>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/31/bobal131.xml
> "Philip Ball has already made a name for himself as a wide-ranging pop
> science writer. His book about patterns in nature, The Self-Made
> Tapestry (1999), merits particular mention as one of the first popular
> works to look at the buzzy topic of self-organisation. Now he has
> turned to fiction - not without some discomfort, judging by his
> acknowledgments - and there's good news: it's come out as another fine
> piece of pop science. Adrift in mid-1980s Eastern Europe, Karl Neder,
> a dissident physicist, is on the run. Pursued, he believes, by the
> forces of "relativism" - the cabalistic adherents of Einstein's
> relativity theories - he writes whirling, green-ink letters to Western
> physics journals claiming to have overthrown the first law of
> thermodynamics and built a perpetual motion machine. Actually, what he
> says is: "PERPETUUM MOBILE IS CONSTRUCTED BY ME!!!!!!!!!"; his
> voluminous correspondence being littered with blood-curdling Igorisms
> of this sort. Little wonder his correspondents can't even bring
> themselves to look at his workings."
>
> Bravo Philip Ball! I know the original story! The only essential
> difference is that, in the original story, "his correspondents" (one
> of them was you Philip Ball) fiercely defended the second, not the
> first law of thermodynamics. The selfsame second law defined by Jos
> Uffink as "red herring":
>
>
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
> Jos Uffink: "This summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful
> to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second
> law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued
> statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained
> attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-
> Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion about the
> arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is
> actually a RED HERRING."
Fortunately there are different journalists:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hutchison/080616
Fred Hutchison: "Kuhn discovered that late in the life cycle of an
aging model, there invariably comes a time when most of the energies
of the science establishment is spent in defensive puzzle solving. The
model becomes a tangled mass of defenses against anomalies. Instead of
a pretty Potemkin village, the model becomes an unsightly ruin. The
unsightly patches in the holes do not quite work. The added wings and
appendages are ad hoc jerry-built eyesores, or are done in
architectural styles that clash with the original style. The model
becomes aesthetically repulsive and loses its romantic panache. A lot
of work is sunk into these maladroit repairs and additions. For
example, some over-paid and over-educated scientist must have gone
half blind to create the mathematical bridge I studied. An expensive
waste of time to save face for Einstein? A sop to people like me who
demand explanations? Well, it was a good sop. It almost worked....A
successful model can somewhat predict selected natural events because
it is deliberately rigged to mimic the patterns of nature. Rich Little
was able to mimic the idiosyncrasies of public figures to get a laugh,
but that does not mean he understood these personages. We might learn
a thing or two from his impersonations, but must be modest in our
claims about what they explain about the personality and psychology of
the person mimicked....Scientists are searching day and night for the
ghosts of the cosmos. But it is much like the search for the Loch Ness
monster. Every so often, some astronomer will cry out that he has
found dark matter or found a black hole. Sensational headlines. Then
silence. The dark matter evaporates. Nessie the monster has gone back
under water. But I saw Nessie...at least I think I saw him. A
frustrated graduate assistant dares to ask the mighty professor, "Why
don't we just get rid of Einstein and save ourselves all this trouble
and embarrassment?" The annoyed professor blurts, "Listen, punk, one
more crack like that and you are barred from this sacred observatory,
built for exploring Einstein's world of symmetry, harmony, and
beauty."
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@
yahoo.com
