On the 8th of April I sent the letter below to about one hundred physicists around the world. I selected the majority of them to be from some of the most prominent optics journals on the planet, and a few from a number of equally prestigious universities on four continents.
Open letter to the current establishment of physicists
One of the first prismatic experiments conducted by Newton was the following one (as described by the great man himself in "Of colours" and with his own accompanying illustration):
On a black peice of paper I drew a line opq, whereof one halfe op was a good blew the other pq a good deepe red (chosen by Prob. of Colours). And looking on it through the Prisme adf, it appeared broken in two twixt the colours, as at rst, the blew parte rs being nearer the vertex ab of the Prisme than the red parte st. Soe that blew rays suffer a greater refraction than red ones.
Many years later, when finally Opticks was published, this experiment became the first piece of evidence listed by Newton as empirical proof of validity for his theory of light and colours, and to this day no one seems to have found (as far as I know) any reason or need to contest this particular Newtonian claim. And this is a deeply disturbing reality, once you realise how terribly flawed the whole issue really is and how easy it is to establish that beyond the shadow of any doubt. So easy, in fact, that in this letter I shall leave aside all but one of the arguments I could bring forward in support of my declaration. This one and only (for the time being) argument I will make use of comes in the form of the picture below, at which I will ask you to look at through a triangular prism (oriented with the refracting angle towards your left) from a distance of about 0.5m.
So, what do you think? If you're not sure yet have a look (with the naked eye, not through your prism) at the image below, then think a little more.
How about now? Still not sure? Pick up your prism again, then, and look through it at the image below.
Now, what I have brought forward in this letter should be compelling enough to persuade you to accept (in earnest) my invitation to www.jaccuse.info where I will lay in front of you many other flaws in the conventional understanding of the nature of light and colours. In return to all this I am formally asking you to mercilessly crush with the power of your theoretical arguments and experimental evidence any flawed claim you may find there, and to also openly scorn and ridicule me to the maximum extent of your will.
Thanking you for your attention,
Remus Poradin
Two weeks have passed in the meantime, and until today I have received a grand total of one reply out of 100. One reply it may have only been, but let me tell you: What a reply!
There’s nothing in your second figure to discredit Newton. Your screen colors are not perfectly pure, so of course the lines will be broadened. And since blue light is refracted more strongly than red light, of course the lines are offset. So what?
Steven I. Dutch
Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
Fax 920-465-2376
Well? Remember Professor Dutch? When I received his email, I couldn't help but ask myself: Is this mere coincidence, or fate? An answer to that question though is too early to find, and so I'll say no more beside showing you below my own reply to the man.
Mr. Dutch,
A few days ago when I received your reply to my letter, I read the four crisp sentences it contained in one breath, and then I smiled indulgently. Today, however, I happened to read your email again, and in an instant I realised that the indulgentness I'd adopted was a foolish magnanimity on my part. Had your message contained only the first three sentences it did I would have still treated your (rather gross) failing to understand the issues in my letter with some leniency. Alas, your reply contained a fourth sentence—and one that I must not omit to answer to in a manner that it truly deserves.
Before going any further I want to ask you one question: Have you got any idea for what purpose I used the two green lines in the picture? You don't have to answer this question to me—just keep it to yourself for now, if you have one. And now, let me answer your “so what?” question.
You see, Mr. Dutch, the simple fact is that the 'arguments' you have raised (the non-purity of my colours and the broadening of the lines seen through the prism) are totally irrelevant to the matter, and the conventional explanation you have used for my 'offset' lines is one expressed in gibberish. To cut a long story short my pictures demonstrably show that in subjective prismatic experiments the colours red and blue are bent in opposite directions. Now this is a fact that neither Newton nor any of his proselytes have picked up on for almost four centuries, in spite of the necessary evidence requiring only a very modest leap of imagination to be obtained.
So, how do I know that in subjective prismatic experiments the colours red and blue bend in opposite directions? Very simple, really. You see, Mr. Dutch, that's why I used the green lines—for in my work I have come to learn that the colour green does not bend at all in a prism! Did you know that? OK. Then, to show you that the matter of fact is that such is the simple truth indeed, I am dropping below a fool-proof demonstration of it. Just take a prism and look through it at the picture below (vertex to your left, first, and then as you'll feel like).
Try this observation from a few different distances too, and then do yourself a favour and come and visit my site www.jaccuse.info to learn a few more things you might not know (or understand). Like, for instance, do you know that there is one other colour that shows no refraction whatsoever in the prism?
Goodbye, Mr. Dutch, and take from all this the following lesson: There is a very fine line between a prophet and a buffoon.
I learned from a professional chess player (an international master) the greatest secret in chess. That is that you should never think more than two, maximum three, moves ahead (and three only in special cases). There is a condition attached to this; that those two-three moves are the best under the circumstances. And there is also an addendum to that condition: That your next move is the best of the two-three step scenario you thought out. This is the best strategy to use in chess, and it's a secret for most. Which is terribly unfortunate, because the wisdom of that strategy should be known by all those who are telling others what they should believe and do.
I'm telling you this because I have a blue. A blue with those who are convinced that they know a real Truth, if you know what I mean.
They are convinced because they have been the direct beneficiaries of the knowledge and wisdom of many others, who have thought and searched for the only truth that matters—the Truth. Those people, past-present-and-future, should know why that secret chess strategy is an absolute requirement for the great player. And even if they're ignorant of it, they should arrive at it by reason.
When you are facing any complex task, you must eventually come to the simplest (best) conclusion under the circumstances: Complexity is an evolution of simplicity. There is an evolutionary process in every physical system, and its degree of complexity is dictated by the number of participants in that process, and by its (process') length. The simplicity within any system is the fact that the participants' interaction is reliable—and therefore predictable, by definition.
Now, if you're a priest, an economist, a statesman, or a contemporary physicist, you will be ready to cry foul at this point, but try to put a moratorium on that for a while. Consider for now that in chess the behaviour of each piece is predetermined and predictable.
There is no system more complex than the Universe itself. The Universe is so incredibly complex because it is formed by an ever-increasing number of participants that have been involved in a long evolutionary process. If you're a linguist, or a contemporary conventional physicist, you're ready once again to raise your voice in protest. If you're a linguist I don't care, but if you are a physicist who cannot see further than what you have been told, and if you want to remind me of the conventional conclusion extracted from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, then I will take the time to show you how badly you have missed the mark (even though that will also make my blood boil a little).
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, you've been telling the world, shows that the entropy in any closed system will never decrease. Which you explain in a couple of ways, usually, for those that are not your peers. When one is pouring milk into a cup of coffee, one is seeing the Second Law of Thermodynamics at work. Before the milk is poured into the coffee there is a relatively high degree of order in your-coffee-system, because all-milk-participants and all-coffee-participants are separated. This also means that the degree of disorder, the entropy, is relatively low. As you pour the milk into the coffee, the degree of order in your-coffee-system is increasingly diminishing, while the entropy is correspondingly increasing. This increase in entropy is observed to be the unavoidable characteristic of any system, you're claiming further, and nothing can be done about it. For example, you continue, an egg you clumsily dropped on the kitchen floor will always break and splatter, changing the initial high order (low entropy) your-breakfast-system into a low order (high entropy) one. Or an even better example, you insist, is a newly unpacked deck of cards before its first shuffle, and after.
As a conventional contemporary physicist, you firmly believe that such descriptions of the physical reality are fully validated by the mathematical logic of the Second Law, and by the observations and experiments conducted over the years. Indeed, you are so convinced that what you're saying on this issue is a real Truth that you have extended the idea of the entropy that never decreases to the whole Universe—becoming a doomsday prophet in the process.
Alas, you have been clearly ignorant about the wisdom of the secret strategy in chess, and you will categorically lose in that game. Not only that, you'll also pay at some point for every mistake you made in that game, and that's why you will lose badly. After all you have chosen to play against the absolute master, the Truth, and in such game a lack of wisdom coupled with poor reasoning makes for a totally forgettable game.
A deck of cards before its first shuffle has 52 participants, which are arranged in a certain order. The act of shuffling is an evolutionary process, I say, but you will probably dispute that. You see low entropy before the shuffle, higher entropy after it. I see differently: I see low complexity before the shuffle, higher complexity after it. For you, the degree of disorder never decreases in a closed system; for me, the degree of complexity never decreases. You see the shuffling of a deck of cards as a regression of a system; I see it as a definite progression. Who is right? Who is wrong? I will not answer those questions, but I'll invite you to think about them in the context of a game of poker. Or of any other card game, really.
A physicist is involved in a game that outweighs chess in complexity by a very large factor. A contemporary physicist believes that he's a better player at this game than any of his predecessors. After all he has inherited a great deal of knowledge and experience from them, and he is convinced that his understanding of the game at this point in time is better than at any other time in the past. The contemporary physicist has many advantages over his predecessors, but that has failed to materialise in the game he's playing now. Indeed, nothing he has done in the last 80-90 years has increased in any significant way what he will leave for the physicist of tomorrow. Naturally, he's asking himself why, even though he's not ready to make that confession to the world.
The main reason for never thinking more than two (very rarely three) moves ahead in chess is that with every extra move the number of possible scenarios increases dramatically—which is not only increasingly difficult to monitor in mind, but is also increasingly likely to confuse you in choosing the best option from among the contenders every time you have to move.
The contemporary physicist is trying to make the next move in the game he's playing, and that's to unify Relativity with QM. This unification must uncompromisingly be possible, for otherwise at least one of those two theoretical descriptions held so dear by the contemporary physicist must be wrong. If that unification is not possible, the contemporary physicist has inherited the augmented effects of a poor move, and that means that an end is in sight and a new game is required. For now, though, the contemporary physicist is still assessing likely scenarios under the circumstances he's inherited. Alas, he's well past the two-three moves strategy of the chess mastering wisdom. But no amount of desperation or stubbornness will alter the end result.
My universe (is so much different than yours...)
Physics is my love. It has been so for many years and it shall remain so until my last day here. Physics is a scientific endeavour, and I am convinced that I understand what that means and entails. Physics is a scientific endeavour fiercely conducted by people with great intellectual abilities, with vast amounts of acquired knowledge, and with enormous egos. Physicists can be dreamers, adventurers, plotters, warriors, lawyers, politicians... given the right circumstances physicists can become all those things and many others too. Sometimes physicists become revolutionaries, rising against their own kind, if they believe strongly enough in something that contradicts the wisdom of the reigning establishment. But the number of revolutionary physicists is much, much smaller than the number of conservative physicists. Which is not at all surprising, considering that (by definition) no establishment wants a revolution. Needless to say, a conservative attitude is more often than not a vital ingredient in any scientific endeavour, acting as a preventive insurance against potentially frequent periods of anarchy or stagnations of the yo-yo kind. On the other hand, however, no progress can be made in any endeavour without revolutions. This is a paradox of the most inconvenient kind.
There haven't been many genuinely progressive revolutions in physics. You can in fact count them all by using just the fingers of one hand. All progress in physics has taken place when humanity advanced between the three great eras of intellectual achievement experienced hitherto. The first of those eras extended from the Golden Age of Greece to the times of Galileo and Newton, the second era lasted for about three hundred years to Maxwell and Einstein, and the third—our own era—has been unfolding for the last hundred years, or so, from the times of Planck and Bohr to the present.
Let me now make clear the fact that the description above of the history of physics as having experienced three major eras of progress is entirely mine, according to my own criteria. That's because no modern physicist would consider my first era as a genuine scientific investigation of the physical reality. According to the modern credo the genuinely scientific investigation of the material reality that we call physics only began with the work of Galileo in the sixteenth century. No one before Galileo could be regarded as having done "physics", and certainly not the Greek thinkers of the Golden Age—would a modern physicist insist.
The modern physicist is no longer in awe of what the Greeks of the Golden Age have left for us. Sure, he may still be mildly impressed by the artistic and philosophical legacies of the time, and he would probably show a bit more excitement when the mathematics and geometry we have inherited from them become topics of discussion, but apart from that there's not much that could arouse his attention. In fact, the modern physicist smiles with an embarrassing degree of condescension when he remembers Democritus' atoms or Aristotle's view of the material reality as described in the treatise, he called Physics!
In spite of this contemporary disinterest in that era there was a time when physicists used to have a much greater respect for the works and ideas of the Golden Age. What happened that completely changed that situation? A couple of things. Firstly, when Galileo began conducting experiments in order to test hypotheses it suddenly became clear that virtually everything the ancient Greeks (Aristotle especially) have taught the world was wrong. The Greeks were known to deplore experimentation, and all of a sudden that particular trait of theirs was perceived as a major flaw in their investigative and rational outlook on reality. Secondly, with the advent of the modern theories at macroscopic and microscopic levels some of the Greek concepts that were still considered valid until recently have been discarded as well. The modern evaluation of the Golden Age may thus seem reasonable, indeed justified.
But I beg to differ, and I'll tell you why.
In regards to the first thing, it mustn't be forgotten that although the Greeks of the Golden Age did not conduct experiments specifically designed to test hypotheses, they had been keen observers, nonetheless, and their hypotheses were designed to explain their observations. The fact that they were wrong in many cases doesn't mean anything, really! Indeed, one may conduct specific experiments to test one's hypotheses, and one may still get them wrong! I can give you a few examples of this fact a little later, apart from the perfectly suitable one that I'll briefly describe here. It is said that the first explanation for the colours seen in a prismatic experiment was offered by none other than Aristotle. (Remember?) After looking with a naked eye through a prism-like piece of glass at some source of light Aristotle concluded that the original purity of light was “polluted” (or “corrupted”, if you prefer) by various amounts which were determined by the particular thickness of the glass at the points where the beam of light passed through the prism. That's why, Aristotle explained, when one looks through a prism-shaped glass one sees violet towards the apex of the prism, then blue below violet, then green... and so on and so forth. (Go here if you want a full description.) Centuries later Newton offered his own explanation for the prismatic observations. Now, Newton derived his explanation after conducting many experiments, which he had specifically designed in order to test (in the beginning) if the Aristotelian explanation was correct, and (later on) to verify the validity of his own emerging speculations. In the end, through his specifically designed and conducted experiments Newton proved that Aristotle's explanation was wrong, and he managed to convince the mainstream physicists of his time (and of the next four centuries) that the correct explanation for the prismatic phenomenon was the one he had derived. But the simple matter of fact is that although he was correct in claiming that Aristotle's explanation was wrong, his explanation was also wrong! (Need I say more? Certainly not, as far as I'm concerned. If you have doubts about my conclusion, though, I challenge you to prove that I am wrong. And you don't have to prove it to me. Prove it to yourself.)
The second thing that changed the modern view about the Greek ideas of the Golden Age came as a result of the two major paradigms that rule the conventional physics of our time: relativity (in both its forms) and quantum mechanics. It is imperious that physicists have a perfect understanding of what a paradigm is, although that is very seldom the case. (In fact, the modern physicists apparently hate the word "paradigm", especially when it is used as a substitute for the word "theory".) A paradigm is “a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated”. The reigning conventional physics is thus formed, and divided, by two philosophical and theoretical frameworks—one for the big things and the other for the small ones. This state of affairs is deeply disturbing and unsatisfactory, although physicists have been playing down for a long time now how truly disturbing and unsatisfactory this situation is. It is bad enough to have two theories ruling one universe, but it is much worse when the two are so irreconcilably different that more than fifty years of intense labour by thousands of the presumably smartest people in the world have yielded absolutely nothing.
In my universe things are far more peaceful and far less 'exotic' than in yours. It's been like this for a long, long time. In fact, it's been like this ever since I became convinced that the old Greek idea that the workings of the Universe must be the same at any scale ought to be true. "As above, so below", a truism I had attributed (wrongly) to them. I believe that the Universe must be, in a strong principle, the same at all scales. Why? Firstly, because God has proven to be the invariable and absolute master of efficiency: This means that He never makes even one thing more than the least required. Secondly, because everything that is “the above” is resting (it is built) onto everything that is “the below”. This means, at the least, that whatever structure (shape, geometry) “the above” has, is an extension of the structure (shape, geometry) of “the below”. Thirdly, because that that is “the below” is overwhelmingly likely to have come into being before that that is “the above”. This means that “the below” was the first to undergo an evolutionary process in which every inefficient (asymmetrical, unstable, weak) structure (object, construction, element) was eliminated, making room for the efficient, symmetrical, stable, strong structures, to combine and construct the objects that will form “the above”. Fourthly, because the geometry of all-space is both the geometry of “the below” and of “the above”.
I have been watching from my corner (mostly amused these days, seldom bemused) the unfolding of events. And what a spectacle it turns out to be! For instance, I used to be completely bemused by the old idea of a particle that was a point-like blob of matter of zero dimensions! Now I'm completely amused by the idea that a particle is a string of matter of one dimension! I used to not be able to understand why physicists were insisting that space has three dimensions. Now I have no problem at all with a space that had 10 dimensions, or 11, or 26, for that matter!
In fact I used to have a lot more problems than those I mentioned above. For instance, the first problem I had with the conventional wisdom was around the age of ten, when I'd heard about Olbers' paradox. Reading somewhere about how it was “officially” explained why the night sky was mostly black drove me to my first rebellion against an establishment. In effect, I refused to believe the conventional explanation for two reasons: one, because it appeared to me to be much (and unnecessarily) too complicated for what it achieved; secondly, because I could achieve the same thing by using a far simpler explanation.
My second rebellion against the conventional wisdom happened a few years later, when I first learned about the Doppler effect. The problem I had this time was of a different nature, however. Essentially, although I totally agreed with both the theoretical analysis, as well as with the physical evidence, behind the Doppler effect, I was also convinced that a Doppler-like effect would occur between two stationary, separated in space, points. Moreover, I truly believed that the proof for my Doppler-like effect was readily available to anyone.
Many years after that I extended the number of fronts upon which I was conducting my personal revolution against the reigning theoretical understanding in physics by two. One was concerned with an extension of the conventional understanding of gravity, to which I had been led by an old geometrical reasoning which I thought could resolve (in the simplest possible way) some disturbing observational facts. The other was formed by my own understanding of the quantum phenomena. Finally, in the beautiful year of 2000 AD I arrived at the last, and most important, piece of my jigsaw puzzle: the geometrical structure of space that could explain the objects, the forces, and the laws of the Universe.
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