Re: RAH and Light speed

In article <1140372112.943729.184730@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
genewardsmith@xxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn wrote:

As I said at the start, relativity would ultimately have been re-
examined and found wanting if classical principles had been reinstated.
It would have happened as soon as people got to grips with the problem
of the nature of the vacuum. (Relativity would not have disappeared as
such - it would be considered a reformulation of Lorentzian symmetries,
but would not have the status of fundamental law.)

Interesting bit of historical revisionism, but it's not what actually
happened. What actually happened in the real world is that Minkowski
gave a famous speech in which he asserted that "The views of space and
time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of
experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are
radical. henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to
fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will
preserve an independent reality."

It was this view which took hold and proved fruitful, sweeping all
before it. Einstein joked that because of Minkowski he no longer
understood his own theory, but he understood it very well, as he proved
when he became the main force behind the creation of general
relativity.

Professional physicists are usually polite; Einstein's comments can be
interpreted as a barb.

As to whether Minkowski's view swept all before it, that may seem so,
and even be so historically to some extent. Certainly it goes some way
to explain the inability of some to confront - or even understand -
revisionist notions.

General relativity represented the complete triumph of the
geometric, spacetime, point of view, and no one was worried about how
it combined with the old quantum mechanics, because that had not yet
become the new quantum mechanics, which had to first become
relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. It's only once
you reach that point that you are faced with the conundrum of how to
fit general relativity together with quantum field theory.

Okay, but times were busy and physics was confused. Once people
started to actually think about the structure of space and time, or
spacetime, whichever might be the most appropriate, these issues came
to the foreground, and relativity started looking a lot less wonderful,
at least to those who kept open minds.

As for "the triumph of geometry", Richard Feynman said in 1962 that
"the geometric interpretation [of general relativity] is not really
necessary or essential to physics". Minkowski's viewpoint may have
swept the smaller minds before it, but it did not sweep all.

But classical principles never were reinstated, and afterwards
physicists no doubt considered the question to be mainly of
philosophical interest. As I stated clearly from the start, the
problems I have explained don't occur when classical principles is
replaced by quantum.

You've made that claim, but you've stated nothing clearly nor made any
kind of coherent philsophical/physical argument for it.

My argument that relativity is classically incoherent depends
specifically on the principles that distinguish classical physics from
quantum physics. I have stated them explicitly. Quite clearly, the
argument does not affect quantum physics. [It's really rather obvious,
in that the obvious adaptation of an ether theory to the quantum world
would be to consider the results of interference between all possible
ethers; special relativity or something very similar is instantly
implied. Perhaps physics would have advanced more rather than less if
so many had not become over-excited by relativity.]

- Gerry Quinn

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