Robert,
I'll respond after your comments:
R: Scientific realism involves more than just simple cause and effect... the rule of sufficient reason requires that the effect be no greater than the cause; there is nothing in the effect that is not potentially in the cause. Evolution violates sufficient causality, when inanimate atoms evolve into animate life forms... and, even more so, when humans evolve immaterial faculties of mind from the material brain...
Then maybe we have to adjust our belief in this "scientific realism". It may apply to the interactions of a system of ball-bearings, or of simple charges, but not to Cosmic evolution. We may need need to extend our imagination to understand the evolution of complexity as opposed to the evolution of simple systems that contain no possibility of new interactions. The problem appears easier to understand if we look only at one small step in evolution--say at how subatomic particles can combine to produce 100 naturally-occuring elements, or these elements combine to form molecules, or DNA to form and then become self-replicating. How about he different primitive cells combine to form a new organism in which each contributes specialized abilities. The evolution of consciousness is no different than any other step in this process: a new form of interaction arising from lower-level entities and processes.
R: What rules out a continuum of space/aether, Henry?
If space is a continuum, the nothing can have definite, repeatable size and shape. Every electron or proton would be of a different size. Nothing would be what it is.
R: Why, if space is independent of time?
Our words are so inadequate. Nothing in this Cosmos is "independent" of anything else in this Cosmos. It is a singe, self-evolving organism. Time and space are certainly not "co-dependent" in the relativistic sense, however. There's no substitute for a working theory of what exists and how it produces what we see. Without that theory we are lost in abstractions.
R: Except..... the astronomical clock is not.
I don't know what you mean--the rotation of the Earth?
R: Newton never identified the locus of absolute space. The bucket frame was not, since the laws of physics(centrifugal force) were not obeyed by a bucket observer. But the Earth frame was a candidate, since all laws of motion are obeyed.
He believed it was a single, Euclidean "solid" and everything had some definite velocity in it but we could not tell what it was. His theory was inadequate for sure, as one really has to relate the inertial frame everywhere to the distribution of matter--the celestial bodies.
R: In the Earth's lab frame all matter has a definite velocity.
All matter has a definite velocity in any frame you chose, the question is whether the frame is the physically-relevant frame or not. The Earth-centered frame that is not rotating with the Earth is indeed the physical frame for Earth-surface and near-Earth motion.
R: The fixed aether of LET was disproven by the Fizeau water tunnel test, which supports the Fresnel aether drag theory.
I don't believe in the fixed aether of LET, I do believe that aether-space is dragged into uniform motion with matter--in its near-vicinity. I'm not sure that the Fizeau experiment involves this effect. Light moving in water travels
from molecule to molecule, constantly being absorbed and then re-emitted. That is why light moves slower through water than through the vacuum. Now if we speed the flow of the water in that direction, then the velocity of light in the moving water will approach, but never surpass the velocity of light in the local vacuum--aether frame. The motion of the water compensates for the slowing caused by absorption-re-emission.
R: Are there one or two aethers/spaces, Henry?
I believe that there is one space, but it has parts and flows like a fluid into all inert matter. This physical space does not move in some other space. Where there are no spatial cells, there is no space.
R: How does aether entrainment explain relative rotation(Mach's principle)?
See my paper on the Implications of flowing space linked below in my post.
R: Fizeau and Sagnac showed that aether is entrainable... dragged by local matter in motion.
The Sagnac effect shows that space is not dragged into rotation with any matter, does it not? I think matter can only drag the near-surrounding space into its own uniform motion in space. And because motion slows atomic clock rates we know that this entrainment cannot extend beyond, say, a Cesium atom's outer electrons otherwise they would not "feel" the motion through space and would not be redshift. On the contrary, it appears that a mass like the Earth entrains the surrounding space into its own free-fall motion for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
re: Admit contradiction and you destroy philosophy. Anything can be anything.
R: Anything can be proven true ..or false.... which therefore proves nothing - the road to agnosticism and then nihilism.
In science, this is worse than being wrong...
AMEN!
R 1- What of pushing gravity, Henry .....Fatiou/Lesage's ultramondane particles?
Doesn't work to explain the phenomenon.
R 2- Doesn't the inflow of space pile up inside celestial bodies?
The "cells" of which space is made are unique, unlike any of the phenomena we know which are products of those cells. We cannot ascribe to them shape, maybe not even size.
R 3- Doesn't the outbound flow counterbalance the inbound flow?
I think that only stars create an outflow--nuclear reactions seem to create space. See the "Implications" paper again for my description of the data that suggest that nuclear reactions create space. So the Solar system would be a massive spatial source, orbited by some small spatial sinks. If all stars are sources, so are all galaxies, and we would have an explanation for "dark energy".
R: Is there an empirical test of Earth's rotation... and a uniqueness proof of its necessity and sufficiency?
See my papers "Beyond Newton and Einstein to Flowing Space" and "Implications". Short answer, the Foucault pendulum, the GPS system, the Coriolus effect.
R: 1- The Sun and the stars rotate at different rates ... about 4 min/day. How can both be the frame in which the Earth rotates?
The do not pull their surrounding space into rotation with them. No rotating dense collection of matter does this for reason I propose in "Implications". They do pull their surrounding space into their free-fall motion in the galaxy,
therefore it is the Earth's rotation relative to their positions/motion that produces all the measured effects. I argue that the free-fall motion of all stars in galaxy pulls all of galaxial space into rotation, explaining the "dark matter" problem.
R: 2- Just curious - what excludes the motion of gravity (actually, a gravitational aether) from explaining the 'obvious effects' ...the astronomical observations?
Not sure what you mean there.
re- The GPS master clock is sitting in the 11.2km/s spatial flow into the surface of the Earth, and is slowed by the Lorentz transformation for that velocity.
R: 1- Isn't the CMB dipole flow 368 km/s?
Yes, I think that the Sun-Earth system appears to have that velocity in the CMB frame according to the Doppler shift, but we cannot detect that velocity on Earth, in Earth-surface experiments. I believe that Earth completely determines the motion of its inflowing space out to several hundred thousand kilometers. That space flows into the Earth from all directions, radially, with a terminal velocity of 11.2km/s--exactly what our atomic clocks tell us. Due to entrainment, there is no physical 368km/s spatial velocity wind at the Earth's surface or Sun's surface. I think that to be exposed to this wind, one would have to get outside of the Sun's entrained aether-sphere.
R: 2- If everything refutes relativity, why are Lorentz transformations even relevant?
Because they do describe at least some physical effects of motion in physical space--atomic clock slowing for instance. They do work, but not for the non-reason given by Einstein.
R: So the rotation of Earth in the aether causes a horizontal drift at the equator of .47 km/s .... but that makes the aether the preferred ref. frame, not the Sun and stars..??
The Earth determines the local aether-space frame. Space is flowing radially into the Earth from all directions, but is not pulled in rotation by the Earth. It would not rotate with the Earth no matter how fast the Earth was spun up as the Sun and stars are much greater masses and control space's state of motion.
R; 1- What test confirmed length contraction independent of the communication time delay between ref. frames?
I don't think that length-contraction has ever been independently confirmed. I do suspect it exists as it would be strange if motion through space at high velocity did not distort an atom's electronic shells--shortening them in the direction of motion. I say this I guess because I think of electrons as EM wave-structures, and they must be distorted with high velocity in the EM medium. It the length-contraction exists, it would cause a null M-M result, and therefore obviate the so-called "requirement" of no-aether Relativity to "explain" the null M-M result, yet Relativity also includes length contraction! The history of thought is full of irony.
R: 2 - If aether is entrained by the Earth's rotation, why did Michelson-Gale detect a relative aether drift?
I think you see from what I've written above that the M-G result is in line with all other evidence that Earth does not cause its surrounding space to rotate with it. Earth rotates within the space controlled by the Sun and local stars. Just as does a bucket of water here on Earth.
R: 3 - My essay suggests the 'null' MMX is really caused by using media with n ~= 1, which will always produce low S/N ratios.
I don't think that there is an "aether wind" at the Earth's surface of 30km/s or 368km/s. I think that we have enough null M-M-like experiments done in vacuum now to rule out media effects, do we not?
R: Reg Cahill documents several non-vacuum MMX and non-interferometer tests that approximately measure the speed and direction of the CMB dipole source. So a 350 km/s aether wind has been detected at least 5 times... at the surface.
I don't believe those experiments are trustworthy enough, not enough to cause me to jettison all other experiments and the theory that seems to me to work best--that of entrainment of space by celestial bodies. I have the mainstream with me on this one--but that is little consolation!
R: So Cahill's analysis calls the Lorentzian theory into question.... as does the Fresnel aether drag verified by the Fizeau water channel test.
Right, if MM-like experiments, done in high-vacuum with very sensitive instrument show an aether wind in a given direction in space caused by the Earth or solar system's or galaxy's motion, then it would mean that the Newtonian concept of a single absolute space unaffected by the position or motion of matter is correct, and that there is also no length-contraction. I really don't think that the evidence supports this view. It is not impossible, however. Ronald Hatch has shown that even the GPS system would work as it does of the Earth had a high velocity in the aether-space frame. It is amazing how clock-slowing and signal velocity changes conspire to hide the EM frame.
Henry