Re: "Finding Einstein: From CD players to elevators, he's just about everywhere" The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

What did I say? Voices of dissent? Yes, voices of dissent. Not everyone is convinced that Einstein got it right. And not everyone who holds that opinion deserves to be labeled a kook or a crank. Let us look at Einstein’s reflection of his life's achievement, “You imagine that I look back on my life’s work with calm satisfaction, [but] there is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.”

How can this be? Scientists proclaim Einstein's genius. The popular culture idolizes him. The evidence of the usefulness of Einstein’s work surrounds us. It is as readily at hand as the nearest solar-powered calculator, CD player, or florescent light. The question, however, is not whether Einstein’s theory produces the right results, but whether it accurately reflects or describes nature. 

At this point, the discussion is getting into places where the air is kind of thin, but I think we can find our way if we take it slow and easy. The first issue to deal with is this: can a theory that is wrong produce the right results? Most people would say no, probably feeling certain that the right theory can only produce correct results, and feeling equally certain that wrong results can only come from a theory that is wrong. But for every correct theory, there are billions of wrong ones, and some of those wrong ones can produce surprising results. 

We are all, for example, satisfied that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and that the stars and planets do not revolve around it. That theory is wrong. Yet predictions produced by equations based on that theory are remarkably good at predicting such things as the positions of the planets and stars. You can navigate a boat or plane by them, and end up at the right location. The theory is wrong, but it produces useful, accurate results. The variations worked on this theory by such thinkers as Copernicus and Brahe serve to further indicate that there may not merely be one erroneous theory that gives accurate results, but many.

Readers of mystery novels may be used to this kind of situation. A murder was committed. Was it the butler, the maid, the lover, the ex, or the jewel thief? Each had a motive, access to the weapon, and a window of opportunity. We can produce a number of theories that lead to the correct conclusion (a body in the library), but which theory is correct?

This peculiarity leads to the issue of how we might decide between competing theories that produce the same, correct results. Readers of mystery novels tend to push for that extra scrap of evidence that breaks the case. But what if the telltale clue did not exist, or was not detected? What then? 

Would it make sense to select one or more of the suspects at random, and punish them; figuring that, if we proceed in this way, then in the infinity of parallel universes that make up the matrix of reality, each of the other suspects (and combinations thereof) will be likewise punished in turn, so that, in at least some universes, justice will be done? Or does such a procedure sound ludicrous and far-fetched? It does, after all, involve quite an imaginative myth of parallel universes and, perhaps, some kind of causal linkage between them—and these are things for which we have no evidence, and which safely lie far beyond the reach of experimentation.

This example is meant to indicate, among other things, that there are different kinds of explanations. If we can decide what kind of explanation we are seeking, we may be able to reduce the field. 

Einstein’s explanations tend to be of a formal, mathematical character, with little regard for physical mechanisms. So, for example, in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, he replaces the hypothesis of the aether with a postulate, and appears not to care a bit that, as a result, light waves are oddly reduced to undulations of nothingness. You see, for the equations, it does not matter at all what light waves are, or whether nothingness can move, bend, take up space, and push things around. If we buy into this mythology, we get the right results. But are the results worth this price?

I suspect that Einstein himself had some trouble buying into this myth and so developed the idea that light may be particles. The Quantum Theory emerged, in part, from this hypothesis, and, while it helped to sidestep some of the issues raised by Special Relativity, it also introduced a new mythology in which things could instantaneously transform from particles to waves and back again. Yet this hypothesis involves blithely ignoring the physical issue of how a local object (a particle) could be instantaneously interchangeable with an omni-directional event (a wave). (Incidentally, for those 'in the know', the introduction of the unobservable ‘superposition’ only adds to the bestiary of mythical creatures.) Quantum Physicists also introduced the strange, almost magical, idea that the act of making an observation (such as glancing at the Moon) could have a causal effect not only on the Moon, but also on billions of other Moons in billions of parallel universes.

For some, all this is deliciously wonderful. To me, it seems as if someone has replaced physics (the study of nature) with the study of a poorly conceived daydream. As I see it, theoretical physics, guided to a great degree by Einstein’s imagination, has moved away from being a study of the natural world, and has become, instead, a kind of mathematical game. It is as if the entire field has become weirdly disengaged from its subject matter, a disembodied spirit that leads minds astray.

One might expect that theoretical physics should be in touch with the phenomenal world, that it's theories should be an attempt to read the book of nature, and to piece together the clues it supplies. These days, however, the object appears to have been reduced to constructing a mathematical system that produces results that happen to coincide with experimental outcomes. This makes the task considerably easier because one no longer is constrained by the parameters that nature sets. A mathematician has utter freedom in constructing his systems of thought because he decides what axioms and parameters to include and exclude. A mathematician, for example, is free to speculate about a world with a dozen or more spatial dimensions, or a universe that acts like the surface of an expanding four dimensional solid. This is a fun game for the mathematically inclined, but problems loom. On the one hand, as noted above, it is possible to come up with indefinitely many mathematical systems that produce the same results. How will we choose between them? On the other hand, our true physicists, those with more concrete interests, are likely to find the whole business a bit phantasmic, and so opt to become doctors, or lawyers, or something--anything--other than physicists. And, who knows, we may already be missing out on some cool stuff and some unbelievable opportunities because we have spent so much energy on imaginary things and pure math.

Yet, even if I approach Einstein's theories on their own terms, as mathematical constructs, I find myself disappointed. For example, one of the rules I learned early on in doing math is that systems that use the fewest number of postulates are more elegant than those that use more. A second rule is that, in general, it is best to take care with postulates so that you do not introduce any that are unnecessary. And a third rule is that it is important to make sure that postulates are carefully and restrictively worded so that they do not introduce any more than is absolutely necessary. Postulates should not do work that can be done by proofs.

I have already indicated that I do not find the light postulate to be especially helpful. I can now add that I do not find a system that includes it to be more elegant than one that does not. And, on top of that, I can ask why, if one is going to include something like the light postulate, it should take the form of a constraint on physical things (the speed of light, c, is the maximum velocity for objects and waves in an inertial frame), rather than a constraint on observations (the velocities of waves and objects moving at speeds greater than c cannot be directly measured)? And I wonder why is it necessary to add this to the system as a postulate? The constraint on observations I just gave falls out as a consequence of the fact that we do not have any sensory organs that detect motions faster than c. 

In the end, the difference is significant. Einstein’s postulate declares (without evidence) that no object or wave travels at a speed greater than c. The alternative leaves that possibility open. In other words, Einstein forbids the Millennium Falcon and the Enterprise from exceeding the speed of light. The alternative allows them to go as fast as they please: the light beams streaming off of them move at c, and this is what we observe. And this is analogous to listening to sound waves that come from a supersonic jet, yet we do not fool ourselves into thinking that the jet cannot move faster than the sound waves that we hear.

Though I could go on, this is not the place to get into the intricacies of supplying alternatives to Einstein’s views. My intentions were, first, to draw attention to the fact that there are alternatives and objections to Einstein’s views that tend to get little or no air time, and, secondly, to shed some light on why Einstein himself might wonder if he had been on the right track. I did not mean to rain on the parade (though, this being spring, it is the season). 

Let, then, the festivities resume, and I’ll propose the toast—with the first word in German, no less: Ein stein for Einstein! Drink up!

John Newell is an independent scholar who holds a Ph.D. in Classics, Philosophy, and History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

I appreciate the expertise you bring to the topic. And I like the opening of
the piece and its ambition -- we are always looking for arguments that go
against the conventional wisdom.

Although we believe we have intelligent readers, I am afraid that this piece
just wouldn't work for our newspaper audience. The piece quickly reaches a
level of scientific detail that would leave too many readers behind.  Alas,
I cannot recommended a strategy to make the piece work for us, so we are
just going to have to pass on this one.

Again, thank you for getting in touch and showing us your work.

Yours sincerely...