Why change the definition of mass? This is a property that is used throughout physics equations. Changing the interpretation and units of mass will affect the interpretations and units of almost everything else. It is a property that is so integral to theoretical physics that no change will receive serious consideration without giving a very strong reason for the change. Even then, resistance will remain due to the prevailing opinion: Why change what has worked so well?

Theoretical physics is very successful at making predictions. Any erroneous change in mass and its units could be expected to immediately and persistently foul up theory yielding results that make no sense and are incapable of reproducing those successful predictions. Should the change to mass not harm physics equations. Should it reproduce the successful predictions and even improve on them, then that makes a very strong case for seriously evaluating its potential correctness.

That correctness would be immensely bolstered when comparing it to current theory, if it also produced clear, always present fundamental unity. That is what occurs as a result of redefining mass using only empirical evidence for direction. Any other direction allows theorists to mix their imaginings into physics equations. It is that infiltration of theoretical inventions into physics equations that can immediately and permanently cause the loss of fundamental unity. The new work that I have presented on several occasions shows that fundamental unity does exist and is incompatable with retaining theoretical inventions.

The change in the definition of mass, as indicated by empirical evidence, is that mass is the inverse of acceleration. That acceleration is the evidence for a fundamental property that remains a major part of physics theory. It reveals itself as the unifying cause for all effects. That is why my many examples of results given here in essays for all five contests are successful in producing unifying connections between all effects. I included for a second time a result that would seem to be unrelated to thermodynamic entropy. That result is the demonstration of how the two expressions for the fine structure constant are unified. They become unified for the same reasons that thermodynamic entropy becomes a known property.

James Putnam

Dear James Putnam,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Mean while, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest.

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Dear James,

I thought you might be interested in chengxi guo's essay, specifically in his discussion of force:

"Force is not an entitative concept. It is designed as an intermediary virtual parameter in processing physical problems. The force is said to be intermediary, because when we use the concept of force, it always appears in the interaction manner. The virtual property of force is that it does not have objective substantiality, can not exist alone in breaking away from entities.

In Newton's law of motion, the two concepts of force and mass are defined in one equation. The mass here is usually considered as inertial mass, confusion also arising from the relationship between inertial and gravitational mass. Aside from the confusion, from a logical point of view, force and mass in the second law played a role of mutual definition logically out of place, this can not be satisfied."

You can read his paper for his specific treatment. I mentioned your approach in a comment on his page.

Hope you are recovering well.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Hi Edwin,

    I feel fine. My strength is back. Thank you for mentioning my work at another's forum. I don't think that I will be following through on it. I have written and discussed enough here to have an accurate assessment of the value others here placed on my work. I don't say this because of the asinine effort by Tom to discredit my work. The combination of that display along with looking at my placement in the current contest are symptoms that I am wasting my time.

    I never have done well in these contests and allowed for the expected resistance to my ideas. However, looking at some of the essays that I have been placed below clarifies the situation more than enough for me to understand that it is definitely not only Tom's attitude that so violently rejects my ideas.

    I have turned my attention to trying to complete a paper I submitted to that conference I have mentioned. I submitted a draft yesterday. It was a day late. Yet it was accepted and I was invited to present an improved finalized version personally for the conference in a few weeks. My immediate problem is not this contest. It is that fixing and rewriting my draft is not going well at all. It needs to be done today and it looks like I have no chance of completing it.

    Even if I managed to squeeze a comprehensible version into the required ten pages, it is not anywhere near being in their required form. I thought I would be reformatting the paper today. Instead upon re-reading it this morning, it reflects the disjointed piecing together that I did to complete it quickly. Even the newly written sections were rough. I am impressed that the representative of the conference could recognize the intended purposes of the paper.

    It is not a one or two day fix. Then it would still remain to put it into its proper form. So perhaps I should relax this year, follow more peaceful interests of mine, and enjoy being retired. I do have other interests. :)

    Good luck to you in the contest. I did re-read your essay and gave you a 10 a while back. I would like to see your work given serious consideration by other physicists. I can't see for myself that that has yet happened. Maybe it will this time. I don't think that I will be reading or rating any more essays. Well back to work so that I at least know that I really tried to finish.

    James

    James,

    I'm sorry to hear about the deadline. I know how hard it is and how much time it takes to whip our ideas into presentable shape.

    There are many aspects at play in the FQXi scoring, and quality of thinking is far from the top. I believe that those who believe in magic are not happy to read arguments that expose this, and score accordingly. Also, by posting the scores, FQXi almost guarantees last minute jockeying to knock the lowest scores out of the winners category so that others may move in to replace them. And there are even grudges that have built over the last few years. So I would not put too much emphasis on the scores. I know that I could have written a different essay that would score more highly than my current one. But I am writing, like Phil Gibbs and others, to get my ideas recorded in as permanent a medium as I can. I believe that's what you are doing also. It *is* worthwhile.

    I did want to alert you to the fact that Lee Smolin (as noted in earlier comment) and now chengxi guo share your unhappiness with the way force and mass are defined. And I am still examining effects in various equations of replacing mass with inverse acceleration. I've been too busy lately to do much, but I have yet to encounter problems when I perform this replacement. At some point in the future I'll try to provide you details of what I'm doing.

    When it reaches the point of depressing you, it's time to back off and get perspective. You are retired and live in a beautiful part of the country. Enjoy your life; it's the best revenge!

    Your friend,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    James,

    I normally use the 'submission date' ordering, to try to keep track of what's new. But I just ordered the essays by community ranking, and was amazed. You note that several poor essays are ahead of you. I agree. There are also at least three exceptional essays far below you!

    The scoring is so screwed up in this contest I don't think you should even pay attention to it. I don't.

    Edwin,

    Well, I kept at it and improved the paper immensely. It was re-submitted late today but on time for the deadline. I don't know yet it its form is fully acceptable, but, the conference representative seemed appreciative of having received it. I was assigned to make a remote presentation at 9:30 AM Eastern time. Unfortunately, I will be in a small village on the ocean in Oregon. It will be 6:30 AM for me. There is no cell phone service, but, there is wi-fi. I think I will set myself up outside on the beach with the ocean behind me. There are huge picturesque rock formations out in the water. I will have to find out first how far the wi-fi reaches from the old cabin that I will be staying in. It is almost on the beach itself. I think it sounds like it could be a fun experience.

    I did a remote presentation last year and could see myself as I did it. I come across looking even older than I am; and, with my mannerisms, I appear to be something of a character. A lot of smiling and head moving. Also, I learned that my progressive lenses cause me to raise my head up to see the computer screen. So, a camera located on the computer picks me up with my nose and chin sticking somewhat upward. It added to the character look. It was humorous to see myself doing the presentation. There was nothing I could do but just go along with it and keep smiling. :)

    James

    James,

    Cameras are for young guys. But as long as you can keep smiling, you're OK.

    " ... the asinine effort by Tom to discredit my work."

    James, your attitude makes me wary of saying anything at all to you. If you don't subject your work to criticism, and instead advise your critics to read everything you've ever written and ignore the contradictions, the work ends up being of use to no one but yourself. Which is fine, if that is all you want.

    In any case, if your conclusions are true, nothing that I or anyone else does or says can discredit them. However, when you make statements like "Mass is the inverse of acceleration ..." and then go one to say that therefore relativity must be wrong, you betray a profound innocence of relativity -- Einstein already accounted for that possibility when he derived special relativity in the first place. Einstein's equation for rest energy, E_0 = mc^2, follows from E^2 = m^2c^4 (pc)^2, where p represents momentum. A massive particle of zero momentum must therefore have negative mass. No problem there -- physicists, particularly cosmologists, have plenty of uses for the idea of negative mass.

    If as you claim, though, mass is undefined (it isn't) -- then defining mass as the inverse of acceleration only compounds the problem because it defines mass as existing only in negative form. Of course, we know this isn't true.

    Edwin quoted Smolin's latest book (which I am also reading), "In general relativity mass can only be defined globally. ...as measured from far, far away (from infinity actually). In the case of local mass [...] there is no clear definition yet. [And] mass density is a similarly ill-defined concept in general relativity." These facts have long been known -- which is what led to the conclusion of my last essay that the source of all information is a point at infinity. (This is no "pi in the sky" claim, either; the mathematics, if not the physics, is rigorous and mostly understood.)

    Now, how would you react if I accused you of making an asinine effort to discredit Einstein? (I don't think I've ever said such a thing to you -- though I might have said something similar to Pentcho Valev, and if not, I should have.)

    Let's meet facts with facts, and forget the bluster.

    I'm sorry to hear you were ill, and glad to hear that you are feeling better.

    Tom

      Tom,

      I acknowledge receipt of the last word. Thank you.

      James Putnam

      Edwin,

      I have been rewriting this essay for future use. You were correct about my not defining terms when needed. I find that by my squeezing it too much that there are rough parts that others could not be expected to go along with. One example is when I speak of what temperature is. My derivation for my statement is missing. Later my substitution for electric charge is also unsupported.

      While it is the case that I gave references where the supporting work can be found, I understand that readers aren't going to accept such radical changes just on the face of them. I should have held onto my essay longer, let time pass, and re-read it before submitting it. Maybe I would have found a better way to proceed. While I don't think that even a well written version would have been well received, readers deserve a better effort.

      I am considering all of this while preparing for my other presentation elsewhere. My other paper couldn't contain everything I wanted to say either, but, I will be prepared to produce additional slides with quick explanations for parts that deserve to be questioned. All of this has to be done efficiently within a limited scheduled time. This is something I need to experience more.

      James Putnam

      7 days later

      James,

      If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

      Jim

      13 days later

      Dear James. Hello, and apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not read, or did not rate my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

      Vladimir

      Hello James,

      I have to give you a mixed review, heavy on the critique. First off; it was mean spirited of you to require folks to read another paper first, and then to change the heading within that paper so it no longer matches the reference in your essay abstract. I have to agree with the comments above that you did not clearly define your usage of Q with the first equation. You do spell out what you are doing (terms wise) on the top of page 2, but by then you have lost some readers because of head scratching.

      I think you would have had a much easier time proving your premise, if you did not try so hard to connect it with your existing body of work. Your basic idea in the abstract is sound, as the usage of Entropy is often confused, and Thermodynamics gives it a specific meaning. Clausius clearly defined movement of heat, but already with Boltzmann we see the confusion creep in that entropy is disorder, or a product thereof. Search for papers by Harvey Leff which sort this out nicely. My friend Bernard Bligh, who is a hard-core experimental realist, would agree with you strongly on several points, but take you to task and argue with you about others - like the connection to your new Physics theory.

      I have to credit you for trying, but this is one essay that would definitely benefit from following the structure of intro, body, conclusions, where you tell folks what you are to establish, then you make your point, then you explain what you just said. Your failure to do that reduces comprehension greatly of a point worth making. But you also fail to really address the core essay topic until the very end. That's the piece of explanation you need in the intro, to make a paper like this work. I have attached one paper by Leff that may be of interest.

      Regards,

      JonathanAttachment #1: entropylanginterp.pdf

        4 days later

        Hi Jonathan,

        Thank you for your detailed review. I also find the essay to be poorly constructed. Edwin was correct about it.

        James Putnam

        Hi James,

        WOW! - was the first thing that came to mind when I read your words, "This 'absolute opposites' treatment of mixed versus unmixed..." for indeed the findings of a recently concluded 12 year experiment mirrors your statement. You are definitely onto something. Although your mathematical approach is different than my approach, I found your essay inspiring and most worthy of merit.

        I wish you the best of luck in the competition.

        Regards,

        Manuel

          Manuel S Morales,

          Thank you for your very nice message. I believe that I have presented material of great importance over and over again here. It has not been well received at all. It is very different to receive a message showing appreciation for the work presented. My other essay entries, there are now five, one each for each contest strongly support what I have said in this last essay. This essay, in turn, was meant to supply the origins of my work bringing unity in support of all of the results presented in all five essays. It was to be the key to completing an understanding of what I have been presenting. The essay clearly did not accomplish that goal until receiving your message. Thank you very much for reading and rating my essay. I look forward to reading and rating your essay.

          James Putnam

          The word 'Indefinable' is important to understand when reading my essay. It is a word that used to be relied upon in introductory physics texts. Its meaning was perfectly clear. It means: An indefinable property is a property that cannot b e defined in terms of pre-existing properties. Properties are represented in equations by means of their units. An indefinable property will have indefinable units.

          An indefinable unit is: A unit that cannot be defined in terms of pre-existing units. There are four such units in physics. They are: meters, seconds, kilograms, and degrees. All other units are definable in terms of two or more of these units. The units of meters and seconds, are naturally indefinable because they are the units of empirical evidence. The units of kilograms and degrees are theoretical units because they are made indefinable due to ignorance.

          My essay makes the point that there should be no theoretical indefinable units. This means that neither kilograms nor degrees should have been made indefinable. My work corrects this problem. For readers who may be interested in reading further about indefinable physics properties please read this essay from my website. It is only four pages long.

          In today's texts the words 'primary' and 'secondary' properties replacing the words 'indefinable' and 'definable' properties. This change lacks the clarity of the original wordings. Something of great importance happened at the very beginning of theoretical physics and the original wording makes clear that that beginning is flawed. My work fixes the flaw.

          James Putnam