🚀 go-pugleaf

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Newton-Smith's is an outdated account: except for the few remaining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-is-relative.html
"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
pvalev@yahoo.com