I was looking over Where Science Went Wrong: Tracking Five Centuries of Misconceptions in preparation for reprinting when I stumbled across the Introduction, which I had forgotten about. Below are excerpts I found interesting because, although they were written eight years ago, reflect points I make in these columns.
The only conclusion concerning measurable physical phenomena that Empirical Science and its precursor philosophy have gotten right since records of knowledge have been kept is that the Earth moves around the sun, and it is only in the last five hundred years that it has willingly accepted this conclusion.
Since that observation, delivered to the world on the deathbed of its proponent Copernicus who feared that its earlier delivery would be contemporary with his untimely death, Empirical Science has promulgated a series of misconceptions concerning measurable and nonmeasurable physical phenomena that has, compounded one on top the other, produced a picture of physical reality so absurd that it would be laughable were it not for the ignorance the picture casts over the human progress for which Empirical Science claims responsibility.
The number of misconceptions is legion, filling every field of knowledge. Where Science Went Wrong includes the major misconceptions surrounding concepts of force and motion. The misperceptions that led to the misconceptions, the pathways to delusion, are set out in detail.
Where Science Went Wrong does not provide answers to the questions about physical reality that underlie each misconception. For empirical praetorians charged with wielding the ultimate shield against scientific apostasy, the plea that what can't be replaced can't be reproached, the answers appear in the other nine volumes of The Copernican Series.
One of the basic tenets of Empirical Science is said to be the need for intelligent people to sit down calmly and discuss on a reasonable basis and in a respectful manner the issues underlying the vast human enterprise that is the search for knowledge in the universe. Because science claims to underlie all human progress, we are instructed that invective, sarcasm and above all name-calling are to be left at the door of the meeting hall so that all present may participate in the improvement of science and the human condition in a quiet and orderly fashion.
This crock of crap, meant to silence those who don't agree with the consensus, is similar to the incantations mumbled by ancient priests, hands held high, forefingers crossed over tortured sacrifices to ward off evil spirits, evil spirits in science being original thought, the tortured sacrifices the remains of all who disagree with the consensus.
Science regularly refuses space in its journals to ideas that oppose the consensus, editors, in fact, having been known to publish lists of subjects that are off-limits for scientific discussion. Observatory facilities are regularly denied for queries into areas accepted as fact, settled interpretations for observations such as the red shift in light when there is no coherent explanation for what light is to start with.
In the era of big machine science, the big machines are off-limits unless they can be used to prove hypothetical facts that are predicted from scientific facts, hypotheses that have been mistaken for reality.
Worse, students can't get doctorates expounding unorthodox ideas, teachers can't get tenure for expressing nonconsensual hypotheses, and professors, should they oppose the established canon either in class or in print, will be hounded from their posts, lose grants, be kicked out of professional societies, their name blackened, cast from the lists, even banned from open-minded establishments of higher learning.
When practical scientists working in subsidized laboratories uncover information that opposes the consensus, they are smeared in the name of the consensus as being bought, tainted by the commercial interests that underwrite their efforts although all advancements in chemistry and physics from Edison through Rutherford to the present, unless the product of pure happenstance, have been subsidized by commercial (or military) interests. Consensus controlled testing laboratories refuse to certify measurable phenomena that oppose the consensus conclusions about what concepts control our picture of reality in fear of losing accreditation.
Work in areas considered to be unproductive, or settled, that produces results that oppose scientific convention, even when adhering to strict empirical standards as promulgated by the scientific establishment, is made the butt of jokes and derision. Scientific meetings, where results are supposed to be objectively evaluated, become the forum for such infantile invective that the fear of ridicule prevails, forcing some to hold sessions only for the safe few, others to forego communicating results altogether, or even from attempting to obtain results to start with.
The use of scientific comity for protection against criticism of process is equally ludicrous. The two hallmarks of the so-called objective scientific method are jokes. Peer review in an atmosphere where consensus rules is used simply to exclude unorthodox points of few, while specialization turns every group of peers into a miniature in-group, speaking a language only group members understand. As a result, any agreed upon absurdity is acceptable so long as it's presented empirically and its underlying hypotheses don't conflict with basic scientific conclusions about reality, interpretations of fact encoded as law for easy enforcement.
Even more ludicrous is the claim of duplication of experimental results. Not mentioning for a moment that interpretations of fact have nothing to do with the facts they interpret so that how experimental results are viewed rests solely on the consensus opinion as to what those results mean, the only reason to duplicate an experiment is to disprove those that conflict with the consensus. In the era of big machine science, and costly experiments, verification occurs in the experimental design itself, and if the verification doesn't occur in the execution of that design, the experiment is redesigned until verification does occur. There is no question of repeating experiments that reinforce the consensus by appearing to find the results its hypotheses predict. The only experiments that are conducted on a repeated basis are easily performed curiosities whose interpretations can be used to promulgate the scientific consensus and those rigged to debunk experiments that have produced results that oppose the consensus.
The reason that Empirical Science needs to defend to the death the delusional concepts it creates is that, like religion, it is based on a set of revealed truths, laws, which have to be believed before one can become a participant in, and be protected by, the resulting belief system and benefit from the structure that has been crafted around it.
The core delusional concept of Empirical Science is the belief that concepts can be proven to be fact by hoking up some sort of methodology, basing the belief, for heaven's sake, on the ancient practice of casting a star speckled, robed arm to the sky, mumbling some incoherent incantations, and claiming to be able to predict the future by reference to the lights in the firmament.
The delusion underlying a process that claims as fact beliefs that predict other facts and then calls the method scientific is self-evident.
Because facts are facts and beliefs are beliefs, producing a procedure that turns beliefs into facts involves all sorts of mumbo jumbo created to confuse nonbelievers, impress them as to the superior knowledge status of the believers, and as a result, gull the nonbelievers into forking over additional funding to support the believers' lifestyles while the believers sit around basking in the glory, the elegance, The Truth of their beliefs. Cries for funding basic research serve only to perpetuate the scam, implying a vast body of omnipotent scientific knowledge out of the public eye that is responsible for technological advancement, the claim that the pile of delusional concepts, occult beliefs such as gravity as a property of matter for why released objects move, angular momentum as conserved in closed systems for why planets rotate or swirling masses of condensing gas for why planets orbit, are responsible for microwave ovens and television sets.
When the obvious misconceptions are questioned by the public, the things of science fiction like black holes, antimatter, space warps, wormholes or time travel, or the things beyond science fiction like strings, singularities, supersymmetry, supergravity, electroweak forces and quantum chromodynamics with its top and bottom quarks, Empirical Science falls back on its methodology, claiming "We didn't think these profound observations up, our objective methodology led us to them inexorably!" -- the claim, espoused by Empirical Science's religious twin that "the Lord works in mysterious ways!"
As noted in the first chapter of the first volume of The Copernican Series, not even the ultimate authority can turn a belief into a fact, and a scientific community that believes its beliefs to be facts will be living a delusion, an accurate statement of current scientific thought.
As the volumes of The Copernican Series illustrate, the only authority is the authority of ideas to actually explain on a consistent basis how facts in reality work together to produce the reality in which we find ourselves.
Currently, science has no ideas that explain facts coherently, and none of the ideas that explain some of the facts reasonably well are consistent with one another.
As a result we have a blustering old science with its silly beliefs and gross misconceptions protecting itself with the shield of comity.
When we don't ask the correct questions, we cannot expect to get correct answers. The failure to phrase questions about physical reality correctly led to the Galilean confusion, it led to the Newtonian confusion and it has led to our own confusion.
But with respect to energy, and its effects, no one has even asked the question!
The question has always been, what makes things move?
No one has asked the question because the cause of motion, and thus momentum, and thus force has been assumed away.
By assuming away motion, we have reversed reality, looking for energy where it does not exist and ignoring energy where it does exist.
This reversal of reality is at the basis of The Copernican Series.
Copernicus, who Empirical Science claims uncovered no scientific fact, reversed reality, providing a clear picture of the solar system by placing the Earth orbiting the sun, showing in the process how the planets move with respect to the sun.
The Copernican Series uncovers no scientific fact. It merely requires that current motion require current force and explains what that current force is and how it produces current motion, showing in the process how the solar system moves with respect to the galaxy.
The error Copernicus corrected dealt with the vision of our position in the universe.
The error with respect to motion deals with our continued presence in the universe, whether we continue to believe that our names, our strings of words, our mindless laws define the universe, or whether we can ask the simple questions that will allow us to understand how the universe operates.
Thinking we know everything when we know nothing may elevate our status from that of savages to that of noble savages, but being totally ignorant of the nature of reality, we remain savages nonetheless.
When we look back on the simple shift in the point of view brought on by Copernicus, we can, with printing still in its infancy, identify few protagonists whose steadfast belief in unreality turned them into laughing stocks. Today, with preposterous absurdities being the substance of tabloids, science columns in the daily papers, trade and association journals and most of all, of the esteemed annals of the various learned societies, the subtle change in point of view, from saying nothing moves something to finding something moves something, will provide identifiable sources of amusement for years to come.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com