DOUBLETHINK IN EINSTEINIANA
Pentcho Valev
George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
of the truth."
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june232009/einstein_lessons_dj_6-22-09.php
"For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past,
present and future is only an illusion, however tenacious" - Albert
Einstein
http://www.geekitude.com/gl/public_html/article.php?story=20050422141509987
Brian Greene: "I certainly got very used to the idea of relativity,
and therefore I can go into that frame of mind without it seeming like
an effort. But I feel and think about the world as being organized
into past, present and future. I feel that the only moment in time
that's really real is this moment right now. And I feel [that what
happened a few moments ago] is gone, and the future is yet to be. It
still feels right to me. But I know in my mind intellectually that's
wrong. Relativity establishes that that picture of the universe is
wrong, and if I work hard, I can force myself to recognize the fallacy
in my view or thinking; but intuitively it's still what I feel. So
it's a daily struggle to keep in mind how the world works, and
juxtapose that with experience that [I get] a thousand, even million
times a day from ordinary comings and goings."
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/passage/index.html
John Norton: "A common belief among philosophers of physics is that
the passage of time of ordinary experience is merely an illusion. The
idea is seductive since it explains away the awkward fact that our
best physical theories of space and time have yet to capture this
passage. I urge that we should resist the idea. We know what illusions
are like and how to detect them. Passage exhibits no sign of being an
illusion....Following from the work of Einstein, Minkowski and many
more, physics has given a wonderfully powerful conception of space and
time. Relativity theory, in its most perspicacious form, melds space
and time together to form a four-dimensional spacetime. The study of
motion in space and and all other processes that unfold in them merely
reduce to the study of an odd sort of geometry that prevails in
spacetime. In many ways, time turns out to be just like space. In this
spacetime geometry, there are differences between space and time. But
a difference that somehow captures the passage of time is not to be
found. There is no passage of time. There are temporal orderings. We
can identify earlier and later stages of temporal processes and
everything in between. What we cannot find is a passing of those
stages that recapitulates the presentation of the successive moments
to our consciousness, all centered on the one preferred moment of
"now." At first, that seems like an extraordinary lacuna. It is, it
would seem, a failure of our best physical theories of time to capture
one of time's most important properties. However the longer one works
with the physics, the less worrisome it becomes....I was, I confess, a
happy and contented believer that passage is an illusion. It did
bother me a little that we seemed to have no idea of just how the news
of the moments of time gets to be rationed to consciousness in such
rigid doses.....Now consider the passage of time. Is there a
comparable reason in the known physics of space and time to dismiss it
as an illusion? I know of none. The only stimulus is a negative one.
We don't find passage in our present theories and we would like to
preserve the vanity that our physical theories of time have captured
all the important facts of time. So we protect our vanity by the
stratagem of dismissing passage as an illusion."
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/07/01/world-science-festival-time-since-einstein/
"There are many theoretical physicists who think the flow of time is
an illusion," he says. "And I think that's a great mistake…according
to quantum physics you don't know the outcome of events until they
happen. We know what happened in the past, there's a time called the
present when things are happening, and there's a time in the future
which is not yet determined. That's my view on it, which is not a very
widely supported one." A professor emeritus of applied mathematics at
the University of Capetown, Ellis is the co-author with Stephen
Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time, and investigates
the physical foundations of the flow of time."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Clutch
> http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them.
yes, that gives them a uniqueness pleasant
feeling that they understand
i wish, almost, also i could
because this is what differentiate a man from
a machine,
the man can
> The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
>
> http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june232009/einstein_lessons_dj_6-2...
> "For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past,
> present and future is only an illusion, however tenacious" - Albert
> Einstein
>
> http://www.geekitude.com/gl/public_html/article.php?story=20050422141...
> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/07/01/world-science-fes...
glird
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
That sounds like a perfect description of "Modern Theoretical
Physics"!
glird
Mahipal
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
>
> "For those of us who believe in physics, this separation between past,
> present and future is only an illusion, however tenacious" - Albert
> Einstein
>
> "There are many theoretical physicists who think the flow of time is
> an illusion," he says. "And I think that's a great mistake…according
> to quantum physics you don't know the outcome of events until they
> happen. We know what happened in the past, there's a time called the
> present when things are happening, and there's a time in the future
> which is not yet determined. That's my view on it, which is not a very
> widely supported one." A professor emeritus of applied mathematics at
> the University of Capetown, Ellis is the co-author with Stephen
> Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space Time, and investigates
> the physical foundations of the flow of time."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com
Thanks for the links to some very interesting events and discussions.
Occasionally do offer a quick quirk of your own regards some of these
links you share. The future is already cast in stone, so write away.
Enjo(y)...
--
Mahipal
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
Einstein's 1905 light postulate is crucially important; if it is
false, Einstein's "whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is
false". Einstein's 1905 light postulate is superfluous; even if "light
in vacuum does not travel at the invariant speed of the Lorentz
transform", Einstein's special relativity "would be unaffected":
Albert Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by
the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and
theory of gravity is false."
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo: "What Einstein realized was that if c did not change,
then something else had to give. That something was the idea of
universal and unchanging space and time. This is deeply, maddeningly
counterintuitive. In our everyday lives, space and time are perceived
as rigid and universal. Instead, Einstein conceived of space and time-
space-time-as a thing that could flex and change, expanding and
shrinking according to the relative motions of the observer and the
thing observed. The only aspect of the universe that didn't change was
the speed of light. And ever since, the constancy of the speed of
light has been woven into the very fabric of physics, into the way
physics equations are written, even into the notation used. Nowadays,
to "vary" the speed of light is not even a swear word: It is simply
not present in the vocabulary of physics. Hundreds of experiments have
verified this basic tenet, and the theory of relativity has become
central to our understanding of how the universe works."
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html
Why Einstein was wrong about relativity
29 October 2008, Mark Buchanan, NEW SCIENTIST
"Welcome to the weird world of Einstein's special relativity, where as
things move faster they shrink, and where time gets so distorted that
even talking about events being simultaneous is pointless. That all
follows, as Albert Einstein showed, from the fact that light always
travels at the same speed, however you look at it. Really? Mitchell
Feigenbaum, a physicist at The Rockefeller University in New York,
begs to differ. He's the latest and most prominent in a line of
researchers insisting that Einstein's theory has nothing to do with
light - whatever history and the textbooks might say. "Not only is it
not necessary," he says, "but there's absolutely no room in the theory
for it." What's more, Feigenbaum claims in a paper on the arXiv
preprint server that has yet to be peer-reviewed, if only the father
of relativity, Galileo Galilei, had known a little more modern
mathematics back in the 17th century, he could have got as far as
Einstein did http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1234). "Galileo's thoughts are
almost 400 years old," he says. "But they're still extraordinarily
potent. They're enough on their own to give Einstein's relativity,
without any additional knowledge." (...) This was a problem if
Maxwell's theory, like all good physical theories, was to follow
Galileo's rule and apply for everyone. If we do not know who measures
the speed of light in the equations, how can we modify them to apply
from other perspectives? Einstein's workaround was that we don't have
to. Faced with the success of Maxwell's theory, he simply added a
second assumption to Galileo's first: that, relative to any observer,
light always travels at the same speed. This "second postulate" is the
source of all Einstein's eccentric physics of shrinking space and
haywire clocks. And with a little further thought, it leads to the
equivalence of mass and energy embodied in the iconic equation E =
mc2. The argument is not about the physics, which countless
experiments have confirmed. It is about whether we can reach the same
conclusions without hoisting light onto its highly irregular pedestal.
(...) But in fact, says Feigenbaum, both Galileo and Einstein missed a
surprising subtlety in the maths - one that renders Einstein's second
postulate superfluous. (...) The result turns the historical logic of
Einstein's relativity on its head. Those contortions of space and time
that Einstein derived from the properties of light actually emerge
from even more basic, purely mathematical considerations. Light's
special position in relativity is a historical accident. (...) The
idea that Einstein's relativity has nothing to do with light could
actually come in rather handy. For one thing, it rules out a nasty
shock if anyone were ever to prove that photons, the particles of
light, have mass. We know that the photon's mass is very small - less
than 10-49 grams. A photon with any mass at all would imply that our
understanding of electricity and magnetism is wrong, and that electric
charge might not be conserved. That would be problem enough, but a
massive photon would also spell deep trouble for the second postulate,
as a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same
speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists'
beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity."
http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/chronogeometrie.pdf
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond "De la relativité à la chronogéométrie ou: Pour
en finir avec le "second postulat" et autres fossiles": "D'autre part,
nous savons aujourd'hui que l'invariance de la vitesse de la lumière
est une conséquence de la nullité de la masse du photon. Mais,
empiriquement, cette masse, aussi faible soit son actuelle borne
supérieure expérimentale, ne peut et ne pourra jamais être considérée
avec certitude comme rigoureusement nulle. Il se pourrait même que de
futures mesures mettent enévidence une masse infime, mais non-nulle,
du photon ; la lumière alors n'irait plus à la "vitesse de la
lumière", ou, plus précisément, la vitesse de la lumière, désormais
variable, ne s'identifierait plus à la vitesse limite invariante. Les
procedures operationnelles mises en jeu par le "second postulat"
deviendraient caduques ipso facto. La theorie elle-meme en serait-elle
invalidee ? Heureusement, il n'en est rien ; mais, pour s'en assurer,
il convient de la refonder sur des bases plus solides, et d'ailleurs
plus economiques. En verite, le "premier postulat" suffit, a la
condition de l'exploiter a fond."
http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/onemorederivation.pdf
Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "This is the point of view from wich I intend
to criticize the overemphasized role of the speed of light in the
foundations of the special relativity, and to propose an approach to
these foundations that dispenses with the hypothesis of the invariance
of c....We believe that special relativity at the present time stands
as a universal theory discribing the structure of a common space-time
arena in which all fundamental processes take place....The evidence of
the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way
the validity of the special relativity. It would, however, nullify all
its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon
velocity."
http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Relativity-Beyond-Approaches-Theoretical/dp/9810238886
Jong-Ping Hsu: "The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are
developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics
undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the
long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a
relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of
light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity.
This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery
of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman,
Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers."
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.physics.relativity/msg/dc1ebdf49c012de2
Tom Roberts: "If it is ultimately discovered that the photon has a
nonzero mass (i.e. light in vacuum does not travel at the invariant
speed of the Lorentz transform), SR would be unaffected but both
Maxwell's equations and QED would be refuted (or rather, their domains
of applicability would be reduced)."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Eric Gisse
[snip all, unread]
Classic example of the write only personality.
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
"Complete honesty" in Einsteiniana:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."
http://books.google.com/books?id=JokgnS1JtmMC
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann
p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had
suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one,
the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding
train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the
speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object
emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume
that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to
Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null
result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to
contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as
we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null
result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian
ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more
or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."
James H. Smith "Introduction à la relativité" EDISCIENCE 1969 pp.
39-41: "Si la lumière était un flot de particules mécaniques obéissant
aux lois de la mécanique, il n'y aurait aucune difficulté à comprendre
les résultats de l'expérience de Michelson-Morley.... Supposons, par
exemple, qu'une fusée se déplace avec une vitesse (1/2)c par rapport à
un observateur et qu'un rayon de lumière parte de son nez. Si la
vitesse de la lumière signifiait vitesse des "particules" de la
lumière par rapport à leur source, alors ces "particules" de lumière
se déplaceraient à la vitesse c/2+c=(3/2)c par rapport à
l'observateur. Mais ce comportement ne ressemble pas du tout à celui
d'une onde, car les ondes se propagent à une certaine vitesse par
rapport au milieu dans lequel elles se développent et non pas à une
certaine vitesse par rapport à leur source..... Il nous faut insister
sur le fait suivant: QUAND EINSTEIN PROPOSA QUE LA VITESSE DE LA
LUMIERE SOIT INDEPENDANTE DE CELLE DE LA SOURCE, IL N'EN EXISTAIT
AUCUNE PREUVE EXPERIMENTALE. IL LE POSTULA PAR PURE NECESSITE
LOGIQUE."
"By a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge ; and so on
indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth":
http://physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/einsteins_special_relativity
Paul Heckert: "Rather than trying to understand why the Michelson-
Morley experiment didn't work, Einstein effectively took the result as
his starting point. He made the basic assumption that the speed of
light is a fundamental constant in the universe and that all observers
in any reference frame that is not accelerating will measure the same
value for the speed of light."
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/496904/relativity/252878/Special-relativity
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA: "The fact that the speed of light is the
same for all observers is inexplicable in ordinary terms. If a
passenger in a train moving at 100 km per hour shoots an arrow in the
trains direction of motion at 200 km per hour, a trackside observer
would measure the speed of the arrow as the sum of the two speeds, or
300 km per hour (see figure). In analogy, if the train moves at the
speed of light and a passenger shines a laser in the same direction,
then common sense indicates that a trackside observer should see the
light moving at the sum of the two speeds, or twice the speed of light
(6 × 108 metres per second). While such a law of addition of
velocities is valid in classical mechanics, THE MICHELSON-MORLEY
EXPERIMENT SHOWED THAT LIGHT DOES NOT OBEY THIS LAW."
http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=66
Stephen Hawking: "Interestingly enough, Laplace himself wrote a paper
in 1799 on how some stars could have a gravitational field so strong
that light could not escape, but would be dragged back onto the star.
He even calculated that a star of the same density as the Sun, but two
hundred and fifty times the size, would have this property. But
although Laplace may not have realised it, the same idea had been put
forward 16 years earlier by a Cambridge man, John Mitchell, in a paper
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Both Mitchell
and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like
cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall
back on the star. But a famous experiment, carried out by two
Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always
travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a
second, no matter where it came from. How then could gravity slow down
light, and make it fall back."
http://www.time.com/time/time100/poc/magazine/a_brief_history_of_rela6a.html
Stephen Hawking: "So if you were traveling in the same direction as
the light, you would expect that its speed would appear to be lower,
and if you were traveling in the opposite direction to the light, that
its speed would appear to be higher. Yet a series of experiments
failed to find any evidence for differences in speed due to motion
through the ether. The most careful and accurate of these experiments
was carried out by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at the Case
Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887......It was as if light always
traveled at the same speed relative to you, no matter how you were
moving."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
Newton's emission theory of light is incompatible with Einstein's
relativity. Newton's emission theory of light is compatible with
Einstein's relativity:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/rel_of_sim/index.html
John Norton: "But an emission theory is precluded in special
relativity by the part of the light postulate that asserts that the
velocity of light is independent of the velocity of the emitter."
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay-einstein-relativity.htm
This reprints an essay written ca. 1983, "'What Song the Syrens Sang':
How Did Einstein Discover Special Relativity?" in John Stachel,
Einstein from "B" to "Z".
"This was itself a daring step, since these methods had been developed
to help understand the behavior of ordinary matter while Einstein was
applying them to the apparently quite different field of
electromagnetic radiation. The "revolutionary" conclusion to which he
came was that, in certain respects, electromagnetic radiation behaved
more like a collection of particles than like a wave. He announced
this result in a paper published in 1905, three months before his SRT
paper. The idea that a light beam consisted of a stream of particles
had been espoused by Newton and maintained its popularity into the
middle of the 19th century. It was called the "emission theory" of
light, a phrase I shall use.....Giving up the ether concept allowed
Einstein to envisage the possibility that a beam of light was "an
independent structure," as he put it a few years later, "which is
radiated by the light source, just as in Newton's emission theory of
light.".....An emission theory is perfectly compatible with the
relativity principle. Thus, the M-M experiment presented no problem;
nor is stellar abberration difficult to explain on this
basis......This does not imply that Lorentz's equations are adequate
to explain all the features of light, of course. Einstein already knew
they did not always correctly do so-in particular in the processes of
its emission, absorption and its behavior in black body radiation.
Indeed, his new velocity addition law is also compatible with an
emission theory of light, just because the speed of light compounded
with any lesser velocity still yields the same value. If we model a
beam of light as a stream of particles, the two principles can still
be obeyed. A few years later (1909), Einstein first publicly expressed
the view that an adequate future theory of light would have to be some
sort of fusion of the wave and emission theories......The resulting
theory did not force him to choose between wave and emission theories
of light, but rather led him to look forward to a synthesis of the
two."
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i6272.html
John Stachel: "Not only is the theory [of relativity] compatible with
an emission theory of radiation, since it implies that the velocity of
light is always the same relative to its source; the theory also
requires that radiation transfer mass between an emitter and an
absorber, reinforcing Einstein's light quantum hypothesis that
radiation manifests a particulate structure under certain
circumstances."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Whoever
news:06257615-5a59-4e15...@d4g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
A surprisingly nice post :)
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
Triplethink in Einsteiniana: The speed of light does not vary with the
gravitational potential. The speed of light varies with the
gravitational potential V in accordance with Einstein's 1911 equation
c'=c(1+V/c^2). The speed of light varies with the gravitational
potential V in accordance with Einstein's 1915 equation c'=c(1+2V/
c^2):
http://www.astronomynotes.com/relativity/s4.htm
"Prediction: light escaping from a large mass should lose energy---the
wavelength must increase since the speed of light is constant.
Stronger surface gravity produces a greater increase in the
wavelength. This is a consequence of time dilation. Suppose person A
on the massive object decides to send light of a specific frequency f
to person B all of the time. So every second, f wave crests leave
person A. The same wave crests are received by person B in an interval
of time interval of (1+z) seconds. He receives the waves at a
frequency of f/(1+z). Remember that the speed of light c = (the
frequency f) (the wavelength L). If the frequency is reduced by (1+z)
times, the wavelength must INcrease by (1+z) times: L_atB = (1+z)
L_atA. In the doppler effect, this lengthening of the wavelength is
called a redshift. For gravity, the effect is called a gravitational
redshift."
http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_sp_gr.html
"Is light affected by gravity? If so, how can the speed of light be
constant? Wouldn't the light coming off of the Sun be slower than the
light we make here? If not, why doesn't light escape a black hole?
Yes, light is affected by gravity, but not in its speed. General
Relativity (our best guess as to how the Universe works) gives two
effects of gravity on light. It can bend light (which includes effects
such as gravitational lensing), and it can change the energy of light.
But it changes the energy by shifting the frequency of the light
(gravitational redshift) not by changing light speed. Gravity bends
light by warping space so that what the light beam sees as "straight"
is not straight to an outside observer. The speed of light is still
constant." Dr. Eric Christian
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is not constant in
a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as
well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]. If this were
not so, there would be no bending of light by the gravitational field
of stars....Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation
in: 'On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light,'
Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911. which predated the full formal
development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is
widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99
of the Dover book 'The Principle of Relativity.' You will find in
section 3 of that paper, Einstein's derivation of the (variable) speed
of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is,
c' = c0 ( 1 + V / c^2 )
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the
speed of light c0 is measured."
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s6-01/6-01.htm
"In geometrical units we define c_0 = 1, so Einstein's 1911 formula
can be written simply as c=1+phi. However, this formula for the speed
of light (not to mention this whole approach to gravity) turned out to
be incorrect, as Einstein realized during the years leading up to 1915
and the completion of the general theory. In fact, the general theory
of relativity doesn't give any equation for the speed of light at a
particular location, because the effect of gravity cannot be
represented by a simple scalar field of c values. Instead, the "speed
of light" at a each point depends on the direction of the light ray
through that point, as well as on the choice of coordinate systems, so
we can't generally talk about the value of c at a given point in a non-
vanishing gravitational field. However, if we consider just radial
light rays near a spherically symmetrical (and non- rotating) mass,
and if we agree to use a specific set of coordinates, namely those in
which the metric coefficients are independent of t, then we can read a
formula analogous to Einstein's 1911 formula directly from the
Schwarzschild metric. (...) In the Newtonian limit the classical
gravitational potential at a distance r from mass m is phi=-m/r, so if
we let c_r = dr/dt denote the radial speed of light in Schwarzschild
coordinates, we have c_r =1+2phi, which corresponds to Einstein's 1911
equation, except that we have a factor of 2 instead of 1 on the
potential term."
http://www.speed-light.info/speed_of_light_variable.htm
"Einstein wrote this paper in 1911 in German (download from:
http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/annalen/history/einstein-papers/1911_35_898-908.pdf).
It predated the full formal development of general relativity by about
four years. You can find an English translation of this paper in the
Dover book 'The Principle of Relativity' beginning on page 99; you
will find in section 3 of that paper Einstein's derivation of the
variable speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The
result is: c'=c0(1+phi/c^2) where phi is the gravitational potential
relative to the point where the speed of light co is measured......You
can find a more sophisticated derivation later by Einstein (1955) from
the full theory of general relativity in the weak field
approximation....For the 1955 results but not in coordinates see page
93, eqn (6.28): c(r)=[1+2phi(r)/c^2]c. Namely the 1955 approximation
shows a variation in km/sec twice as much as first predicted in
1911."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
John Norton and the consensus in physics "take account of the reality
which one denies":
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html
"General relativity knits together space, time and gravity.
Confounding all common sense, how time passes in Einstein's universe
depends on what you are doing and where you are. Clocks run faster
when the pull of gravity is weaker, so if you live up a skyscraper you
age ever so slightly faster than you would if you lived on the ground
floor, where Earth's gravitational tug is stronger. "General
relativity completely changed our understanding of time," says Carlo
Rovelli, a theoretical physicist at the University of the
Mediterranean in Marseille, France.....It is still not clear who is
right, says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his
instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and
time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that
it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a
malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of
stars, planets and matter."
"By a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge ; and so on
indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth":
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Alden_B_Dow_Museum_of_Science_Art_at_Midland_Center_for_the_Arts_Presents_Einstein_88126_20090723
"Einstein's Revolution-Visitors are introduced to how radically Albert
Einstein's work in physics reconfigured our modern understanding of
the universe. In 1919, Einstein shot to international fame when
British astronomers observing a solar eclipse confirmed one of the
most astonishing predictions of his General Theory of Relativity: that
the Sun's gravity deflects light from distant stars. The classic
Newtonian view of gravity as a simple force between objects was
overthrown by Einstein's vision of gravity as the result of objects
warping space-time. A large video installation graphically simulates
this by distorting the images of visitors by the imaginary gravity of
a projected black hole."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html
Steve Carlip, Professor, University of California, Davis: "Einstein
went on to discover a more general theory of relativity which
explained gravity in terms of curved spacetime, and he talked about
the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the 1920 book
"Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: ". . .
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. A curvature of rays of
light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light
varies with position." Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector
quantity: speed with direction) rather than speed alone, it is not
clear that he meant the speed will change, but the reference to
special relativity suggests that he did mean so. [Einsteiniana's
subtlest practitioners "take account of the reality which one
denies":] THIS INTERPRETATION IS PERFECTLY VALID AND MAKES GOOD
PHYSICAL SENSE, ["By a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
of the truth":] BUT A MORE MODERN INTERPRETATION IS THAT THE SPEED OF
LIGHT IS CONSTANT IN GENERAL RELATIVITY."
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-17.html#seventeen
George Orwell: "It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners
of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is
a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the
best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest
from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the
understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the
less sane."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com
Pentcho Valev
> George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
> contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
> of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
> must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
> reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
> that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
> would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
> be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
> hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
> the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
> retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
> tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
> fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
> again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
> to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
> account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
> necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
> exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
> tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
> knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
> of the truth."
Multiplethink in Einsteiniana:
http://www.answers.com/topic/gravitational-redshift
"The gravitational weakening of light from high-gravity stars was
predicted by John Michell in 1783 and Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1796,
using Isaac Newton's concept of light corpuscles (see: emission
theory) and who predicted that some stars would have a gravity so
strong that light would not be able to escape. The effect of gravity
on light was then explored by Johann Georg von Soldner (1801), who
calculated the amount of deflection of a light ray by the sun,
arriving at the Newtonian answer which is half the value predicted by
general relativity. All of this early work assumed that light could
slow down and fall, which was inconsistent with the modern
understanding of light waves. Once it became accepted that light is an
electromagnetic wave, it was clear that the frequency of light should
not change from place to place, since waves from a source with a fixed
frequency keep the same frequency everywhere. The only way around this
conclusion would be if time itself was altered - if clocks at
different points had different rates. This was precisely Einstein's
conclusion in 1911. He considered an accelerating box, and noted that
according to the special theory of relativity, the clock rate at the
bottom of the box was slower than the clock rate at the top. (...) The
changing rates of clocks allowed Einstein to conclude that light waves
change frequency as they move, and the frequency/energy relationship
for photons allowed him to see that this was best interpreted as the
effect of the gravitational field on the mass-energy of the photon."
Pentcho Valev
pva...@yahoo.com