The Race to Replace the Kilogram

Steve Agnew

I thought you were done explaining your definitions...of empirically supported opinions...saying mass is something that it is not is wrong. Mass units cannot be the same as that something else...

Your language seems to be so twisted up in identities that is it difficult to make any sense out of what you say. Of course, saying mass is something that it is not is wrong by definition. That is what those words mean and so you do not have to keep repeating them.

You have something that you call pure observation and space and time can be observer, but then you state that neither space nor time are subject to direct experimentation. So direct experimentation is somehow different from pure observation in your mind, but not in any one else's mind. Making these kinds of distinctions in word definitions seems to reveal hidden truths to you but just seem like redefining words in confusing ways.

Wondering why the universe is the way that it is or why force is the way that it is or why identity recursions exist are questions that result in perpetual discourse. There are questions that have no answers and there are definitions that make no sense and there is a pure observation that is not a direct experimentation.

Strangely enough, you do have a method in your madness in that you keep repeating that identities are not definitions. I use the term axiom, but you do not like that term. You choose to begin your universe with force and acceleration and there are many different equivalent axioms upon which to build a universe. Somehow you have convinced yourself that building a universe from force and acceleration reveals some kind of hidden truth. To me, it seems like just another way to build a universe.

James Putnam

"I thought you were done explaining your definitions...of empirically supported opinions...saying mass is something that it is not is wrong. Mass units cannot be the same as that something else...

"Your language seems to be so twisted up in identities that is it difficult to make any sense out of what you say. Of course, saying mass is something that it is not is wrong by definition. That is what those words mean and so you do not have to keep repeating them."

Its not going away. Mass, temperature,and electric charge are three definite weak points in theoretical physics. Weak points in the fundamentals that form the foundation. You don't see it. I understand that. But because of the official lack of definitions for all three, theoretical physics is out on a limb. What I present are the necessary corrections. Theoretical physics will change. I won't bother you with it anymore. You no longer believe, if you ever did, that physics properties need to be defined according to consistent strict criteria. The physicists of the past, including recent past, set the correct criteria. I will be sticking with their clear thinking.

James Putnam

Steven Anresen,

"Is there an example of a novice who has been vindicated and then recognized in recent years?"

"... in recent years?

I will think about that. Here is an easy quick, indisputable, historical adventure story, truncated by me, about Michael Faraday:

"Faraday, who always kept to empirical facts, did indeed compare the electric contiguous action in non-conductors with elastic tensions, but he took care not to apply the laws of the latter to electric phenomenon. He used the graphical picture of "lines of force" that run in the direction of the electric field from the positive charges through the insulator to the negative charges. ..." [Michael Faraday Methuen Company in 1924, Dover Publications, Inc.; pages 165-1760.]

Page 167: "This strange view of Faraday's at first found no favour among the physicists and Mathematicians of his own time. ... "

James Putnam

Steven Andresen,

Some of what I meant to include in my message was missing so I am adding to it.

["Is there an example of a novice who has been vindicated and then recognized in recent years?"

"... in recent years?

Page 167: "This strange view of Faraday's at first found no favour among the physicists and Mathematicians of his own time. ... "]

Adding from page 165: 5. Faraday's Lines of Force

"Faraday came from no learned academy; his mind was not burdened with traditional ideas and theories. His sensational rise from a bookbinder's apprentice to the world-famous physicist of the Royal Institution of London is well known. The world of his ideas, which arose directly and exclusively from the abundance of his experiments, was just as free from conventional schemes as his life. ... "

The problem we face today, in my opinion, is that there is a surplus of theoretical physicists who work at 'chalkboards' with no post Doctoral experimental experience. If it can be 'written' then it can be considered. The mathematics, a necessary vehicle for carrying out experiments, has been adapted to serve the minds' that drive theory, theory is the substitution for what is not known so that mathematics can move forward even with its historically long missing parts still missing. Missing, continually, but substituted for with that which has 'mathematical solution' possibilities. It seems ironic that Faraday's circumstance and accomplishments should be so graciously acknowledge by someone who would play an important role in causing the acceptance of Einstein's non-empirical theory.

Anyone looking in and wondering how such an apparently prediction-wise successful theory can be referred to as non-empirical, the answer is that its foundation is the Dilation-of-Time and the Contraction-of-Space. There is no experimental support for either of those claims. Experimentation is limited to experiments upon objects who's velocities can be caused to change.

James Putnam

Hi Steven,

"What do you think of their proposed method for redefining mass?"

This point helps to emphasize the loose attitude physicists have adopted to the meaning of the word 'defined'. No physicist has defined mass. Mass is not being redefined. It never has been defined. Substituting a new and better rule for the measurement of mass is no substitute for defining mass. Physicists have never defined mass, are not defining mass, and, do not presently know what mass is. We will know when physicists know what mass is when: The units of mass, kilograms, will be themselves made into defined units. They are not presently, nor have they ever been, defined units. The reason for pressing the dependence of the meaning of mass upon the definition of its units is that mass is a name for that which kilograms represents in all physics equations.

James Putnam

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