🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.174154.1255@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> gsmith@lauren.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith) writes:
>In article <1992Nov9.182446.13635@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>>     Though many people were working on gravitation, and always had been
>>     working on gravitation (and there are still people working on 
>>     alternatives), it wasn't like there was any vastly compelling reason to 
>>     overthrow Newton.
>
>Once you've bought special relativity (and about that you have no
>choice) you've *got* to work on alternatives to Newton.  Moreover, you
>are forced into nonlinear alternatives.  I think by working up from
>the linearization, you would be led to a local theory which was
>Einstein's locally, and from there it would become obvious.
>
>Basically, what I am saying is that Einstein's theory in its pure (no
>cosmological constant) form is the simplest classical theory uniting
>gravitation with special relativity, and so would have been discovered
>eventually--in the 40's or 50's, say.

     I buy your premise completely, which is the reason that I 
     think that we would not 'have' it.  By the 50's, say, there
     would have been enough objections to such a classical theory
     that it would not have been accepted (to say nothing of the
     fact that without Einstein psychologically fighting QM at
     every turn, encouraging Schroedinger, etc. 'classical' theories
     may not even have been investigated at all).

     As an example, there are now several fairly classical
     routes out of the 'black body problem'.  Do you 'accept' them?

                             dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                          crb7q@virginia.edu        
Department of Mechanical, 
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              (804) 924-7926