Einstein, Popper and the Crisis of theoretical Physics E-Book

Christoph von Mettenheim

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 632

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

EINSTEIN, POPPER AND THE THEORY OF LIGHT AND MATTER discusses under philosophical, logical and mathematical aspects the theory of light and the problem of explaining gravitation, one of the oldest problems of philosophy and physics. Assuming the cause of gravity to lie in a force of attraction without a material agent would violate fundamental principles of physics. Newton saw that, and he knew that his theory left gravity well described but unexplained. Michael Faraday also saw the problem but could not solve it. Both relied on the ether hypothesis, which was given up at the beginning of the 20th Century in favour of Quantum Theory and the Theory of Relativity. Quantum Theory and the Theory of Relativity, however, rested on serious logical and mathematical mistakes. Max Planck gave no reasons for the individibility of the quantum, and his quantum jump assumed velocity without taking time. Einstein based his theory on a mathematical self-contradiction that remained undiscovered in a whole century. Both theories must be abandoned. In that difficult situation applying Karl Popper´s theory of science leads to a revival of the ether hypothesis in a different shape. If matter is not distinct from ether but is itself a process composed of ether particles, then their elasticity will explain the phenomena of light, of gravity, of the stability of matter, of the vortex shape of galaxies, and several other phenomena as well.

Leseprobe

Christoph von Mettenheim

EINSTEIN, POPPER AND THE CRISIS

Copyright © 2015 by Christoph von Mettenheim

Published and distributed in Germany by: Tredition GmbH, Hamburg Cover and Interior Design: Jeannette Zeuner, BookDesigns, Potsdam

978-3-7323-7897-5 (Paperback)

978-3-7323-7898-2 (Hardcover)

978-3-7323-7899-9 (e-Book)

1st edition, December 2015

Christoph von Mettenheim

EINSTEIN, POPPER AND THE CRISIS OF THEORETICAL PHYSICS

A NEW APPROACH TO AN ANCIENT PROBLEM

To the Memory of

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: The Issue at Stake

FIRST PART: On Einstein’s Theory of Knowledge

Chapter 1: Einstein and the Problem of Gravitation

Chapter 2: A Third Way to Cognition?

Chapter 3: The Poverty of Axiomatics

Chapter 4: Axiomatics versus Heuristics (1): From Kant to Einstein

Chapter 5: Axiomatics versus Heuristics (2): From Einstein to Popper

Chapter 6: On the aims of Scientific Research

SECOND PART: A Century Lost – The Long Return to Ether Theory

Chapter 7: On the Status of Ether Theory in the 19th Century

Chapter 8: The Great Quantum Muddle

Chapter 9: Ether Theory versus Special Relativity

Chapter 10: What About the Atoms? On the Use of Model Theories

Chapter 11: Explaining Gravitation

Chapter 12: On the Origin of the Universe

CONCLUSION: A Cautiously Optimistic Outlook

APPENDIX 1: On Karl Popper’s Theory of Science

APPENDIX 2: On Deducing the Lorentz Transformation

I: The mathematical mistake in Einstein’s ‘Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformation’

II: The mathematical mistake in A. P. French’s M.I.T. textbook

INDEX OF NAMES

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

FIRST PART:ON EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

‘The difference between Kant and Einstein is not in the fact that one of them assumed Euclidean space while the other assumed non-Euclidean space but most of all in the relation, which they established between mathematics and reality.’

FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT

Experimental physics came first; theoretical physics initially was only stopgap; beginning of secession; stagnation of theoretical physics in 20th Century; problem of gravity unresolved. I. The spirit of Enlightenment encouraged speculative science. II. Contrast with timid undercurrent pining for certainty. III. Einstein’s ambivalent attitude; overrating mathematics symptomatic of the period; slow liberation from Aristotelianism; conditions of Einstein’s success; emergence of ‘the Schism in Physics’.

Experimental physics is as old as physics itself. Anyone throwing a stone at a target is performing a physical experiment. We can therefore be certain that physical experiments of the most simple kind were carried out since man began to have thoughts about nature. And ever since he handled fire and water he must have consciously targeted such experiments.

Theoretical physics, by contrast, seems to have emerged only in the 19th Century, and developed only gradually even then. At present its representatives consider it a largely autonomous branch of science, and that development is interesting not only for the history of science but also linked with the beginning of industrialization and hence with European economic history.

Technical inventions often foster the progress of humanity, and inventors were appreciated at all times. Since the end of the Middle Ages many countries specially protected them. The Venetian Republic made first attempts at creating a kind of patent law in the 15th Century already. Industrial development and the French Revolution then encouraged the general recognition of intellectual property eventually to be recognized worldwide. Inventions increasingly often became sources of personal wealth, waking creative powers thereby and unleashing a kind of intellectual gold rush in the 19th Century. The focus of economic life, formerly determined mainly by agriculture and tade, shifted towards commercial production which was beginning to to develop into industrial production. Internationally, the manifold competition of individuals resulted in bitter economic strife of whole nations. On the European continent the foremost aim was catching up with the technical lead which British industry had gained by James Watt’s invention of the steam engine (1765) and Edmund Cartwright’s of the power loom (1785), and which Great Britain jealously defended.

That economic development generated an unprecedented demand for physicists. Many felt the future of mankind to be lying in technology and engineering, and entrusted to them their own future. The need for physicists entailed that for physical education which also took a steep rise in the 19th century. Chairs for teaching physics only in theory were mere stopgaps at first, accepted of necessity because colleges and universities were unable to meet demand otherwise. Teachers were available, even interested and talented teachers endowed with knowledge, enthusiasm and deep understanding of physical phenomena. Nor did classrooms cause any problems. Only laboratories for performing experiments were scarce because they required financial backing. Due to that dilemma and in order to let young physicists at least have theoretical training, professors were appointed even where laboratories were not available. Some teachers of physics had to wait for years until at last they could carry out their own experiments under tolerable circumstances. Heinrich Hertz, the discoverer of electromagnetic waves, was a famous example9.

Markets follow their own laws however, and the market for physical knowledge soon began to generate its own momentum. Teachers of physics without a laboratory of their own would try to remedy that unsatisfactory state of affairs by attracting the more attention to their theoretical teachings and publications, hoping these might procure them a better-equipped chair elsewhere. Initially less-favoured teachers thus were encouraged to excel in the field of theory, and their achievements would attract students bent on theory rather than on practice, gifted rhetorically but preferring to leave experimenting to others. The most capable of them would often become academic teachers themselves later. The officials appointing them would usually have but limited knowledge of physics, and would depend for their selection on publications they understood even less, or on experts who had to be physicists if they were to be qualified. Thus theoretical physics gradually came to be generating itself. In the second half of the 19th Century first chairs were instituted for teaching physics in theory only. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) and Max Planck (1858-1947) were among the first physicists to be pure theorists from the outset10.

By this process unfolding in the 19th Century, theoretical physics gradually established itself as a separate branch of science, largely independent of experimental physics. Since then its home has come to be somewhere in no-man’s-land between physics, mathematics and philosophy. Its relations to those disciplines remind of those of the newborn baby to the fairies in the tale. Physics endows it with the subjective certitude of empirical knowledge. Mathematics presents it with the objective certainty of logical reasoning. And philosopy is the evil fairy coming uninvited. As her christening present she puts in the cradle of the child the question of how the subjective certitude of empirical knowledge based on experience and the objective certainty gained by the rules of logic and mathematics together can yield knowledge that is certain yet extends beyond experience. And along with that she presents it with the eternal riddle of how human knowledge is possible at all.

Physical science shifted its focus considerably in the course of that development. In the 19th Century experimental findings, such as Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction, Young’s of the polarization of light, Roentgen’s of x-rays, Becquerel’s of radioactivity, or Hertz’ of electromagnetic waves, stood in the foreground. Since the turn of the century theoretical physics began to attract more attention. The development of quantum theory, the theory of relativity and the Rutherford-Bohr planetary model of the atom all came in barely fifteen years. They did not affect daily life in any way, but they changed the worldview of modern physics more than any other discovery had changed it since the days of Copernicus. The quest for theoretical unification of physics began to rouse more interest than discoveries of physical effects. Parallel to that, theoretical physics increasingly withdrew from physical practice and from the understanding of common people.

At present however, theoretical physics has been stuck in a crisis for decades. No fundamental advance in theoretical physical knowledge has been on record for a long time. The impulses to technological progress come from other disciplines. Yet business ostensibly goes on as usual. Black holes, or the discovery of new or still smaller particles, or some other news of that kind will occasionally be reported. Quantum computers have been predicted for decades but never been put in practice. The effect of such reports coming up with almost somniferous regularity has long been that the public will hardly take notice of them anymore because common understanding of theoretical physics has suffered too long.

In spite of that however, credulous politicians continue investing in theoretical physics public funds of dimensions hardly conceivable because they, too, are unable to follow its ways11. They depend for their decisions on expert opinions from theoretical physicists or on publications in journals of science staffed also with theoretical physicists. At present theoretical physics not only generates itself. It also controls itself.

Results are nowhere in sight however. The most fundamental questions of physics remain unanswered. That applies not only to controlled thermonuclear fusion which seemed to be almost within reach so long but now is removed again to a distant future after having devoured billions of money in any currency12.

It also applies to the relationship of light and matter and to the explanation of gravity. In fact, it applies to all the truly big problems of theoretical physics and astronomy, even to explaining the causes of the earth’s rotation or of magnetism. Not even new approaches to their solution were found in so many decades. They appear so hopeless that no one seems willing to take them on anymore. Non-physicists hardly remember that those problems still exist, and even physicists seem sometimes to have forgotten them. Regarding the complexity of issues left open, the current state of theoretical physics is more hopeless than that of the ancient Ptolemaic theory had been in the times of Copernicus.

I

There is a link between the development just described and the history of thought in Europe. The stunning progress of experimental science in the 19th Century had been a belated effect of the independent and critical spirit of the Age of Enlightenment. Great developmens at the close of the Middle Ages had wakened that spirit, foremost the discovery of America in 1492 and the heliocentric theory put forward by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) about in 1514. They did not immediately influence the worldview of individuals but in the further course of history they changed the worldview of humanity radically and forever. They opened to human imagination ranges of dimensions hitherto quite unknown, here on earth as well as in the universe. And the art of printing developed by Johannes Gutenberg (1395–1468) around 1455 lent to that imagination the wings on which the minds of countless individuals could freely tour those vast spaces.

That fascinating enlargement of perspectives began to take effect in the Age of Enlightenment. In science Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), René Descartes (1596–1650), Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) and Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) were among the first to succeed in throwing off the mental shackles of the past. By the end of the 18th Century their thoughts had circulated widely and had generated a spirit of optimism carrying many with it. No method was prescribed or prohibited. One pondered over the mysteries of nature and speculated and experimented at heart’s content.

Success was all that counted, and it strongly took sides for that free, undogmatic and open science, particularly in physics. All the great discoveries about electricity, from Galvani’s first studies on animal electricity (1789) to Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction (1831), came in barely more than forty years. The discoveries of light interference and of the polarization of light also fell within that period. And events almost toppled over themselves once scientists had realised that behind the world of visible phenomena there was another world of invisible phenomena still awaiting discovery.

Cathode rays, X-rays, radioactivity and electromagnetic waves, the photoelectric effect and many more physical phenomena normally hidden by nature to human perception were discovered within a few decades. At the turn of the 19th Century the world of experimental physics was upside down, and physical science had to begin almost from scratch in some fields.

Practical application did not tarry either. Great explorers like Galvani, Young, Faraday, Ampère, Hertz and Roentgen had shown the way, and great technicians such as Watt, Cartwright, Stephenson, Morse, Siemens, Edison and Otto followed them hotfoot. Their epoch-making inventions of the steam engine, the power loom, the locomotive, the telegraph, the dynamo, the light bulb or the combustion engine, to mention only some of the wonderful achievements of that period, changed the world in few decades to an extent that previously found no comparison in millennia.

II

Parallel to that development, however, there lived in the world of science also a more timid undercurrent of thought, finding it more difficult to own up to new discoveries. Its exponents could not quite muster the courage needed for making experiments, but rather would squint at the opinions of others. Satisfying curiosity by experimenting is a risky thing after all, especially for scientists pining for public attention.

It takes readiness to commit mistakes, to confess one’s own ignorance when they become visible, and to admit to oneself and others that one had been wrong. Only strong natures could face that; others feared loss of reputation. They tried to avoid the risk of error, strove for infallibility, and clung to the certainty of mathematics. Like the amanuensis Wagner in Goethe’s Faust they believed they knew much, and hoped to know everything one day.

Those following such lines of thinking would be inclined to place knowledge above curiosity. They would be less interested in making new discoveries, and averse to shaping opinions of their own. They would also tend to be impressed by rhetoric more than by creativity, even if paired with scientific discipline. Theorists were exposed to those dangers more than experimentalists were, whom nature itself would permanently demonstrate in their experiments the limits of their knowledge.

On the European continent the admired Anglo-Saxon example did the rest. In late 19th Century the mathematical reflections of the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) probably were the most widely accepted doctrine of physics13. At the end of the century that school prevailed in theoretical physics, and reinforced the above-mentioned development favouring too long and too strongly physicists interested in theory, gifted mathematically and rhetorically, but turned away, rather, from experimental practice.

The First Part of this book will mainly be about the clash between those two major intellectual streams which I have tried to outline. It probably is as old as science itself, being the expression of a fundamental conflict that becomes visible whenever people consciously turn their minds to the world in which we live, and try to understand it. The contrast between Faust and his amanuensis Wagner is everlasting. In some respects it also describes that between Socrates and Plato, or between Huygens and Newton, or between Faraday and Maxwell14. No science is spared that conflict between critical and dogmatic thinking because every scientist must make it out with himself, in each generation, and not only once in his life but throughout his scientific work. Some go boldly ahead, devoting their lives to their passion for truth and taking on greatest risks for its sake. If they fail they will soon be forgotten. If they succeed however, and if their success becomes visible, then others will emulate them and sometimes even betray them for their own advantage.

III

The contrast between critical and dogmatic thinking is alive also in theoretical physics, and it shows in Einstein’s oeuvre particularly. Einstein not only embodied it in his own person like no other physicist; he even realised it in his life and in his work. Two souls were living in his chest, and trying to separate ever and again. Light and shadow were so close together in his thinking that the borderline between them sometimes hardly is traceable. That is why Einstein’s world of thought is the framework of this essay whereas Popper’s mehodology is its guideline. Einstein’s physical theories and his reflections on the theory of science were a mirror of his time. Their influence on contemporary theoretical physics can hardly be overrated.

We will see that despite the exceptional status usually accorded him, Einstein was not an exceptional case. In fact, rather on the contrary, he was very normal, almost too normal. Being interested not only in his proper field of physics but beyond that also in philosophy and in the theory of science, he was in some respects the model scientist of his time. That was why his contemporaries could so easily believe him to be a genius. Many shared his notion of science, and his greatest problem was that this notion itself aimed at a conflict which he first made visible without being able to resolve it.

Einstein wanted to be an empirical scientist as we will see. But he also wanted to have the certainty of mathematics on his side. That was why he was always in line with the most progressive scientists of his time where he was right. And it also explains why he was mostly following a line of thought far older than the conditions from which he started where he was wrong. His errors were almost invariably expressions of a tradition of many centuries, influencing not only theoretical physics. In fact, Einstein’s unfortunate pioneering success consisted in importing into physical theory the intellectual approach of essentialism mentioned in section II of the Introduction, which in philosophy goes back as far as to Plato and Aristotle.

In that, too, Einstein was in harmony with his time. The approach he followed dominated the late 19th Century and infected many of the theories brought forward by theoretical physics in the past 20th Century. Max Planck also stood under its influence. One of its symptoms was an overestimation of mathematics, caused by disregarding its origin and its limitations. It shows in Planck’s original quantum theory as well as in its later developments strongly influenced by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

The state of affairs was unsatisfactory but it had also a positive aspect. It attracted the attention of others to the problems of theoretical physics, Poincaré, Tarski, Gödel and Popper among them, and thus eventually resulted in the great developments made in the theory of science in the 20th Century – developments which theoretical physicists mainly neglect to this day.

We must begin at the beginning however. For seeing the problem, we must understand the intellectual climate from which Einstein’s approach arose. That background is more interesting in some respects than later developments. Logical mistakes happen everywhere, even in science. That is why critical discussion is so important. We will see Max Planck’s logical mistakes in Chapter 8, but although we can locate them precisely, we will also see that they were by no means obvious. Planck’s problem consisted in asking wrong questions rather than giving wrong answers. Einstein’s oeuvre raises greater questions. We saw one of his mistakes in the Introduction already, and will see more of it in Chapter 9. It was so obvious that it seems almost to leap to the eye. Yet, instead of being rejected on the spot, his theories roused astonishment and admiration. The mistakes he made were in principle but harmless blunders that might easily happen to a young scientist. If theoretical physics had been on the alert at the time instead of being mainly on the lookout for geniality, then one of his teachers or some critical reader would have noticed that he was confusing the meaning of his terms and that his deductions were mathematically incorrect. And there the matter would have ended.

The greatest mystery is why that never happened. Why did not only famous contemporaries at home and abroad, Max Planck and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz among them, but almost all physicists worldwide and even the great philosopher Karl Popper accept Einstein’s theory of relativity almost unhesitatingly without taking umbrage at its inherent contradictions? We will see in Chapter 8 that in his theory of the quantum nature of light Einstein shifted the meaning of Max Planck’s original quantum theory without even mentioning that. Why did others tolerate that without considering what it entailed? How could it be that ether theory, accepted by most physicists since the times of Huygens and Newton, was given up almost unopposed in favour of a new theory put forward by a hitherto unknown ‘expert of third class’ of the Swiss Patent Office? How could all this happen although his theories left unexplained so much that ether theory previously had explained? Why were the achievements of generations of physicists set aside so unceremoniously? Is it possible that the relationship to logic of theoretical physicists is generally disturbed, or that they will uncritically adopt opinions of others instead of forming theirs themselves?

Such questions will come to mind. They appear to me more interesting than Einstein’s mistakes because they lead to the roots of the problem instead of dealing with its symptoms only. Einstein was a child of his age after all, and his thoughts were with the mainstream of that period. If my interpretation is correct, then the answers to those questions follow mainly from two causes. One of them was in the tradition of epistemology which only gradually liberated itself from the age-old traditions and mental shackles of the Aristotelian school of thought. And the other was in the specific historical situation in which physics stood at the beginning of the 20th Century. We will see several factors interacting then.

How could Einstein’s theory of relativity be so overwhelmingly successful? It seems impossible to find an even halfway plausible answer to that question in the originality of the theory or in its power of persuasion. He never was the unrecognized genius pining for being discovered, but was accepted almost from the moment when he first walked onto the stage of science as a young man, and became world famous only a few years later. I think he owed that easy victory not to the strength of his theories but mainly to the historical constellation in which he proposed them. He framed his thoughts at a time when the revolutionary developments of the 19th Century had thrown the self-confidence of many physicists into a deep crisis. His theory of relativity ostensibly showed them a way of overcoming that crisis, and of conceiving physics as an ‘exact science’ again. He promised to achieve that for which many scientists were yearning. His theories served what they wished for far better than they served the progress of science.

I will explain this view in the following chapters. If my interpretation is correct, then the turn of the 19th Century marks an important parting of the ways in the history of physics. In those decades experimental physics and theoretical physics finally separated. Some scientists continued to search for new physical effects and explanations, inventing original experiments and making wonderul discoveries such as the semiconductor or laser technology which were to shape the technical and economic development of the late 20th century to an almost incredible extent. Others worked on the presentation and perfection of their theoretical system. That was the origin of the ,Schism in Physics’15 described by Karl Popper, which has since been deepening more and more the gulf between theoretical physics and other sciences, and has been leading even within physics itself to problems of understanding hardly to be bridged any more in our time.

The striking stagnation of theoretical physics in the second half of the 20th Century is a direct sequel to that misguided development about a century ago. It originated in a misunderstanding of the principles of science, the symptoms of which show clearly in quantum theory and the theory of relativity, and it still reigns unchallenged in most other areas of theoretical physics. We will see those relationships in detail in the following chapters. For really understanding them however, and for being fair to Einstein’s memory, we must begin by taking a closer look at the circumstances of his life.

9  Albrecht Fölsing, Heinrich Hertz - Eine Biographie, Parts I–III.

10  Karl v.Meÿenn in Die Großen Physiker, vol. II p. 87, 89; Fölsing, Heinrich Hertz – Eine Biographie, p. 195.

11  The text refers to the development of large particle colliders. At the outset of those experiments, many hoped they might lead to making nuclear fusion useful for civil purposes. At present there seems to be no question of that anymore.

12  Constructing the fusion reactor in southern France began only after I had published Albert Einstein oder Der Irrtum eines Jahrhunderts on the internet in 2005. Details of the experiment are on the ITER website. At the time of writing this book the estimate of total costs is about 13 billion Euros but its outcome still is open. I do not expect it to succeed, and will explain my reasons for that in Chapter 11, VI.

13  Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) and his Matter and Motion (1877) probably were the most comprehensive statements of physical mathematics of that time. Einstein took Maxwell‘s theory as a starting point in his papers Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (1905, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) and Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig? (1905, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content?).

14  For the difference between the attitudes of Socrates and Plato, see Karl Popper’s Open Society vol. I, The Spell of Plato, Chapter 10, sections V – VII. The differences between those of Huygens and Newton or of Faraday and Maxwell will become apparent in the further course of this essay.

15  The quotation refers to Popper’s book Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (1982).