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The principle "ANYTHING can be deduced from ANYTHING" was introduced
by Clausius in 1850. Consider the following arguments:

(A) If it rains, then the soil is wet.

(B) If Peter and Paul are identical twins, then Peter looks like Paul.

(C) (Sadi Carnot 1824) If heat is an indestructible substance (cannot
be converted into work in the heat engine), then Heat Engine 1 working
between the temperatures T1 and T2 is just as efficient as Heat Engine
2 working between the same temperatures.

The prior (that is, before the premise is taken into account)
probability of A's conclusion is not zero so the combination "false
premise, true conclusion" is possible. In contrast, the prior
probability of B's and C's conclusions is virtually zero so the
combination "false premise, true conclusion" is virtually impossible.
Yet C's conclusion (the prototype of the second law of
thermodynamics), although deduced from a false premise and therefore
false as well, was crucially important for Clausius' and Kelvin's
careers so in 1850 Clausius advanced the following INVALID argument:

(C') (Clausius 1850) If heat always flows spontaneously from hot to
cold, then Heat Engine 1 working between the temperatures T1 and T2 is
just as efficient as Heat Engine 2 working between the same
temperatures.

Clausius' 1850 "deduction" had the effect of opening a Pandora box so
half a century later the scientific community was ready to accept the
conclusions of the following arguments:

(D) (Albert Einstein) If the speed of light does not depend on the
speed of the light source, then a situation is possible in which I
observe your clock running slower than mine and you observe mine
running slower than yours and both observations are correct.

(E) (Albert Einstein) If the speed of light does not depend on the
speed of the light source, then an 80m long pole can safely be trapped
inside a 40m long barn.

Pentcho Valev wrote:

The fundamental principle of Beautiful Totalitarian Science:

"If our walks are silly enough, we can deduce ANYTHING from
ANYTHING":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w
Silly Walks Applicant: "Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to
obtain a Government grant to help me develop it....I think that with
Government backing I could make it very silly." Silly Walks Director:
"Mr Pudey, the very real problem is one of money. I'm afraid that the
Ministry of Silly Walks is no longer getting the kind of support it
needs. You see there's Defence, Social Security, Health, Housing,
Education, Silly Walks ... they're all supposed to get the same. But
last year, the Government spent less on the Ministry of Silly Walks
than it did on National Defence! Now we get 348,000,000 a year, which
is supposed to be spent on all our available products."

L. McGlashan, Chemical thermodynamics, Academic Press, London (1979),
pp. 72-73: "For an infinitesimal change in the state of a phase alpha
we write
dU = T dS - p dV + SUM mu_B dn_B (1)
We regard equation (1) as an axiom and call it the fundamental
equation for a change of the state of a phase alpha. It is one half of
the second law of thermodynamics. We do not ask where it comes from.
Indeed we do not admit the existence of any more fundamental relations
from which it might have been derived. Nor shall we here enquire into
the history of its formulation, though that is a subject of great
interest to the historian of science. It is a starting point ; it must
be learnt by heart."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
"A more important objection, it seems to me, is that Clausius bases
his conclusion that the entropy increases in a nicht umkehrbar
[irreversible] process on the assumption that such a process can be
closed by an umkehrbar [reversible] process to become a cycle. This is
essential for the definition of the entropy difference between the
initial and final states. But the assumption is far from obvious for a
system more complex than an ideal gas, or for states far from
equilibrium, or for processes other than the simple exchange of heat
and work. Thus, the generalisation to all transformations occurring in
Nature is somewhat rash."

http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière
est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de
futures mesures mettent enévidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procédures opérationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La théorie elle-même en serait-elle
invalidée ? Heureusement, il nen est rien ; mais, pour sen assurer, il
convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et dailleurs plus
économiques. En vérité, le premier postulat suffit, à la condition de
lexploiter à fond."

http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/mechanics/levy-leblond_ajp_44_271_76.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c. (...) We believe that special relativity at the present time
stands as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common
space-time arena in which all fundamental processes take place. (...)
The evidence of the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such,
shake in any way the validity of the special relalivity. It would,
however, nullify all its derivations which are based on the invariance
of the photon velocity."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST
"This "second postulate" is the source of all Einstein's eccentric
physics of shrinking space and haywire clocks. And with a little
further thought, it leads to the equivalence of mass and energy
embodied in the iconic equation E = mc2. The argument is not about the
physics, which countless experiments have confirmed. It is about
whether we can reach the same conclusions without hoisting light onto
its highly irregular pedestal. (...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum,
both Galileo and Einstein missed a surprising subtlety in the maths -
one that renders Einstein's second postulate superfluous."

http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/henryMinkowski.pdf
"In September of 1905 Einstein published a development from relativity
- the discovery of the implication that E = mc2, and in this new paper
he mentions a single postulate only. But the paper contains a sweet
footnote: "The principle of the constancy of the velocity of light is
of course contained in Maxwell's equations." How I love that "of
course!" Einstein was human! I do not know if it is true, but I recall
being told that during the Middle Ages undergraduates learned to
multiply and divide using Roman numerals, while the exotic Arabic
numerals were reserved for the more advanced students. That is exactly
what we do today in teaching special relativity. Antique postulates
that are not of anything but historical interest to genuine physicists
are presented to students as "Special Relativity." Some books do
better than others in warning students how seemingly impossible the
second postulate is; but all have the students working out true but
unintuitive consequences (e.g. relativity of simultaneity) using
thought experiments with of course the second postulate producing the
bizarre result. A small number of texts (Ohanian, Knight, a few
others) at least follow Einstein's second paper in having but a single
postulate; but none do what needs to be done, which is to drop
Einstein and adopt Minkowski."

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001661/
MINKOWSKI SPACE-TIME: A GLORIOUS NON-ENTITY
Harvey R. Brown, Oliver Pooley
"It is argued that Minkowski space-time cannot serve as the deep
structure within a "constructive" version of the special theory of
relativity, contrary to widespread opinion in the philosophical
community."

http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/index_files/physics%20against%20tense.doc
"In my opinion, by far the best way for the tenser to respond to
Putnam et al is to adopt the Lorentz 1915 interpretation of time
dilation and Fitzgerald contraction. Lorentz attributed these effects
(and hence the famous null results regarding an aether) to the Lorentz
invariance of the dynamical laws governing matter and radiation, not
to spacetime structure. On this view, Lorentz invariance is not a
spacetime symmetry but a dynamical symmetry, and the special
relativistic effects of dilation and contraction are not purely
kinematical. The background spacetime is Newtonian or neo-Newtonian,
not Minkowskian. Both Newtonian and neo-Newtonian spacetime include a
global absolute simultaneity among their invariant structures (with
Newtonian spacetime singling out one of neo-Newtonian spacetimes many
preferred inertial frames as the rest frame). On this picture, there
is no relativity of simultaneity and spacetime is uniquely
decomposable into space and time."

Beautiful Totalitarian Science for sale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218

http://orangecow.org/pythonet/pet-shop.html

Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong
with it?
Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead,
that's what's wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm
looking at one right now.
Owner: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the
Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
........................
Mr. Praline: No, I'm sorry! I'm not prepared to pursue my line of
inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too silly!

Note the desperate state Mr. Praline is eventually in: when things get
too silly fighters for truth get paralized and lies and absurdities
rule forever.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com