Why in the world would Einstein suggest....

I am surprised nobody has yet raised the Eccles-Bluebottle Conjecture !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk

@fresco,

Many here seem to want to sneer at Newton's notions of absolute time and space. What they presumably don't know is:

Quote:

The term "general relativity" is thus something of a misnomer, as pointed out by Hermann Minkowski and others. The theory does not make spacetime more relative than it was in special relativity. Just the opposite is true: the absolute space and time of Newton are retained.

That quote is from a website maintained by Stanford University: https://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime2.html

Others may think that Minkowski's 4 -dimensional geometrical interpretation of SR is particularly insightful, but the current thinking seems to be that:

Quote:

The universe appears to have a smooth spacetime continuum consisting of three spatial dimensions and one temporal (time) dimension. On the average, space is observed to be very nearly flat (close to zero curvature), meaning that Euclidean geometry is experimentally true with high accuracy throughout most of the Universe

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe#Size.2C_age.2C_contents.2C_structure.2C_and_laws

Three spatial dimensions (i.e. height, length, and depth) and one (separate) time dimension is NOT the 4-dimensional "spacetime" that Minkowski boasted of "discovering."

The speed of light is NOT constant in the context of general relativity (contrary to Parados assertion):

Quote:

According to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity,...cannot claim any unlimited validity.

Einstein, 1920

Physicist Don Koks explains:

Quote:

In general relativity... the not-quite-well-defined "speed" of light can differ from c, basically because of the effect of gravity (spacetime curvature) on clocks and rulers.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

Categorical assertions to the contrary have been made multiple times in this thread. I had hoped that this site would be a good forum for exchanging ideas and discussing various concepts. Apparently not. For the most part, it just seems to be chock-full of people making blustering assertions regarding matters about which they are ill-informed.

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@fresco,

It brings to mind similar sentiments expressed separately by famous people:

1. “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so.” (Mark Twain)

2. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” (Bertrand Russell)

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@fresco,

As the undisputed KING of epistemology, Fresco, you might want to consider this thought:

“Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.” (Ambrose Bierce)

If this guy is right, then "education" has different effects on different people, eh?

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@layman,

"The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff " (Ambrose Bierce)

Instead of a trading quotations game, why don't you try your diatribe* on a specialist Physics Forum where I suggest you will get even "shorter shrift".
It is highly likely that you have done so already. Am I correct ?

* Count your posts relative to those of others. Clear diatribitis don't you think ?

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@fresco,

SR happens to be a subject that interests me. I realize that many, or really, most people have little interest in the topic. I have seen little propensity to discuss the topic at all on this site. Fair enough. If no one's really interested, that's strictly up to them.

My interest is really not so much the "physics" aspect of it. It is the philosophical, epistemological, and "sociological" elements that I find most interesting. But, there again, those are aspects that seem to be of little interest to the "typical" person. Again, each to his own.

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@layman,

...Then you have gone about such "interest" in entirely the wrong way.

You ostensibly seek support on a general forum for a minority scientific view which appears to have no practical import as far as observations are concerned. You’ve read the literature. You know very well that neo-Lorentzianism is confined to parochial publications. The origins of that view are based on epistemological and ontological assumptions which favour anthropomorphic “common sense” and “search for fundamental substrates” rather than the elegance and creative thinking displayed by Einstein and recent thinkers in current paradigms.

What do expect? Are you attempting to cash in on non-specialists who might agree with a naïve (realist) concept of “truth”? Surely that is as much as you might expect from non-physicists, but participants here are generally more philosophically sophisticated than that !

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@layman,

EDIT: I meant to write "anthropocentric" not "anthropomorphic".

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@fresco,

Quote:

...a minority scientific view which appears to have no practical import as far as observations are concerned.

If LR has "no practical import" then neither does SR. What are you really trying to say here?

Quote:

You ostensibly seek support on a general forum for a minority scientific view

Ostensibly? How so? I'm seeking support for anything. To suggest that people recognize and accept what professional physicists know and accept, to wit, that LR and SR are empirically equivalent is not seeking support of one over the other.

Quote:

The origins of that view are based on epistemological and ontological assumptions which favour anthropomorphic “common sense” and “search for fundamental substrates”

I don't agree with this at all. I do in fact think that there are philosophical and practical reasons (such as maintaining some kind of objective standard) for preferring LR over SR, but, again, that's something to debate, if one cares to. It is NOT a matter that can be empirically resolved. But that is not the "origin" of the view, by any means.

Quote:

Are you attempting to cash in on non-specialists who might agree with a naïve (realist) concept of “truth”?

Cash in? Say what?

There is analytic and synthetic "truth." A priori and a posterori "truth." Analytic and a priori "truth" has nothing to do with "realism" at all. It is simply a matter of logic. A logical inconsistency or contradiction is just that, REGARDLESS of what subject matter it relates to and REGARDLESS of any opinion one might have about the soundness of an "argument." You can't even address the issue of soundness if you don't have a "valid" argument to begin with.

Edit: I do agree with this part, if I understand you correctly: "“search for fundamental substrates."

Yes, that's exactly what the science of physics has always done. Physics is NOT math, and it is not "metaphysics."

1 Reply

@layman,

Okay, this is my last reply on this thread.

You are obviously unaware of Quine's rejection of the distinction between "synthetic" and "analytic" statements. There is a whole philosophical vista lurking aroound that involving concepts of "observation" and construction of "reality". Without such a background, further debate with you would be futile.

I myself admit to citing physical models and findings (such as those of quantum physics) in support of a non-dualistic philosophical position which I tend to advocate. However, I do it in that order....philosophy first...physics second. That's the problem with your thread here as evidenced by the lack of participation.

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@fresco,

Quote:

I meant to write "anthropocentric" not "anthropomorphic".

If there was ever a "scientific" theory that is anthropomorphic, then certainly SR must be included in that group.

What other scientific theory (which I don't really think SR even is) elevates utter subjectivism and the mistaken impressions of individual "observers" to the status "truth" or "reality," in the way SR does? Name one.

Berkeley would have been proud.

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@fresco,

Quote:

You are obviously unaware of Quine's rejection of the distinction between "synthetic" and "analytic" statements.

Heh, how could you possibly conclude that? Is it because you think (and therefore think all others should think) that V. W. O. Quine is the sole and final arbiter of any epistemological viewpoint?

Truth is, I tend to agree with Quine, but that certainly doesn't demonstrate that Kant and his followers are jackasses.

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@fresco,

Quote:

... agree with a naïve (realist) concept of “truth”

You want to condemn a "realist" concept of truth, but then cite Quine as the ultimate authority?

As wiki notes, Quine's "Replacement naturalism maintains that traditional epistemology should be abandoned and replaced with the methodologies of the natural sciences."

This is reminiscent of your putative rejection of positivism, all while routinely incorporating positivistic premises in your "arguments."

For the record:

""the most important defect of logical positivism is that nearly all of it was false" (A. J. Ayer, "founder" of logical positivism)

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@layman,

Quote:

Other theories of motion postulate otherwise, and are just as effective in making predictions as SR.

Which theories are those?

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@layman,

Take another case where a buoy, floating on the ocean's surface, and a "steamship," cruising at 30 knots, "pass each other."

Could anyone persuasively argue that you can't tell which one is moving, because each is maintaining a uniform speed?

I don't think so. Their respective "uniform speeds" may be reciprocal, but they are not otherwise identical. It is the steamship, and only the steamship, which requires continuous power to move at 30 knots. The buoy requires no such input.

Of course I would say that, for that reason alone, the ship is not in a state of "inertial motion". But Al seems to ignore this when he produces the "explanation" of relative simultaneity involving a passenger on a train.

[/quote]
So you are arguing that CMB is not the standard frame of reference? Or are you arguing that the buoy is the same frame of reference as the CMB?

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@fresco,

Quote:

You know very well that neo-Lorentzianism is confined to parochial publications

Heh, the omnipresent insinuation that anyone who would dare question or criticize SR is a "crackpot" predictable raises it's head, eh?

John H. Field is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Geneva and is a consultant at CERN. He is far from a crank, and is just one of many modern physicists who analyze some of the problems created by SR. Unbeknownst to me, at the time, he raises the what is basically the same question I posed in my initial post in a 2011 article entitled: "Primary and reciprocal space-time experiments, relativisticreciprocity relations and Einstein’s trainembankment thought experiment."

The article is replete with mathematical proofs and "technical" scientific jargon. He is just one of many reputable physicist who raise legitmate questions about SR. An excerpt from his abstract:

Quote:

The concepts of primary and reciprocal experiments and base and travellingframes in special relativity are concisely described...These include Einstein’s train/embankment thought experiment...The interpretions given by Einstein and Sartori of their experiments, as well as those given by the present author in previous papers, are shown to be erroneous.

Notice that he himself admits to having made the same putative errors. Among other things, he says: "There is therefore no ‘relativity of simultaneity’ effect for a pair of synchronised clocks at different positions in S —they are also observed to be synchronised in the frame S. How this spurious effect arises from misuse of the space-time Lorentz transformation is explained elsewhere."

Summarizing some of his conclusions in laymen's terms, he says:

"The essential flaw in Einstein’s argument was the failure to distinguish between the speed of light, relative to some fixed object in an inertial frame, and the speed of light relative to some moving object in the same frame, which is what is relevant for the analysis of the TETE....This leads to Einstein’s false conclusion that the light signal emission events would be found to be non-simultaneous in the train frame.

As I read it, he is saying that it is a mistake to build opposing and conflicting claims (each party claims HE is "at rest') into any reliable comparison of the two..

The entire paper can be found here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.0158v2.pdf

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@parados,

Quote:

So you are arguing that CMB is not the standard frame of reference? Or are you arguing that the buoy is the same frame of reference as the CMB?

I am not arguing either, and, here again, I don't see any need whatsoever for a standard frame of reference to address the issue raised by this question.

Assume there is a "race" between two rowboats arranged. When the gun goes off, only one of the two begins to move wrt the shore. In the one that is deemed to be moving, the crew is rowing. In the one that isn't, the crew is just sitting there reading comic books. Among other reasons to conclude that the rowing boat has not remained motionless while the other boat and every tree, person, cow, fence post, etc. on the shore began moving "backwards," is that you can see the means of locomotion of the moving boat (the oars in the water). Why would you need to posit a universally motionless frame to see that?

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@parados,

Quote:

Which theories are those?

Theories which do not use Einstein's dictates for clock synchronization and which posit that simultaneity is absolute, not relative. Such as the theories used by Sexl and Mansouri in 1977 to "test" SR in their now-classic study where they spoke about the

Quote:

"remarkable result that a theory maintaining absolute simultaneity is equivalent to special relativity."

Similar tests were made both before and after theirs, with the same conclusion.

See, e.g,: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_theories_of_special_relativity

According to Wiki: "They also noticed the similarity between this test theory and Lorentz ether theory of Hendrik Lorentz, Joseph Larmor and Henri Poincaré."

1 Reply

@parados,

I asked:

Quote:

Could anyone persuasively argue that you can't tell which one is moving, because each is maintaining a uniform speed?

It gets tedious to always specify what any given object is said to be moving relative to, especially when the context makes it obvious.

I obviously mean "moving [wrt the surface of the ocean]." No "absolute frame" is needed to answer that question, based on known physical laws.

Yet you apparently want, for no particular reason, to pretend I said "moving wrt the ether," or something similar to that.

What's up with that?

Using straw man tactics to quibble about nomenclature completely misses the real point, which is that an object which requires a constant input of energy to maintain its motion is not moving "inertially." Therefore it is accelerating. In SR, acceleration is deemed to be "absolute motion."

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@parados,

Dale, I don't know if you're still here or not, but what I'm saying to Parados also directly relates to your questions to me.

To say that the train is moving with respect to the railroad tracks, is not tantamount to saying "the train is moving with respect to an absolutely motionless frame of reference."

You can see that, can't you?

I'm sure you can, but you then go on to raise questions which would only really apply if I had in fact said "the train is moving with respect to an absolutely motionless frame of reference." (which I didn't say).

Even SR does NOT claim that you need to know some motionless point to confidently say that a given object is "moving absolutely." In SR, all accelerating objects are moving absolutely. Perhaps that's what you are failing to consider, I'm not sure.

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Why in the world would Einstein suggest....

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