Aristotle said "The mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting it" and I'd say the mark of a health society is to be able to discuss any idea openly without censoring it. This applies to physics too. I developed MiHsC by looking at controversial data like the Pioneer anomaly (even more controversial now!) with an attitude of not necessarily accepting the anomaly, but just seeing whether it was explainable in a new way. As soon as you start either blindly believing in what you are doing, or on the other hand become too wary of what others think, you become sterile and lose the sense of curiosity or fun that is necessary to continue. I remember Feynman once felt he got himself out of a sterile hole by writing 'Disregard (others)' on his blackboard. In science, doubt and data are crucial.
This is a creeping problem in our society, in that avenues of exploration are being closed down and data is being ignored by people who feel they have the final answer. No-one has the final answer, and if someone ever claims to, speak calmly and run quickly! It's best to allow everyone's ideas to be debated openly, because you never know where a useful answer will come from. Look at physics: the first action-at-a-distance theory of gravity was inspired by Newton's obsession with alchemy, back then a dangerous and wrong-headed idea, but nevertheless stimulating. If a problem has been around for awhile, like galaxy rotation today, the answer never comes from an acceptable direction, because those have been tried already.
This is a quote (from Pais, 1982) that has intrigued me for years: 'Einstein wrote this to his old friend M. Besso, one year before his (E's) death: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, ie: on continuous structures. In that case nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitational theory included and the rest of modern physics".'. This shows that although Einstein's main thrust was in the opposite direction to me (from general relativity to quantum mechanics), he had a healthy doubtful attitude to the end, and occasionally considered non-continuum physics, eg: horizons, which MiHsC is based on.
This is a quote (from Pais, 1982) that has intrigued me for years: 'Einstein wrote this to his old friend M. Besso, one year before his (E's) death: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, ie: on continuous structures. In that case nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitational theory included and the rest of modern physics".'. This shows that although Einstein's main thrust was in the opposite direction to me (from general relativity to quantum mechanics), he had a healthy doubtful attitude to the end, and occasionally considered non-continuum physics, eg: horizons, which MiHsC is based on.
References
Pais, A., 1982. Subtle is the Lord (see page 467).
2 comments:
Long quote from 'Star Drive' at NSF tonight:
***Lastly, the Eagleworks Lab's next paper on the Q-V entitled "Dynamics of the Vacuum" will be out on the NASA NTRS internet servers just any day now. I've already provided this forum a one page abstract and introduction for this paper, but I need to agree with those that are saying that in the end analysis, the seat of all mater and space is nothing more than waves and various vortices AKA elementary particles in the Q-V. And we also think from our ongoing work that gravity is an emergent phenomenon that is nothing more than a Q-V flow field between other Q-V entities. So when the EM-Drive creates a thrust like phenomenon, what is really happening is that the EM-drive configuration is just setting up these Q-V flows via magneto-Hydro-Dynamics (MHD) like rules that translate into our 4D universe as space-time distortions or differential gravity gradients surrounding the drive.***
Sounds almost like an echo of your theory.
He also included a nifty multicolored chart I can't make heads nor tails of.
Hm. What they're proposing uses the zpf, but not Unruh radiation & not horizon-quantisation, so it is very different from MiHsC (& too contrived in my view). I'll say more when their paper comes out on NSF..
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