Dr. Bryan G. Wallace
FARCE OF PHYSICS
Chapter 1
Sacred Science
The title of this book was inspired by Dr. Fritjof Capra's
book The Tao of Physics. Capra, a theoretical physicist states:
The purpose of this book is to explore this relationship
between the concepts of modern physics and the basic ideas in
the philosophical and religious traditions of the Far East.
We shall see how the two foundations of twentieth-century
physicsДДquantum theory and relativity theoryДДboth force us
to see the world very much in the way a Hindu, Buddhist, or
Taoist sees it, and how this similarity strengthens when we
look at the recent attempts to combine these two theories in
order to describe the phenomena of the submicroscopic world:
the properties and interactions of the subatomic particles of
which all matter is made. Here the parallels between modern
physics and Eastern mysticism are most striking, and we shall
often encounter statements where it is almost impossible to
say whether they have been made by physicists or Eastern
mystics. [1 p.4]
This presents an interesting question, what is the difference
between modern physics and Eastern mysticism? There was a
fascinating debate concerning creation-science published in the
letters section of the journal Physics Today that directly
relates to this question. The journal is sent free of charge to
all members of the American Physical Society. The Society is the
largest physics society in the world, and has world-wide
membership. The letters section is popular, and is probably the
most important communicative link between the world's physicists.
The following quote is from a letter by Prof. Harry W. Ellis, a
Professor of Physics at Eckerd College:
On the other hand, the scientist (or anyone) who dismisses
religion because the idea of an omnipotent God is logically
inconsistent is guilty of intellectual hypocrisy. Does he or
she think that science is free from inconsistencies? Perhaps
he or she is not aware of the existence of Russell's paradox
or Goedel's Theorem. Actually, aside from obvious
methodological differences, science and theology have much in
common. Each is an attempt to model reality, founded on
unprovable articles of faith. If the existence of a benign
supreme being is the fundamental assumption at the heart of
religion, certainly the practice of science is founded on the
unprovable hypothesis that the universe is rationalДДthat its
behavior is subject to human understanding. Through science
we construct highly useful models which permit us to
understand the universe, in the sense of predicting its
behavior. Let us not commit the elementary epistemological
mistake of confusing the model with reality. Surely
scientists, as well as religious leaders, should possess
sufficient maturity to realize that whatever ultimate reality
there may be is not directly accessible to mortal humans.[2]
Dr. Rodney B. Hall of the University of Iowa writes:
Perhaps faith or the lack of it is simply a matter of
indoctrination. You have been indoctrinated by the priests or
the professors or both.[3]
Dr. John C. Bortz of the University of Rochester argues:
Faith is not a valid cognitive procedure. When it is
accepted as such, the process of rational argumentation
degenerates into a contest of whims, and any idea, no matter
how absurd or evil, may be successfully defended by claiming
that those who advocate it feel, somehow, that it is right. In
such a philosophical environment ideas are accepted not on the
basis of how logical they are but rather on the basis of how
much "feeling" their advocates seem to have. Unfortunately,
the acceptance of ideas on this basis has been and continues to
be the dominant epistemological trend in the world.[4]
Dr. Anthony L. Peratt of Los Alamos states:
It is almost amusing to see the proponents of Big Bang
cosmology, who have themselves been accused of fostering a
religious intolerance toward those who question whether the
foundations of the Big Bang hypothesis are scientifically
justifiable, now getting a dose of their own medicine from
biblical creationists.[5]
Dr. Carl A. Zapffe presents the view that:
Science deserves every whack it gets from the so-called
creationists, for a charge of puritanical posture belongs as
much to one side as to the other.[6]
The governing body of the American Physical Society has
released the following official statement on the matter:
The Council of The American Physical Society opposes
proposals to require "equal time" for presentation in public
school science classes of the biblical story of creation and
the scientific theory of evolution. The issues raised by such
proposals, while mainly focused on evolution, have important
implications for the entire spectrum of scientific inquiry,
including geology, physics, and astronomy. In contrast to
"Creationism," the systematic application of scientific
principles has led to a current picture of life, of the nature
of our planet, and of the universe which, while incomplete, is
constantly being tested and refined by observation and
analysis. This ability to construct critical experiments,
whose results can require rejection of a theory, is fundamental
to the scientific method. While our society must constantly
guard against oversimplified or dogmatic descriptions of
science in the education process, we must also resist attempts
to interfere with the presentation of properly developed
scientific principles in establishing guidelines for classroom
instruction or in the development of scientific textbooks. We
therefore strongly oppose any requirement for parallel
treatment of scientific and non-scientific discussions in
science classes. Scientific inquiry and religious beliefs are
two distinct elements of the human experience. Attempts to
present them in the same context can only lead to
misunderstandings of both.[7]
I expect that the average scientist would agree with the
following argument presented by Dr. Michael A. Seeds:
...A pseudoscience is something that pretends to be a science
but does not obey the rules of good conduct common to all
sciences. Thus such subjects are false sciences.
True science is a method of studying nature. It is a set of
rules that prevents scientists from lying to each other or to
themselves. Hypotheses must be open to testing and must be
revised in the face of contradictory evidence. All evidence
must be considered and all alternative hypotheses must be
explored. The rules of good science are nothing more than the
rules of good thinkingДДthat is, the rules of intellectual
honesty.[8 p.A5]
This brings up an interesting question; Do scientists actually
practice what they preach? The evidence clearly shows that the
average scientist tends not to use the rules of good science. In
fact, it appears that Protestant ministers are inclined to have
more intellectual honesty than Ph.D. scientists. To document
this fact, I will quote from an article titled "Researchers Found
Reluctant to Test Theories" by Dr. David Dickson:
Despite the emphasis placed by philosophers of science on
the importance of "falsification"ДДthe idea that one of a
scientist's main concerns should be to try to find evidence
that disproves rather than supports a particular
hypothesisДДexperiments reported at the AAAS annual meeting
suggest that research workers are in practice reluctant to put
their pet theories to such a test.
In a paper on self-deception in science, Michael J. Mahoney
of the University of California at Santa Barbara described the
results of a field trial in which a group of 30 Ph.D.
scientists were given 10 minutes to find the rule used to
construct a sequence of three numbers, 2,4,6, by making up new
sequences, inquiring whether they obeyed the same rule, and
then announcing (or "publishing") what they concluded the rule
to be when they felt sufficiently confident.
The results obtained by the scientists were compared to
those achieved by a control group of 15 Protestant ministers.
Analysis showed that the ministers conducted two to three times
more experiments for every hypothesis that they put forward,
were more than three times slower in "publishing" their first
hypothesis, and were only about half as likely as the
scientists to return to a hypothesis that had already been
disconfirmed.[9]
There is an interesting article by Dr. T. Theocharis and Dr.
M. Psimopoulos of the Department of Physics of the Imperial
College of Science and Technology in London titled "Where science
has gone wrong," that explores the arguments put forth by
prominent scientists and philosophers with regard to the nature
of modern science.[10] The following is several quotes from that
article:
On 17 and 22 February 1986 BBC television broadcast, in the
highly regarded Horizon series, a film entitled "Science ...
Fiction?", and in the issue of 20 February 1986 The Listener
published an article entitled "The Fallacy of Scientific
Objectivity". As is evident from their titles, these were
attacks against objectivity, truth and science....
This state of affairs is bad enough. But things are even
worse: perversely, many individual scientists and philosophers
seem bent on questioning and rejecting the true theses, and
supporting the antitheses. For example, most of the
participants in the "Science ... Fiction?" film were academic
scientists....
Popper also thought that observations are theory-laden. He
phrased it thus: "Sense-data, untheoretical items of
observation, simply do not exist....[11]
But if observations are theory-laden, this means that
observations are simply theories, and then how can one theory
falsify (never mind verify) another theory?...[12]
So back to square one: if verifiability and falsifiability
are not the criteria, then what makes a proposition scientific?
It is hard to discern the answer to this question in Lakatos's
writings. But if any answer is discerned at all, it is one
that contradicts flagrantly the motto of the Royal Society: "I
am not bound to swear as any master dictates".[13] This answer
is more obvious in Thomas Kuhn's[14] writings: a proposition is
scientific if it is sanctioned by the scientific establishment.
(Example: if the scientific establishment decrees that "fairies
exist", then this would be scientific indeed.)
According to Kuhn, science is not the steady, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge that was portrayed in old-fashioned
textbooks. Rather, it is an endless succession of long
peaceful periods which are violently interrupted by brief
intellectual revolutions. During the peaceful period, which
Kuhn calls "normal science", scientists are guided by a set of
theories, standards and methods, which Kuhn collectively
designates as a "paradigm". (Others call it a "world-view".)
During a revolution, the old paradigm is violently overthrown
and replaced by a new one....
Kuhn's view, that a proposition is scientific if it is
sanctioned by the scientific establishment, gives rise to the
problematic question: what exactly makes an establishment
"scientific"? This particular Gordian knot was cut by Paul
Feyerabend: any proposition is scientificДД"There is only one
principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in
all stages of human development. It is the principle: Anything
goes"....[15]
In 1979 Science published a four-page complimentary
feature[16] about Feyerabend, the Salvador Dali of academic
philosophy, and currently the worst enemy of science. In this
article Feyerabend was quoted as stating that "normal science
is a fairy tale" and that "equal time should be given to
competing avenues of knowledge such as astrology, acupuncture,
and witchcraft." Oddly, religion was omitted. For according
to Feyerabend (and the "Science ... Fiction?" film too),
religionДДand everything elseДДis an equally valid avenue of
knowledge. In fact on one occasion Feyerabend
characteristically put science on a par with "religion,
prostitution and so on."[15]
The above mentioned Prof. Thomas S. Kuhn, was a man who wrote a
controversial book on science. In an interview of Kuhn by John
Horgan on page 40 of the May 1991 issue of the prestigious US
journal SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, we find the following:
... "The book" The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
commonly called the most influential treatise ever written on
how science does (or does not) proceed. Since its publication
in 1962, it has sold nearly a million copies in 16 languages,
and it is still fundamental reading in courses on the history
and philosophy of science.
The book is notable for having spawned that trendy term
"paradigm." It also fomented the now trite idea that
personalities and politics play a large role in science.
Perhaps the book's most profound argument is less obvious:
scientists can never fully understand the "real world" or
evenДДto a crucial degreeДДone another...
Denying the view of science as a continual building process,
Kuhn asserts that a revolution is a destructive as well as a
creative event. The proposer of a new paradigm stands on the
shoulders of giants and then bashes them over the head. He or
she is often young or new to the field, that is, not fully
indoctrinated....
Dr. Spencer Weart directs the Center for History of Physics at
the American Institute of Physics in New York. In his
interesting article THE PHYSICIST AS MAD SCIENTIST published in
Physics Today, he writes:
The public image of the scientist partly evolved out of ideas
about wizards. Here was an impressive figure, known to all
from early childhood, reaching back through ancient sorcery
legends to prehistoric shamans.[17 p.28]
Prof. Albert Einstein states the following on the general lack
of scientific integrity in the temple of science:
In the temple of science are many mansions, and various
indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have
led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense
of superior intellectual power; science is their own special
sport to which they look for vivid experience and the
satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the
temple who have offered the products of their brains on this
altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the
Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two
categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously
depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present
and past times, left inside.[39 p.224]
In Ronald W. Clark's definitive biography of Einstein, we find
what Einstein means when he makes the above statement pertaining
to the Lord, or some of his other famous statements such as "God
is subtle, but he is not malicious" or "God does not play dice
with the world.":
However Einstein's God was not the God of most other men.
When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later
life, he tended to adopt the belief of Alice's Red Queen that
"words mean what you want them to mean," and to clothe with
different names what to more ordinary mortalsДДand to most
JewsДДlooked like a variant of simple agnosticism. Replying in
1929 to a cabled inquiry from Rabbi Goldstein of New York, he
said that he believed "in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in
the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns
himself with the fate and actions of men." And it is claimed
that years later, asked by Ben-Gurion whether he believed in
God, "even he, with his great formula about energy and mass,
agreed that there must be something behind the energy." No
doubt. But much of Einstein's writing gives the impression of
belief in a God even more intangible and impersonal than a
celestial machine minder, running the universe with
undisputable authority and expert touch. Instead, Einstein's
God appears as the physical world itself, with its infinitely
marvelous structure operating at atomic level with the beauty
of a craftsman's wristwatch, and at stellar level with the
majesty of a massive cyclotron. This was belief enough. It
grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the
title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible
respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a
life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the
earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect
rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an
orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those
who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go
on searching for them. And it was to this task which he began
to turn his mind soon after the age of twelve. For the rest of
his life everything else was to seem almost trivial by
comparison.[38 p.38]
In an expansion of Einstein's views with regard to a scientific
cosmic religion, Clark states:
Maybe. To some extent the differences between Einstein and
more conventional believers were semantic, a point brought out
in his "Religion and Science" which, on Sunday, November 9,
occupied the entire first page of the New York Times Magazine.
"Everything that men do or think," it began, "concerns the
satisfaction of the needs they feel or the escape from pain."
Einstein then went on to outline three states of religious
development, starting with the religion of fear that moved
primitive people, and which in due course became the moral
religion whose driving force was social feelings. This in turn
could become the "cosmic religious sense ... which recognizes
neither dogmas nor God made in man's image." And he then put
the key to his ideas in two sentences. "I assert that the
cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest
driving force behind scientific research." And, as a
corollary, "the only deeply religious people of our largely
materialistic age are the earnest men of research."[38 p.516]
With reference to the general view of most scientists with
regard to science and religion, there is a very interesting FOCAL
POINT article in the journal Sky & Telescope by Dr. Paul Davies,
a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide
Australia.[139] The title of the article is What Hath COBE
Wrought?, and the following statements are from the article:
THE BLAZE of publicity that accompanied the recent discovery of
ripples in the heat radiation from the Big Bang focused
attention once again on the subject of God and creation.
Commentators disagree on the theological significance of what
NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, found. Some
referred to the ripples as the "fingerprint of God," while
others lashed out at what they saw as the scientists' attempt
to demystify God's last refuge.
When the Big Bang theory became popular in the 1950s, many
people used it to support the belief that the universe was
created by God at some specific moment in the past. And some
still regard the Big Bang as "the creation" ДД a divine act to
be left beyond the scope of science.... Cosmologist regard the
Big Bang as marking the origin of space and time, as well as of
matter and energy.... This more sophisticated, but abstract,
idea of God adapts well to the scientific picture of a universe
subject to timeless eternal laws.... If time itself began with
the Big Bang, then the question "What caused the Big Bang?" is
rendered meaningless.... New and exciting theories of quantum
cosmology seek to explain the origin of the universe within the
framework of scientific law. Their central feature is
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which permits genuine
spontaneity in nature. As a result, the tight linkage between
cause and effect so characteristic of classical physics is
loosened. Quantum events do not need well-defined prior
causes; they can be regarded as spontaneous fluctuations. It
is then possible to imagine the universe coming into being from
nothing entirely spontaneously, without violating any laws.
Sir Isaac Newton, in his reasoning in support of the particle
(corpuscular) model of light in space, as opposed to the wave in
ether model, presented the argument:
Against filling the Heavens with fluid mediums, unless they be
exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and
very lasting motions of the Planets and Comets. For thence it
is manifest, that the Heavens are void of all sensible
resistance, and by consequence of all sensible matter.[140]
In 1846 Michael Faraday wrote in his diary:
All I can say is, that I do not perceive in any part of space,
whether (to use the common phrase) vacant or filled with
matter, anything but forces and the lines in which they
exerted.[141]
This was the beginning of the dominant modern physics theories,
where it is the geometric and physical conditions of space itself
that is fundamental. Prof. Eyvind H. Wichmann, in the Berkeley
Physics Course, Volume 4, quantum physics, presents the following
argument:
35 Today the mechanical ether has been banished from the
world of physics, and the word "ether" itself, because of its
"bad" connotations, no longer occurs in textbooks on physics.
We talk ostentatiously about the "vacuum" instead, thereby
indicating our lack of interest in the medium in which waves
propagate. We no longer ask what it is that "really
oscillates" when we study electromagnetic waves or de Broglie
waves. All we wish to do is to formulate wave equations for
these waves, through which we can predict experimentally
observable phenomena....[122]
There is a popular argument that the world's oldest profession
is sexual prostitution. I think that it is far more likely that
the oldest profession is scientific prostitution, and that it is
still alive and well, and thriving in the 20th century. I
suspect that long before sex had any commercial value, the
prehistoric shamans used their primitive knowledge to acquire
status, wealth, and political power, in much the same way as the
dominant scientific and religious politicians of our time do. So
in a sense, I tend to agree with Weart's argument that the
earliest scientists were the prehistoric shamans, and the
argument of Feyerabend that puts science on a par with religion
and prostitution. I also tend to agree with the argument of
Ellis that states that both science and theology have much in
common, and both attempt to model reality on arguments based on
unprovable articles of faith. Using the logic that if it looks
like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it must
be a duck: I support the argument that since there is no
significant difference between science and religion, science
should be considered a religion! I would also agree with Ellis'
argument of the obvious methodological differences between
science and the other religions. The other dominant religions
are static because their arguments are based on rigid doctrines
set forth by their founders, such as Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad,
who have died long ago. Science on the other hand, is a dynamic
religion that was developed by many men over a long period of
time, and it has a flexible doctrine, the scientific method, that
demands that the arguments change to conform to the evolving
observational and experimental evidence.
The word science was derived from the Latin word scientia,
which means knowledge, so we see that the word, in essence, is
just another word for knowledge. An associate of mine, Prof.
Richard Rhodes II, a Professor of Physics at Eckerd College, once
told me that students in his graduate school used to joke that
Ph.D. stood for Piled higher and Deeper. If one considers the
vast array of abstract theoretical garbage that dominates modern
physics and astronomy, this appears to be an accurate description
of the degree. Considering the results from Mahoney's field
trial that showed Protestant ministers were two to three times
more likely to use scientific methodology than Ph.D. scientists,
it seems reasonable to consider that they have two to three times
more right to be called scientists then the so-called Ph.D.
scientists. I would agree with Popper's argument that
observations are theory-laden, and there is no way to prove an
argument beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, but at the very
least, the scientist should do more than pay lip service to the
scientific method. The true scientist must have faith and
believe in the scientific method of testing theories, and not in
the theories themselves. I agree with Seeds argument that "A
pseudoscience is something that pretends to be a science but does
not obey the rules of good conduct common to all sciences."
Because many of the dominant theories of our time do not follow
the rules of science, they should more properly be labeled
pseudoscience. The people who tend to believe more in theories
than in the scientific method of testing theories, and who ignore
the evidence against the theories they believe in, should be
considered pseudoscientists and not true scientists. To the
extent that the professed beliefs are based on the desire for
status, wealth , or political reasons, these people are
scientific prostitutes.
I agree with Newton's argument that if light was a wave in the
ether, the ether would have to be nonsensible matter. Calling
the ether space or vacuum does not solve the problem. Its
existence is based on blind faith and not experimental evidence.
As I will show in the following Chapters, there is an
overwhelming body of evidence that light is a particle, as Newton
predicted. The fact that most modern physicists have refused to
objectively consider this evidence, has made a farce of physics.
This empty space of modern physics is a supernatural solid[123]
that can have infinite temperature and density.[105] A spot of
this material that is smaller than an atom is supposed to have
created the entire universe.[8 p.325] This physical material has
become the God of most modern physicists!
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