>”I haven’t seen it argued recently except to note that the way to Quantum >Mechanics might have been more straightforward if Einstein hadn’t come up with >STR.”
Sadly, I suspect that STR/SGR constrains development not only in quantum mechanics. It impacts on the science narrative and provides license for all sorts of flawed assumptions and unfalsifiable speculation, for example, astronomy (e.g., big bang theory, black holes, etc). It’s baggage that the sciences don’t need. From: John Collier [mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za] Sent: Friday, 8 July 2016 5:10 PM To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: RE: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [Sadhu Sanga] How to judge what is pseudoscience? I can’t post to the Sadhu Sanga list (and don’t want to), so I am posting to Peirce-L Not the Lorenz transformations alone. They would not give the right result for Mercury’s precession. In fact it would be hard to apply them in a non ad hoc way. Something many people don’t know is that STR is incompatible with gravity. It was developed to explain electrodynamics. Einstein used a non-empirical assumption, that the correct laws of physics should be the same from all frames of reference. This gives STR pretty much directly from Maxwell’s equations. But gravity doesn’t fit. So he needed a more inclusive theory. There may be other ways to make gravity fit (Mach’s Principle was one proposal, but nobody has ever been able to figure out how it would work mathematically). Some philosophers and historians have argued that Lorenz’ theory of the electron gives a better theory than STR. The famous British astronomer, E.T. Whittaker argued for Lorenz’ approach as late as 1931, and didn’t eve n mention Einstein. I haven’t seen it argued recently except to note that the way to Quantum Mechanics might have been more straightforward if Einstein hadn’t come up with STR. John Collier Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com [mailto:online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stephen Jarosek Sent: Friday, 08 July 2016 10:24 AM To: online_sadhu_sa...@googlegroups.com Subject: [PEIRCE-L] RE: [Sadhu Sanga] How to judge what is pseudoscience? >”Einstein's work took longer to gain acceptance, and as we have seen, there >are hold-outs to this day (100 years later).” As a non-physicist, I pose the question… might the Lorentz transformations, in the absence of the assumptions of relativity theory, be sufficient to account for the anomalous precession of Mercury that has been observed?
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
