Freeman Dyson: Science on the Rampage

New York Review of Books ^ | April 5, 2012 | Freeman Dyson

[neverdem]

Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything
by Margaret Wertheim
Walker, 323 pp., $27.00                                                  

Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource

An engraving by William Blake from The Song of Los, 1795

Physics on the Fringe describes work done by amateurs, people rejected by the academic establishment and rejecting orthodox academic beliefs. They are often self-taught and ignorant of higher mathematics. Mathematics is the language spoken by the professionals. The amateurs offer an alternative set of visions. Their imagined worlds are concrete rather than abstract, physical rather than mathematical. Many of them belong to the Natural Philosophy Alliance, an informal organization known to its friends as the NPA.

Margaret Wertheim's book discusses her encounters with the natural philosophers. She is interested in them as characters in a human tragedy, with the seriousness and dignity that tragedy imposes. Her leading character is Jim Carter, and her main theme is the story of his life and work. Unlike most of the philosophical dreamers, Carter is a capable engineer and does real experiments to test his ideas. He runs a successful business that gives him leisure to pursue his dreams. He is a man of many talents, with one fatal flaw.

Carter's flaw is his unshakable belief in a theory of the universe based on endless hierarchies of circlons. Circlons are mechanical objects of circular shape. The history of the universe is a story of successive generations of circlons arising by processes of...

[GOPJ]

...famous remark by his fellow physicist Steven Weinberg that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."[44]

Weinberg's statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: "And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion." The main point of Christianity is that it is a religion for sinners. Jesus made that very clear. When the Pharisees asked his disciples, "Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?" he said, "I come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." Only a small fraction of sinners repent and do good things but only a small fraction of good people are led by their religion to do bad things.

From your same link - thanks.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. An "extra, extra" ping to the APoD list.

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Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim Kindle edition Unknown Binding reviewed

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks neverdem. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks LiM.

[cripplecreek]

I think its a good idea to at least consider what’s outside the box.

Someone mentioned this short story by Harry Turtledove called “The road not taken”. There are some obvious problems with it but its a fascinating short story that raises some interesting things to ponder.

http://pastebin.com/aJQfubrK

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo and /bingo.

[cripplecreek]

And Robert Forward.

[bigheadfred]

Good subject. Worth that quad ping. Thanks.

[Mike Darancette]

...and that for life to happen, the conditions need to be like Earth.

What they really are saying is "and that for [earth] life to happen, the conditions need to be like Earth." That is a tautology.

[Army Air Corps]

An interesting story. Thanks for the post.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) My pleasure. It’s an unusual topic that gets this treatment. :’)

[martin_fierro]

There’s a vacuum cleaner joke in here somewhere, I just know it.

[SunkenCiv]

Well we do like to Filter Queens around here...

[Makana]

“Don’t care about “inside” or “outside” the box, but support the ones who can duplicate their results!”

Obviously, you are limited in your research that way. Consider the “Journal Of Irreproducible Results”.

http://www.jir.com/favorites.html

[Little Ray]

Thanks! I'd forgotten about them.

But, if you cannot reproduce your results, they cannot be technologically exploited.