The Augean-Stable Syndrome in Science
Steve Giddings, theoretical physicist; Professor, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara: "What really keeps me awake at night (...) is that we face a crisis within the deepest foundations of physics. The only way out seems to involve profound revision of fundamental physical principles."
This view is shared by almost all theoretical physicists and philosophers of science (most of them sleep well at night). Some even go as far as to predict the death of physics:
Mike Alder: "It is easy to see the consequences of the takeover by the bureaucrats. Bureaucrats favour uniformity, it simplifies their lives. They want rules to follow. They prefer the dead to the living. They have taken over religions, the universities and now they are taking over Science. And they are killing it in the process. The forms and rituals remain, but the spirit is dead. The cold frozen corpse is so much more appealing to the bureaucratic mind-set than the living spirit of the quest for insight. Bureaucracies put a premium on the old being in charge, which puts a stop to innovation. Something perhaps will remain, but it will no longer attract the best minds. This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is optimistic that it can be re,versed. I am not. (...) Developing ideas and applying them is done by a certain kind of temperament in a certain kind of setting, one where there is a good deal of personal freedom and a willingness to take risks. No doubt we still have the people. But the setting is gone and will not come back. Science is a product of the renaissance and an entrepreneurial spirit. It will not survive the triumph of bureacracy. Despite having the infrastructure, China never developed Science. And soon the West won't have it either."
"Profound revision of fundamental physical principles" implies looking for, finding and, in the end, abandoning some false principle. Is there such activity in physics? Yes there is - campaigns, quite noisy sometimes, start and restart but then never reach their goal (the false principle remains well and kicking):
Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics, p. 226: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible, Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent theory in which you changed only the second postulate."
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."
"Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says."
International team of leading philosophers and physicists who have come together to reassess the contemporary paradigm of the relativistic concept of time: "Unfortunately for Einstein's Special Theory, however, its epistemological and ontological assumptions are now seen to be questionable, unjustified, false, perhaps even illogical."
Special relativity is a deductive theory based on two postulates so it cannot be "the root of all the evil" unless at least one of the postulates is false. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the second (speed-of-light) postulate is false and the speed of photons, like the speed of ordinary projectiles, varies with the speed of the emitter (c'=c+v). Let us assume further that most, if not all, theoretical physicists and philosophers of science know about the falsehood. Is there any chance that things will be fixed, some exit from the blind alley found and, why not, a revolution in Kuhnian sense launched?
In my view, the answer is no. False theories die in the end but Augean stables remain that no Hercules is able to clean up. Einstein's 1905 false light postulate and its absurd consequences have become an integral part of the spirit of our civilization. In this sense they are infallible and eternal, and would disappear no sooner than the civilization itself would end.
Pentcho Valev