OJ:

Just because a pernicious ethical "system" shares (part of) a name with a scientific theory hardly makes the ramifications of that system the same as those of the theory.

Special relativity was initially proposed to explain certain electromagnetic phenomena. General relativity deals with gravity and the curvature of space. Neither has anything to do with relativity of truth.

Orrin, I think you are getting things a bit bass-ackwards here. It's not like Einstein came along and said: "Nietzsche says God is dead, so I'll come up with some new theories to match." Then-current physics couldn't explain certain problems, and Einstein came up with better explanations. Any new theories that displace Einstein's won't be going back to pre-Einsteinian theories.

And the nitpick the article, the speed of light is a constant in a vacuum. It slows down (sometimes a lot) in other mediums.

Anthony/Papaya:

He didn't explain anything, just offered a scientific theory that fit his times. Times have changed, so we'll get a new theory.

There seems to be a general problem with physics theories in that they tend to break down when applied beyond the realm in which they were formulated-- Newton's theories were created for the realm of planetary motion-- moderate speeds, moderate accelerations and small point-like objects. It broke down when applied to high speeds and dense massive objects-- hence special and general relativity. What we are seeing here is that those theories aren't up to explaining phenomena outside the current age of the universe or to large massive but low density objects either. Nothing new there. The real problem is that worshipers at the First Church of Einstein aren't yet willing to admit that their One True God, like Newton before Him, is fallible and will be replaced eventually. (Another attack on Einstein/Newton I came across recently is that the inverse square law for gravitation a small constant or linear factor that only applies to extremely low accelerations. It's an effort to explain some anomalous behavior in the motions of Pioneer 10/11 and the Voyagers.)

As for "moral relativity" vs. "theory of Relativity", Paul Johnson in Modern Times posits that it was a case of the social scientist following the lead of the physical scientists without understanding what the physical scientists were talking about.

Jeez, OJ, do you know anything about how science works? Theories aren't adopted because they sound nifty or impress the fashionable set; they're adopted because they do a better job than previous theories at predicting natural phenomena. It's called the Principle of Correspondence.

Einsteinian general relativity was proposed to account for anomalies in the paths taken by light rays around large objects. Special relativity, which really originated with earlier physicists such as Lorenz, Fitzgerald, Michaelson and Morley, was proposed to account for the inability to find differences in the transit time of light between objects moving at different speeds. Both were adopted because they succeeded at predicting the results of various experiments where Newtonian physics failed, while simultaneously covering all the phenomena Newtonian physics had covered, equally well.

Perez-Miller and Papaya are quite correct. Orrin is off-base this time. (Can't win 'em all, Orrin.)

Francis:

They do a better job of describing things consistent with the prevailing political notions of the time. Then the political notion shifts and the scientific paradigm follows.

Heisenberg explains:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/014309.html

But it's always amusing to see a hardshell rightwinger like Orrin lining up with the extreme leftists.

Father Stanley Jaki (Benedictine priest, physicist, and science historian) likes to say the Theory of Relativity is misnamed, it should be the Theory of Invariance (invariance of the speed of light, that is).

Mr. Porretto - did Kuhn and Lakatos not make any impression upon you? Epicycles actually made slightly better predictions than did the Keplerian heliocentric model, but the simplicity of Kepler's model won some converts right away. Max Planck famously said, "A new (scientific) truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather the opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." There is of course a sociological component to science.

BTW, I bought & read Magueijo's book. It really isn't that good, and he comes across as snotty & juvenile.

Einstein wasn't the first to 'question' Newton - Max Planck started the ball rolling 10 or 15 years earlier.

OY, stick to kinky sex OJ. Calling Einstein's theories of relativity has led to a lot more misunderstanding than enlightenment.

Actually, the 1905 paper was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." What was most important about the paper was not relativity, but invariance. Indeed the best one line take away for the theory is that the laws of physics (including Maxwell's equations, describing electromagnetic radiation, in their simple form) are the same (invariant) for all observers even if the observers are in frames of reference that are moving with relative to each other. The theory of General Relativity extended this invariance to accelerated frames of reference and gravity. That c is a constant and E=mc^2 is a consequence of this theory not a parameter.

The article you cited does not impress. The theories of General and Special Relativity are well established here on earth in modern laboratories. Observable and measurable quantities here in labs and in present astronomical events such as solar eclipses, the orbits of the planets and satellites have firmly established the theories. What the article says is that physicists cannot explain some phenomena in the early history of the universe based on their current knowledge of the facts with the physics they now have. One of two things has to change. My guess is that our knowledge of the facts will change long before our physics changes.

Your cultural reference is completely out to sea. Incidentally, Einstein's personal views on religion were not those of many of his more simple minded and more politically committed colleagues. He was not, of course, a Christian. He was also not a conventional theist. His personal beliefs were more like Spinoza but perhaps not so rigidly pantheistic.See Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer.

"Epicycles actually made slightly better predictions than did the Keplerian heliocentric model, but the simplicity of Kepler's model won some converts right away."

I don't think so. Kepler lived a century after Copernicus. His achievement was to take the observations of his master Tycho Brahe, which were much better than those Copernicus had to work with and reduced them to his three laws.

Kepler’s three laws differed in a very fundamental way from all previous systems of astronomy. Copernicus, like all of his predecessors practiced astronomy as a purely mathematical system. The cycles and epicycles had no meaning other than as computational devices. Kepler transformed astronomy into a dynamic science. His three laws are equivalent to Newton’s law of Gravitation. Newton’s great insight was in seeing that Kepler’s laws and sub-lunary ballistics were part of the same phenomenon -- Gravity. It therefore follows that calculations made on the basis of Kepler’s laws are like Newton’s, subejt to the adjustment that Kepler did not account for interaction between the planets.

P.S. Harry: Good Dig!

Harry:

The extremne Leftists were johnny-come-latelys. Their great insight--that nothing can be known rationally--was amply demonstrated thousands of years earlier and ably reiterated by Hume and others early in the Age of Reason. Nor does it matter much, except to Rationalists. Faith suffices, including faith in Reason.

Robert:

Indeed, the only part of it that's wrong is that they do vary.

OJ: We are letting you off easy on this one. Now go pine away for Jim McGreevy.

This guy is one of many.

The real difference between science and what Orrin chooses to call faith -- actually, superstition -- its that scientists quetion their current understanding. Religious people are incapable of doing this.

Also, it would be helpful if Orrin would distinguish between validated theories and mere speculations. It's no wonder he's confused -- or pretends to be.

If Reason was like religion, we would still be worshipping Newton and railing--or ignoring--any contradictions to Newton.

Newtonian mechanics were known to be incomplete the moment telescopes were invented with the capability of resolving binary star systems. It took several centuries of work to determine why and how. The kind of work, BTW, to which organized religion is virtuall immune.

This is the last sentence from the review OJ linked to: "Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth."

Precisely--and all rationalists know this.

One could equally accurately say "Therefore, it will never be possible by making stuff up and putting it in a book to arrive at some absolute truth."

A great many religionist have failed to take this on board.

As Bruce points out, Theory of Invariance would have been a better name. I really don't see any correspondence between moral relativism and Einstein's theory.

New theory on light weighs heavily on scientists: A brash young theoretical physicist claims Einstein was wrong (Lori Valigra, 1/30/03, CS Monitor)

Challenging any popular or long-held theory in science is a risk, and can even end a promising career. That's especially true when the challenge is being made to the work of a great scientist like Albert Einstein. But Magueijo, with help along the way from a handful of other scientists who were open to discussing the variable speed of light (VSL), kept developing his idea.

Their first attempts to publish a technical paper on the subject, however, ran into what Magueijo characterizes as condescension and purely political opposition. Indeed, the childish, personal nature of these arguments will shock anyone who imagines disinterested scientists searching together for truth.
Y'all are easily shocked. Science is no different than any other faith.

pj:

There's a reason it's called the one and not the other.

OJ:

"...ran into what Magueijo characterizes as condescension and purely political opposition."

As if he is a disinterested observer. While it may be the objections were childish and personal, there could be some wounded pride of authorship here.

But in any event, if Magueijo is correct, his theory will ultimately triumph. Which is more than one can say about sectarian arguments.

"There's a reason it's called the one and not the other." Within the context of the theory, it is an arbitrary choice.

There is no more correspondence between Einstein's theory and moral relativism than between soup and nuts.

Jeff:

A new record, you stumbled twice into the truth:

There are no disterested observers.

and

The nuts follow the soup as surely as the science follows the philosophy.

OJ,

Undoubtedly there are philosophical preconceptions in any scientific theory.

To take two examples: in General Relativity, it is presumed that space (more properly, spacetime) is itself a thing, rather than merely a container for a thing, as in Newtonian cosmology.

And the founders of quantum mechanics were unduly influenced by logical positivism: hence they gave us a theory that explains nothing of the nature of the phenomena it describes.

You'd be a lot better off cherry-picking odd quotes from the likes of Heisenberg and Bohr than claiming that Einstein's relativities were influenced by a philosophically-driven urge to de-absolutize truth.

I'm a fan, but in this case you are making the same mistake as someone who describes the US, France, and various unlamented communist regimes as all the same because each describe themselves as "Republics".

Religious zealots like Orrin cannot accept that science provides ever closer appproximations to regularities, because there is always the possibility -- which turned into reality many, many times -- that these discoveries would contradict what the religionists had declared to be unquestionable truth.

Now, it was never necessary, from the point of view of either philosophy or Christian religion, to declare the Truth that comets cannot exist above the atmosphere. But Christian theologians and philosophers were ignorant and stupid, and they made that mistake. And, like Vanessa Williams, they made it over and over.

When you're batting .000, the only hope is to change the rules.

So now they are desperately trying to change them.

The Theory of Relativity might be replaced by the same theory under a different name.

OJ:

Please do me the favor of noting syntax and meaning in my comments.

Clearly, disinterested is a matter of degree.

Just as clearly, soup and nuts is a term describing similarity, which has no relationship to time.

When you set up strawmen like that, it leads others to think you are running out of air.

Harry:

You kidding? We love this stuff. You guys start yapping about how the Universe isn't geocentric, but it turns out it is. About Darwinism but nothing evolves. About invariance but it turns out to vary just enough for someone to fine tune the Universe. We just like poking at you while you flail your way back to where we never left.

Anthiony:

Einstein was a prisoner of his times, just like anybody. I don't fault him his biases.

Joseph:

Except that it was excepted because it seemed to conform peoples' philosophy, not because of any intrinsic truth value.

Jeff:

Tut, tut, mustn't blame others for your ignorance:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msoupnut.html

It had to be renamed before it was accepted by non-scientific "intellectuals."

In any case, the decreasing usefulness of relativity to post-modernism made it necessary for someone to pretend to criticize it.

Geocentric? Have you gone environmentalist on us?

Joseph:

Heisenberg Principle

Schroedinger's Cat

Fermi's Paradox

Holographic Universe

Multiverse

Anthropic Principle

Everything they're cranking out suggests we're the point of the universe, indeed that it may not exist unless we're looking at it.

Only the first of those is accepted science.

And you do not know what that one says, as you demonstrated last week.

The rest are speculations of, to me, little interest although it keeps the boys off the street.

When you come up with some evidence pro or con on any of them, call.

Harry:

"Accepted" Good one.

"They'll abandon relativity for the same reason they adopted it--because the zeitgeist has shifted." - - so writes oj

The farce continues. The idea of changing a zeitgeist is ludicrous. Orrin, at least your snake-oil-salesman approach is entertaining. Watching a shyster is sometimes entertaining.

Relativity did not require abandoning pre-relativistic physics; likewise relativity will not be abandoned. Relativity was a nuance, a quite astounding nuance at that. Relativity certainly resolved a number of curiosities, and led to technical breakthroughs. But the price of milk didn't change, nor did the crime rate - the fingerbowl philosophers had more BS to dispense; that's about all. Nearly every medium-sized town in America has a machine(a linear accelerator used in medicine) that requires accounting for relativistic effects - - but SO WHAT!! The distinctive claims about how "so much has change!!! " .. "omigod, it is sooo DIFFERENT now !!" that schtick is predominantly seen in nontechnical folks who claim some sort of astounding new conclusion about mankind or our universe.

What a farce.

"They'll abandon relativity for the same reason they adopted it--because the zeitgeist has shifted."

"Abandonment" applied only to those with weak egos ... the know-it-alls ... who had staked a claim to the inevitably-faulty position of saying, "The 'story' about our world on this particular date is SO valid that there shall NEVER be a modification(the fabric of our world has no additional tapestry to be found)."

Now certainly some folks in religion(the supernatural) take correspondingly adamant positions.

"...constancy of the speed of light is central to the theory of relativity and the other areas of modern physics that this theory penetrates." - - no it's not. Any change in the speed of light would be found to occur at what we regard as extraordinary situations. We'd continue to work with a "constant" speed of light for the conditions that we've worked with up to the end of the 20th century. [ p.s., "c" is a constant only within a vacuum, and now we accept that even deep space is not a true vacuum. In addition, Cherenkov radiation is emitted when (e.g., in water) various charged particles travel faster than the light particles (GASP ! ) . Is nothing sacred? Orrin, get a life.

"Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only scientific formula known to just about everyone." - - this is strikingly false. Well more than 2 billion humans know nothing about this formula. Perhaps an even larger number have seen the formula but cannot come close to explaining its significance.

The lever formula is known implicitly, if not formally, to even children:
F-action = ( d-long / d-short ) * f-applied

f = m * a is also well known, somewhat because of its useful intuitiveness.

R = V / i -- the electrical resistance formula -- is astoundingly better known than E = m*c*c . And by coincidence, it is eminently more useful[ "don't say it's so!! curses!" ] However, various coffeehouse philosophers (aka BS'ers ) may not care to acknowledge humanity's attention to the lowly MUNDANE formulae which are truly recognized by practical, living-in-this-world-instead-of-in-our-heads persons.

The Einstein equation, for a majority of those who can write it, is "known" like the Coke logo is "known." Its phonetic expression is often "known," akin to how a person knows how to speak "doh-reh-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh."

I work with relativistic-significant phenomena, and it ain't nearly as 'profound' as the humanities-oriented BS'ers make it out to be. Get a grip.

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/parodies/sgsft.html
http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/parodies/lobotomy.html
http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/sr.html

Larry:

Yes, it's failure to answer any significant questions about life will make it easy for us to shuck it off.

"... indeed that it may not exist unless we're looking at it."

Your confusion of the physicists use of the term "observation" with "looking at it" shows clearly you need to stop using concepts you don't understand.

Regarding Fermi's Paradox. Keep in mind, though most don't, that successfully getting a spaceship from one star to the next requires as much energy to stop as to start. And generating all that energy means having to sink a great deal of heat in space, which is far from easy to do. The bigger the ship, the greater the energy, the more the heat, the larger the ship because of the heat sink requirements.

Look like a vicious circle to you?

The answer to Fermi's paradox may well be: can't get here from there.

Jeff:

If there were others around they'd have figured it out.

OJ:

You are making the completely unfounded assumption the problem is solvable. NB: I'm not saying it isn't; rather, it is silly to automatically presume it is.

Just because you want it to be, in order for the Other's absence to (unjustifiably) confirm your religious views, doesn't make it so.

You are falling prey to the fallacy of consequences.

If infinity then solvability.

"If infinity then solvability."

That is pure nonsense. Never mind that since it took roughly 30% of the age of the universe to get to us, talking about infinity is ridiculous.

Jeff:

Yes, we're the greatest beings in existence.

You are engaging in non-sequitors and baseless assertions.

Yes, Orrin, 'accepted'

Unlike religious dogma, science has to go through a testing process. There are lots of likely candidates that have not passed and been accepted, yet are not read out of court, either.

As for Fermi's Paradox, if you're going to argue from logic, you have to be logical.

Besides Jeff's practical objection, there is the fact that we have no reason to think that there could be an infinitude of universes. If the total is anything less than infinity, then the paradox disappears if you are the first (or one of the first) or the last of the multiple universes.

We have no way, so far, of knowing where in the sequence, if there is a sequence, we stand, so the fact that we have not been contacted is not paradoxical.

Harry:

Yes, you're reduced to thinking that your time and place is special.

No, I'm reduced to thinking that there's not much evidence either way.

And then you just stake it all on faith. My point exactly.

OJ:

No, Harry stakes it on faith buttressed by evidence.

You base it all on faith--pure concoction, in other words.

There's a difference--Harry's and my point exactly. Thank you for making it so effectively.

Jeff:

Not all all, I have faith in your evidence too--it's the basis of my broader faith.

Well, that is wonderful.

Perhaps you could accord to others' faith the respect you demand for yours.

Why? Our society is based on mine and its opponents, like you, are trying to destroy it.

OJ:

Considering I spent 20 years defending it, that is beyond insulting.

For all the morality you religionists espouse, you are certainly ready with baseless ad hominem attacks.

And are the last to note the evils to which claiming absolute truth lead, or the fact that secularism has kept your ilk from shredding society through sectarian violence.

It has been known to happen.

Never. While the secular statist epoch from the 30s to the late 70s did much damage. Luckily we avoided major violence as the faithful retook the government, but the potential was there in the 70s/80s. Now secularism is in such rapid decline that moment of danger has passed.

Never? Not the Inquisition, or the 30-yrs war, or the extermination of any number of "heresies?"

Surely, you jest.

You, who espouse statist intervention into people's decisions about what they will watch or read, or risks they choose to take, are the enemy of liberty.

Fortunately, last I read, the largest growing faith (and now second largest after Christianity) in the US is none in particular. There are a whole lot of people out there who aren't willing for someone else's notion of Absolute Truth to be rammed down their throats.

They didn't shred society, they made it.

They slaughtered, and it took secularism to stop them doing it.

Slaughtered? Hardly. Slaughter started with the secularist Nazis and Marxists.

Contrary to what you might expect, I do not spend all my time googling for Christian atrocities, it's just that they are so common that in my general reading I encounter almost every week ones I didn't know much about.

Slaughter, in the exact sense you mean, started with the Catholics. I was not aware, until last night, that the Final Solution against the Orthodox Serbs began before the Final Solution against the Jews. (The first was, simultaneously, not surprisingly, also against the Jews, but the Serbs are the example that counts.)

Though you have often asserted that Darwinists introduced the concept of racial extermination, that turns out to be false, as in the First Final Solution, the Roman Catholic Croats refused to accept conversions of Orthodox Serbs.

The mass murders were not led by gauleiters but by Franciscan priests, and were endorsed by the pope in Rome.

Later, when secular forces put the Croat murderers on the run, they hid out in the Vatican.

All of this began before the formation of the einstazgruppen.

I should not have been, but even I was a little surprised by the cynicism of the Catholic exterminationist policies.

Harry:

Source, please?

John Cornwell, 'Hitler's Pope.'

Which Cornwell himself repudiated and says he wrote for Harryesque reasons.