Dear Ian,
I have become involved in a discussion in the blogs section with Tom. I will be posting a response there. I prefer to post it here first, because it is related to the discussion that took place here first. I have appreciated very much your courtesy, patience,and thoughtful responses. It is possible it may change slightly before reposting it. However, here it is for your consideration.
Tom wrote:
"Really James, this has gone beyond ridiculous. Special and general relativity are kinetic theories; therefore, empirical. ..."
No theory is empirical. Theory is the accumulation of guesses that the theorists choose, because of their own philosphical biases, to replace that which they do not know about why the universe functions as it does. Empirical science belongs to the real world, and, it studies patterns in effects. It is only effects that the universe makes known to us.
"...And you're taking issue with _Newtonian_ physics, too? Wow. ..."
The theoretical guess pushed onto f=ma was the decision to declare mass to be an indefinable property deserving its own indefinable units of measurement. No one could have known that that was true. It contradicts unity in the universe. Even worse, it made disunity a permanent part of our analysis of the operation of the universe. That is where theoretical physics first began to stray away from empirical science. That single act caused force to be improperly defined resulting in both energy and momentum being improperly defined and adversely affected all higher level theory that has made use of any of these properties.
Theoretical physics is a facade that prevents us from seeing the universe as it really is. I began removing that facade starting with f=ma. Behind the facade, I have found that the erroneous guesses of theoretical physics have been compounded and are distorting mass, electric charge, space, time, temperature, thermodynamic entropy, the origins of the fundamental constants of nature, the fine structure constant, permittivity, permeability, and have made disunity so firmly a part of our analyses that numerous unobservable properties must now be invented out of nothing in order to try to patch theory back together again. They are the new strain of guesses. That which we carelessly tore apart must now be joined back together with super, or hyper, but in any case, magic glue.
The guesses are easy to identify. Everytime a theorist declares a property to be a cause, it is a guess. Theory is the practice of inventing causes. No one knows what cause is. Furthermore, our equations cannot display cause on either side. If cause is found on either side, then that is a clear theoretical error. It may be a real, even though improperly defined, property, but it is not a 'cause'. There is a symbol that we use in our equations to represent all causes. That symbol is the equals sign.
All of your theoretical 'causes' could be squeezed behind the equals sign and empirical knowledge would not suffer. The equations would be better for it. They would be returned to their original, natural state. They would once again be empirical equations. Then, they could tell us the truth about that which we can know scientifically and that which we cannot. However, so long as they remain represented as physics equations, they can only serve to help us solve mechanical type problems.
I have previously objected to the use of the word 'tells'. It is certainly true that each object in the universe knows what to do. Cause is knowing what to do and reacting accordingly to an effect. An original cause is 'knowing everything to be done'. It is fair enough, in a general sense, to say that one object tells another what to do. My objection was directed at the use of the word 'tells' within the context of theoretical physics. Knowing, or intelligence, is the most important property of the universe, but it is not a property of theoretical physics. The philosophy upon which theoretical physics has been constructed cannot call upon any semblance of intelligent act in order to explain anything. The underpinning of the philosophy of theoretical physics is that the universe is mechanical, inanimate, purposeless and dumb. It can never know 'Why?'.
James