggested that scientists have been very wrong about some very big
> issues. First, a new paper seemed to suggest that dark energy the
> mysterious force that makes up three quarters of the universe, and is
> pushing the galaxies further apart might not even exist. (...) Cynics
> said that Einstein might as well have gone fishing from 1920 onwards,
> given the failure of much of his research." Lord Rees is President of
> the Royal Society
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3338512/Think-big-like-Einstein...
> Martin Rees: "Cynics have said that Einstein might as well have gone
> fishing from 1920 onwards. Although there's something rather noble
> about the way he persevered in his attempts to reach far beyond his
> grasp, in some respects THE EINSTEIN CULT SENDS THE WRONG SIGNAL."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com

Britain was the home
of Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Paul Dirac, and Brits made world-
class contributions to understanding gravity, quantum physics and
electromagnetism - and yet the British physicist is now facing
extinction. But so what? Physicists are not as cuddly as pandas, so
WHO CARES IF WE DISAPPEAR?"

I agree with Mr Pentcho Valev With everything that he says in this
article. But I like to mention that this extract from his writings
disturbs and me and like to put a general question:why English
scientists do not defend Newton theory and Galilei and Copernicus
achievements when Einstein theory negates all that? If you take out
the Lorentz Transformation the Special theory is zero. If you take out
the Principle of the equivalence of the inertial force with the
gravitational force the general relativity is zero. And as a
consequence of that Einstein theory of Relativity is zero including
all its conclusions. Why people speak so much complicated sentences
and saying nothing making possible young peoples not like to study
physics?
Stamenin