🚀 go-pugleaf

On Jan 6, 12:42 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, Routledge, London,
> 1981, p. 128: "But the fact that inconsistent theories have brought
> progress is no reason to revise logic by dropping the law of non-
> contradiction. Inconsistent theories have brought progress through
> their development into consistent theories."
>
> It is high time special relativity brought progress by dropping
> Einstein's 1905 false light postulate and transforming itself into
> Newton's (consistent) emission theory of light. Is special relativity
> an inconsistency? If the following statement is a genuine absurdity
> the answer is yes:
>
> Genuine absurdity: One observer sees an event (squashing a bug)
> incompatible with what the other observer sees (the bug is alive and
> kicking).

Nope. You've been misled. The bug gets squashed, as seen by all
observers. There is no paradox.

>
> The following illustration of the glorious paradoxicalness of Divine
> Albert's Divine Special Relativity involves REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM
> leading from Einstein's 1905 false light postulate to the genuine
> absurdity defined above:
>
> http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/Relativ/bugrivet.html
> "The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is
> similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the
> bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it
> looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's
> point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just
> 0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the
> bug....The paradox is not resolved."

And this explanation on this website is wrong.

>
> Pentcho Valev wrote:
>
> W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, Routledge, London,
> 1981, p. 3: "For vewed sub specie eternitatis scientists (even
> physical scientists) are a fickle lot. The history of science is a
> tale of multifarious shiftings of allegiance from theory to theory.
> Newtonian mechanics had its hour of flourishing with virtual universal
> allegiance. Then, following a dramatic and brief period of turbulence,
> relativistic mechanics came to the fore and is espoused with the same
> universal allegiance and firm commitment on the part of the
> community."
>
> Newton-Smith's is an outdated account: except for the few remaining
> profeteers (who were unable to become climate change experts), nobody
> supports Einstein's relativity anymore, let alone "with firm
> commitment". The problem is that Anti-Einsteiniana is not organized
> and is difficult to be organized in a world where money, not ideas, is
> the essence of any organization. Still some anti-relativity community,
> perhaps too loose for the moment, does exist:
>
> http://www.worldnpa.org/main/
> "The Natural Philosophy Alliance, quite unlike establishment physics,
> does not impose any particular ideas on its members, whose ideas are
> so diverse that generalization about them is very difficult. Aside
> from virtually unanimous agreement that contemporary cosmology and
> physics--especially modern or 20th-century physics--are in dire need
> of a thorough overhaul, and that a much more tolerant spirit than has
> recently been shown in these fields must be practiced in order to
> achieve the needed changes, not very much comes close to achieving
> unanimous approval among NPA members. Nevertheless, certain interests
> and themes are very widespread, and certain opinions are subscribed to
> by a very large majority. The central theme that concerns nearly all
> members, both because of its highly honored position in current dogma
> and because its rather simple mathematics makes it comparatively easy
> to deal with, is special relativity (SR). A very large majority in the
> NPA believe it is seriously flawed, and a clear majority believe it is
> totally invalid. I earnestly subscribe to the latter view: SR has no
> validity whatsoever." (By NPA Founder, John E. Chappell)
>
> I think NPA should adopt a more concrete stance on special relativity.
> The theory is strictly deductive so it can only have "no validity
> whatsoever" if a postulate is false. Official mavericks in
> Einsteiniana are somewhat more advanced than NPA members in
> identifying the false postulate:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/science/e-and-mc2-equality-it-seems...
> "As propounded by Einstein as an audaciously confident young patent
> clerk in 1905, relativity declares that the laws of physics, and in
> particular the speed of light -- 186,000 miles per second -- are the
> same no matter where you are or how fast you are moving. Generations
> of students and philosophers have struggled with the paradoxical
> consequences of Einstein's deceptively simple notion, which underlies
> all of modern physics and technology, wrestling with clocks that speed
> up and slow down, yardsticks that contract and expand and bad jokes
> using the word "relative."......"Perhaps relativity is too restrictive
> for what we need in quantum gravity," Dr. Magueijo said. "We need to
> drop a postulate, perhaps the constancy of the speed of light."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com