Professor M Pepper FRS ; Dr Neil McEwan
; Dr James W
Mink ; Professor A Howie FRS ; Professor Philip E Secker ; Professor
Michael Pepper FRS ;
The End of the Enlightenment
The analysis proving the
end of the Enlightenment is immersed in technical material peculiar to the
key experiment. Thus, my book The Catt Anomaly http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm
is
opaque to some students of history. Here, the key philosophical points made in that book are given without the technical clutter. Ivor Catt 20oct02 [Further discussion at http://www.ivorcatt.com/2922.htm [Scandals in Electromagnetic Theory http://www.ivorcatt.com/28scan.htm Philosophical extracts
from http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm The Catt Anomaly Science beyond the Crossroads by Ivor
Catt Westfields Press, 121 Westfields, St. Albans AL3 4JR, England 1996,
2001 First published in 1996 http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm Republished with additions in 2001 http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm
Introduction The case of the Catt Anomaly goes to the heart of elementary
electrical theory. It is much simpler and much more important than Dingle's
Twin Paradox. The best introduction to the politics of knowledge in science,
and the best scientific demonstration that the scientific Age of Reason is
over, is to study the present status of the Catt Anomaly. The reader can stop
here and test the following proposition for himself. No scientist is willing
to take a scientific approach to the problem of suppression in science - the
allegation of widespread censorship, to be tested by the usual criteria of
repeatability, corroboration, Popper's falsification and the rest. Try to get
a scientist to remain a scientist when addressing these matters! He will
start talking about Catt's paranoia or egotism, which are not scientific
concepts. Perhaps more properly called 'The E-M
Question', the Catt Anomaly is an elementary question about classical
electromagnetism which experts refuse to answer in writing. McEwan, Pepper, Howie, Mink found that
they passed examinations with high marks. This gradually took them further and
further up the hierarchy of academe. We have only limited evidence, e.g.
McEwan on p6, that they claim competence in electromagnetic theory. It has
usually been attributed to them by others. This is the way in which the vital
disciplines underpinning our culture gradually disintegrate. Those very few
who do have a grasp of electromagnetic theory are elbowed aside by
ignoramuses who have floated to the top on a sea of confusion. I have found
the same grave situation in my other fields of research; computer
architecture and Wafer Scale Integration (see Wireless World, July81 and
March89). McEwan, Pepper and Mink show us how scientific knowledge gradually
descends into liturgy, examples being their letters. In the same way as the
parish priest, having forgotten his theological training, thinks he still
retains the key to his religion, so these scientific quacks think they hold
the key to their subjects. However, the unanswered questions give them a rare
glimpse of the real subject that they should study and discuss. Concern to
continue to pay their mortgages and retain the respect of their wives makes
them ignore the letters with their awkward questions. Our task is to square
the circle; to bring them back into the scientific fold. Unless we do this
soon, science will remain at best sterile, and will more probably
disintegrate. http://www.ivorcatt.com/em_test04.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/08101.htm http://www.ivorcatt.com/2698.htm The background http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anomb.htm The Earlier Background
.
. As the decades drifted by, I continued
to fulfil my duty of attempting to get my work published. I also delved
deeper into the theory of the Politics of Knowledge, or the Sociology of
Science. Basil Bernstein, of the Institute of Education, London, gave me the
first clue, which can be paraphrased as follows; Knowledge is Property,
with its own market value and trading relationships, to be protected by those
who trade in that body of knowledge. It was many more years before I realised that He who brings unsafe new
knowledge is a vandal, much as the Nazis who burned the books were vandals. The reason is that the intrusion of unsafe
new knowledge results in the rejection of the old books. Unsafe new knowledge has to
be defined. New knowledge is unsafe if its acceptance would lead to a change
in an A level syllabus. It is also unsafe if it would lead to the change of a first degree syllabus.
It is not unsafe
if it would merely lead to the
addition of an extra section in a first degree syllabus, leaving the text
books untarnished. One has to consider the knowledge broker, or lecturer, with his
slabs of lecture notes. Each slab of notes represents capital which brings in
sixty pounds of income each year from two hours of lecturing. The
professional is unwilling to tear up those notes, or to give up the royalties
on his text book. His text book probably gained his promotion. The professionalisation of teaching in around 1850, and the
merging of research with teaching, set the stage for the inevitable
ossification of science a century later. The professional cannot afford to
allow knowledge to advance. Any attempt to push forward
the bounds of knowledge by paying professionals to do so must fail. Even when
employed specifically to advance knowledge, the professional will freeze it. The existing knowledge
base is the professional's identity, his security, and his income. Unsafe new knowledge
threatens all of these. It took further years for me to realize that the role of the
professional institution was similar to that of the educational
establishment. In the 1970's, when the IEE was obstructing our efforts to
publish and to initiate discussion of fundamentals, we naively assumed that
if only we could get past the 'decadent' officials to the 'vibrant'
membership, all would be well. I am now convinced that this was a delusion,
for the following reasons. Those students who studied, learned, and passed exams in the
IEE's static knowledge base developed subject loyalty and also a vested
interest in its maintenance and defence against unsafe new knowledge. Some had even passed
the IEE's own exams. They now paid their subscriptions to the IEE, not to
encourage it to advance knowledge, but so that it would defend the knowledge
base which was now their
identity and their security. When working at Lucas forty years ago, the manager told me that
the average time a production line girl worked for the company was six weeks.
This made nonsense of the SDP idea of worker participation in management
decisions. We might as well ask British Rail to have its Board meetings on a
platform of Victoria Station and ask the passengers waiting for their trains
to help to make decisions on running the railway system, there and then. Decades later, my son pointed out that the worker's interest was
best served if reinvestment were held to a minimum, and his company closed
down when he took retirement. That way, his income would be maximised. We can
apply the same rule of thumb to the professional engineer, member of the IEE. My article "The Scientific Reception System as a
Servomechanism", Appendix 2 of http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm ,
gives the next stage in the argument. Like the Catholic Church, the IEE paying member would allow the
IEE to sin a little - to allow small increments, or changes in, the knowledge
base. This mirrors the production line worker benefiting from minor
improvements to the existing production line. However, major theoretical
advances must be held up until the IEE paying member retires. At that point,
the bulk of membership would be younger, of an age to want further delay in
the publication of major scientific advance, and so ad infinitum. Thus, the
IEE and its members mirror the conservative stance of the professional lecturer.
Neither benefits from major advance, which would cause short and medium term
damage to his career. The professional engineer has no interest in major
advance in the art. Major advance benefits only; (1) putative future generations of
engineers, who do not yet pay their membership fees to the IEE, and (2) society at large, which does not pay
membership fees to the IEE. The more exposed, and the more absurd, [IEE Executives] Williams and Secker were to appear, the
more supportive and grateful the IEE membership would be that they had risked
so much to protect and maximise members' careers. In the case of electromagnetism, there was good reason why the
blocking of advance was particularly easy for the official to come to terms
with, without feeling of guilt or compunction. Books on electromagnetism
state that the theory was
completed a century ago, and no further advance is possible or necessary.
Thus, the IEE officials knew that any purported advance was fallacious. See
for instance John
David Jackson, [U Calif. Berkeley and Visiting Professor at Trinity College,
Cambridge], "Classical Electrodynamics" 3rd edn., pub. Wiley 1999. [But see http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm
] Philosophy We have to make considerable effort to gain some understanding
of the behaviour of captains of science like Atiyah, Pepper, McEwan,
Williams, Secker and the rest. This will enable us to control and limit their
destructive activity more effectively, and direct them towards doing what
they are paid to do. The picture is clarified if we think of them as
politicians first, administrators second and scientists third. However, it is
probably more useful to think of them as not scientists at all, as Stalin was
not a communist or Marxist. More accurately, whether Stalin was a Marxist or
not had minimal influence on his behaviour, which was driven by other forces. The attack on scientific principles was mounted a few decades
following the professionalisation of science in the mid-nineteenth century.
Professionals feared the career insecurity when they stood on a shifting
knowledge base. At a subconscious level they realised that they had to freeze
their body of knowledge. Further, they had to suppress the knowledge that
they were doing so. This is the dialectic which makes these commissars of
knowledge vulnerable and manipulable. Most of them will go to considerable
effort to avoid admitting to themselves, and more particularly to their
admirers - wives, maiden aunts and so forth, that they represent the forces
of darkness. The Remedy The blocking of new information by all our institutions means
the end of civilisation. It is of the utmost importance that the facts of the
situation be established soon and that remedial action be taken. The remedy
is simple - to introduce accountability. I fear that at present a knowledge
broker is rewarded for blocking new information. The necessary reform will be that should a knowledge broker be
proved to have blocked new information, he will be dismissed. AIDS: The failure of contemporary science http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anoma.htm The Rise and Fall of
Bodies of Knowledge. -
I. Catt, The Information Scientist 12 (4) December 1978, pp. 137-144. It is argued that the self-protecting nature of the knowledge
establishment leads to the suppression of new ideas. Proposals are put
forward for the establishment of 'Communication nets' which having no central
points are incapable of suppression. Introduction. Although the principle of free communication of ideas is a basic
tenet of the scientific community, there are numerous examples of their
suppression. Professor Herbert Dingle, who wrote a book on relativity in the
1920s as well as a section on relativity for ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, and
was the man chosen by the BBC to give the eulogy on Einstein when he died,
developed doubts about the special theory of relativity around 1955. To his
astonishment, he found that the scientific journals and institutions suddenly
closed their pages and doors when he wanted to write or say something
unorthodox; that is, heretical. A scientist might say, 'something that was
incorrect'. He describes his experience in his book, SCIENCE AT THE
CROSSROADS (1). Immanuel Velikovsky
painstakingly developed the heretical theory that Venus as a planet is only
some 3,500 years old, that it moved for centuries on a very eccentric orbit,
and about 1500 BC made its two closest approaches to the Earth. During the
eighth and seventh centuries BC, the comet Venus repeatedly approached Mars,
and Mars in turn menaced our planet. Only after all these encounters did
Venus finally lose its last cometary characteristics and settle down to its
present planetary behaviour. Velikovsky believes that the effects of these
encounters on the Earth, especially the earlier ones, where truly
catastrophic. He wrote a book about his theories, called WORLDS IN COLLISION
(2). Without reading Velikovsky's
book, the Professor of Astronomy at Harvard warned Macmillan not to publish
anything by Velikovsky, saying that if they did, Macmillan would be boycotted
by the academic community. Macmillan bowed to the pressure, and fired the
editor who had accepted Velikovsky's manuscript, because he had accepted
heretical material (3,4). The computer journals
and conferences in Britain and the USA consistently evaded 'The Glitch', the
way in which computers spontaneously go mad for no apparent reason. The
lengthy private correspondence with the editor of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN which
culminated in his being forced to give 'The Glitch' a passing mention, in
April 1973, is very revealing. It took ten years of dedicated hard slog by a
group of scientists in the University of Washington, St. Louis, to get it
into the professional journal, the IEEE Transactions on Computers, in June
1975. Many other instances
could be cited of the suppression of new or unusual, that is 'heretical',
ideas by scientific institutions. The system of refereeing technical articles
before publication (and I myself have acted as a referee) is a system of
censorship, the censor having no training in how to differentiate between
'wrong' and 'heretical'. Superficially, it is
easy to look at the suppression of free communication in science from the
Basil Bernstein point of view (6), that 'knowledge is property with its own
market and trading value', to be protected by the practitioners of that
particular brand of knowledge - it may be sociology, mathematics, psychology,
or some sub-set of these. We might regard the suppression of new ideas and
the obstruction of outsiders when they try to trespass into a branch of
knowledge as pernicious and retrograde. As one example of many suppressions, digital
electronics, otherwise called computer hardware design, can be taught in
virtually no college in the world today. It is suppressed by the older
knowledge groups of computer science, which means programming, and by
electronics, which means telecommunications. Dr Charles Seitz was chased out
of the University of Utah when he opened up a laboratory with digital
electronic hardware within the Computer Science Department. He then called
himself a 'defrocked computer scientist'. (After a long gap, he is now
lecturing at CALTECH.) If we were certain
that the suppression of free communication was wrong, it would merely be
necessary to expose the fact that editors of scientific publications work to
suppress scientific communication, rather than to sustain it; that university
faculties work to block new disciplines, rather than help them to develop,
and we would organize methods to prevent editors, professors and conference
organizers from suppressing new developments in the future. The Holt Dictum. However, across this vista, like a blaze of light, comes the
dictum of Dr A. W. Holt, 'Without barriers to communication there can be no
communication'. This is one of the great profound truths which often appear
facile at first sight. As an illustration of
Holt's thesis, when I publish something in a scientific journal, a large part
of what I am publishing has already been said before the first word of the
piece. The fact that I am publishing in that scientific journal means that I
accept virtually the whole of what Galbraith calls the 'conventional wisdom'
which is accepted by subscribers to that journal and its editors. This
rigidly limits the scope of my communication. I want to publish in that
journal because I accept the frame of reference established by that journal
and the group of scientists who support it. If something were published in
that journal by someone who did not accept virtually all the precepts
enshrined in previous issues of the journal, it would carry little meaning,
or communication, because having broken with the traditional agreed premises
of the journal, no reader would any more know what was still agreed; no one
would even be sure what the words in the revolutionary article meant. After
all, the meaning of a word is a creature of the frame of reference within
which it has traditionally been used. (M. Polanyi in PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE says
that every time a word is used, it alters or reinforces its meaning as a
result of its being used in a different context (7).) As further illustration of the Holt dictum, we can take
something that the poet Stephen Spender once said. He argued for writing in
an already accepted style. He said that if one created a new style, one's own
style, one ran the risk of creating an 'historical object', and not communicating.
Similarly, one could say that if one wrote a revolutionary article in a
journal, one would create an historical object; what one said would be
unintelligible to the reader. The only meaningful communication is one which
only marginally alters the frame of reference. In the language of T.
S. Kuhn (8) it is permissible to write and speak within the limitations of a
shared paradigm, and even to marginally modify the shared paradigm. This is
an acceptable, meaningful exercise in what he calls 'normal science'. What is
not permissible is to write or say something which contradicts the shared
paradigm, and expect it to be tolerated by the accepted journals, conferences
and faculties. In so far as such institutions allowed the ingress of
revolutionary ideas, they would be inhibiting the proper flow of very useful
communication of the normal kind, of normal science, because the shared
paradigm, a necessary frame of reference in normal scientific communication,
would be undermined. Knowledge as Property. Basil Bernstein writes, apparently critically, that a body of
knowledge is property, with its own market value and trading arrangements, to
be protected by the social group which administers that body of knowledge.
However, one can look at such defensiveness in a favourable way. If no one
were to defend the integrity of a body of knowledge against assault from
laymen outside, the clarity and coherence of that body of knowledge, and in
particular the solidity and validity of the shared paradigm which is its foundation,
would be undermined. Any body of knowledge,
which embraces both information and understanding, needs its own body of
dedicated practitioners, who exercise their knowledge and keep it alive.
Also, they put up barriers around it to defend it against confusion. Without
these barriers to more or less random communication, giving precedence to
communication between the select few within the barriers, within their
journals and conferences (and churches), the body of knowledge that they are
protecting would lapse into confusion. That is why 'without barriers to
communication there can be no communication'. New Knowledge. From time to time, new knowledge tries to break through the
defensive barriers into the main body of knowledge, and an important role of
the priests within is to analyse these new ideas and decide whether to accept
or reject them. All the while they must defend what they already have. It is
therefore important that a limit be placed on the amount of new knowledge
attempting to break through to the inner sanctum. If too much were allowed in
for analysis at any one time the result would be confusion and damage to the
valuable body of knowledge already entrenched within. However, the new
knowledge which attempts to break in beyond the barriers and articulate on to
the already established knowledge plays an important role. The existence of
such conflicts attracts people of high calibre towards the centre of the
knowledge and towards its fringes. Even the rejection of a new piece of knowledge
is a useful exercise, because in the process the main body of knowledge is
exercised, and the practice of manipulating it will be kept alive among the
priests in the inner sanctum. As a body of knowledge
increases in size and complexity, the problem created by each quantum of new
knowledge which attempts to break through into the inner sanctum is greater.
For this reason, the defences surrounding a large body of knowledge are
rightly much higher, more difficult to surmount, than those surrounding one that
is smaller, less complex and less mature. However, new knowledge still comes
in, and the body of knowledge continues to grow, albeit at a slower and
slower rate. Unfortunately, however, when the body of knowledge is bigger and
the rate of inflow of new knowledge is smaller, more and more of the activity
within the knowledge becomes 'celebration', more and more ceremonial rather
than exercise in depth. As a result, a different calibre of person is
attracted to the large knowledge, lacking the ability to understand and
defend a body of knowledge with many levels of meaning. They are 'maintenance
men' rather than 'builders'. The central body of knowledge ossifies, becomes
brittle and disintegrates. This is how civilizations collapse, how religions
and cities collapse, and how a scientific community will collapse. Growth of Knowledge. We can expect bodies of knowledge to grow rapidly at first, grow
more slowly when they are large, and then steady to a more or less fixed
maximum. After some time at this maximum they will disintegrate. My recent
investigations indicate that our knowledge and understanding of
electromagnetic theory reached its zenith in about 1910, and we have since
lost most of what we knew about the subject. I cannot find anyone in the world
today who professes to be an expert on electromagnetic theory, or who is
researching into the subject. The computer art had
reached a large size and complexity as a body of knowledge in 1944, which
appears to have been its practical limit. Since there has been no advance in
the last thirty years (9), it must be well on its way to disintegration. In the language of
Professor Lehman's theory of growth dynamics (10) 'progressive' work has come
to a halt and all activity is 'anti-regressive' maintenance work. Lehman says
that at this point, further advance can only be made if the foundations of
the knowledge are re-examined and streamlined. However, it is at this
point that the Holt barriers to communication play an unfortunate role. By
the time fundamental change is needed, we have seen that there are good
reasons why the calibre of the 'guardians of the faith', the high priests,
will have sunk to an all-time low, becoming worried, inadequate functionaries
holding in reverence their predecessors who engineered the era of fast growth
and progress. As the need for fundamental change increases, their blocking of
communication of new ideas will become more complete and the established
institutions more closed and rigid. High technology will
grind to a halt and even regress unless we fundamentally alter its underlying
structure. The key problem is that as a body of knowledge matures, that is,
ossifies and becomes decadent, channels of communication are shut off by the
vested, mature groups, in a manner vividly described by Dr Charles McCutchen
(11). Need for a New System of Communication. Clearly, what is needed is a new system of communication between
peers which cannot be strangled in the normal way when the relevant body of
knowledge reaches maturity. The key to the design of an irrepressible
communication system, which we can call a 'Communication Net', is that it
should have no central control point, no single focus whose capture leads to
strangulation. This is how established institutions are easily emasculated.
For instance, control of the staff appointments to a college faculty makes it
easy to destroy the elan vital of that faculty. Control of the reviewing
process of a professional journal makes it easy to suppress further
constructive communication. Similarly the technical conference, with its
small cabal choosing the list of speakers, is easy prey to a decadent clique. I am not saying that
the forces of decadence know that they are strangling their social group's
future - indeed the essence of their decadence is their ignorance of what
they are doing. Generally, they believe they are maintaining standards. We must design a system which retains
the good intent of the established institutions - search after truth, free
communication, appraisal by peers - but does not have their unsound
structure, vulnerable to capture by a career- and prestige- oriented clique.
One might even go so far as to say that more rugged structures are a
prerequisite for the technological revolution, and that the reason for the
failure of high technology to generate vast profit is the strangulation of
its institutions. In principle, a
communication net contains equal individuals, each of whom keeps an up to
date list of articles that he recommends and copies of which he is willing to
supply on request at twice the direct cost involved; 25p would be the kind of
sum that another member of the net would send in advance when requesting one
article. The reason for charging double is that this gives anyone in the net
a surplus of funding which he uses to finance the voluntary sending of
unrequested articles - for instance an important new article, or articles to
someone who is being invited to join the net. A member includes, in his
bibliography of a certain subject, only those articles - by himself and
others - which he thinks make a contribution to the subject. Each subject
will have its own net, and on request a member will supply his bibliographies
to all nets of which he is a member. This will break down interdisciplinary
boundaries, which is one of the main problems in high technology. Since membership of a
professional institution costs about £15 p.a., it will be reasonable to
expect such members to spend about £5 p.a. on communication nets, that is
about twenty communications per year; quite enough in practice. Once the nets are in
operation, a prestige-oriented scientist will aim to belong both to a
professional institution and to a communication net. Wide distribution of
one's article on a net, particularly if it appeared in bibliographies
supplied by a number of eminent experts, would soon become more prestigious
than publication in a professional journal. In job applications it would be
useful to show that one's articles were recommended by top people in the
field - this is a facility unavailable at present. A member of a net will
include in his bibliography a statement of the hours during which he is
available on the telephone. It looks as though two hours per week would be
reasonable, and it might be necessary to restrain calls by only allowing
trunk calls on the net. Xerography and the
direct dial telephone appeared after the philosophical and organizational
structure of professional institutions ossified, and the institutions make no
concessions to such technological advances. Communication nets should be able
to adjust rapidly to new communication developments and opportunities. In a BBC programme it
was estimated that on average a published article was read 1.3 times - that
is, articles are read 30% more often than they are published. I asked the
editor of AFIPS, a leading computing journal, about this, and he said he
thought the figure was probably more like four. Whoever is right, it is clear
that even after suppression of important articles, the dissemination of what
is allowed through by the censors (reviewers) is ineffective and expensive.
It seems eminently economical by comparison to Xerox (say) ten copies of an
article and mail them to those likely to read them. I myself am setting up
at least three nets - one being on electromagnetic theory, a subject totally
suppressed by the journals. Another net that I shall start will be a net
giving advice on what nets exist. Net design can be expected to improve
rapidly during the first ten years or so after their inception, and it is
important that improvements in their structure are widely communicated as
they are received. If communication nets
are successful, it may be possible to use their structure as the basis for
the design of organizations dedicated to other activities than flow of
information. These other activities may develop spontaneously within
communication nets, or alternatively they may be consciously started at a
later date after some experience has been gained with communication nets. References. 1. Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, Martin Brian &
O'Keefe, London, 1972. 2. Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, Sphere, 1972. 3. De Gracia (Editor), The Velikovsky Affair, Sidgwick &
Jackson, 1966. 4. Velikovsky reconsidered, Pensees, May 1972. 5. George R. Couranz and D. F. Wann, Theoretical and
experimental behaviour of synchronizers operating in the metastable region,
IEEE Trans. Computers, C-24, June 1975, pp. 604-15. 6. Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, 1962. 7. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, London, 1962. 8. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
University of Chicago Press, 1962. 9. I. Catt, Computer Worship, Pitman, 1974, p. 125. 10. L. A. Belady and M. M. Lehman, Programming System Dynamics,
IBM Research Report RC 3546, 1971. 11. Charles McCutchen, An Evolved conspiracy, New Scientist, 29
April 1976, p. 225. [Reprinted in I. Catt, Electromagnetic
Theory vol. 1, pub. C.A.M. Publishing 1979, p. 117] Comments made in July 2000 by Ivor Catt. My website is www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ The last part of the article obviously describes the Internet of
today. However, there are differences. The Internet contains a shadowy
central control committee, which we need to obviate. Also, the Internet lacks
any system of validation by respected experts in the field. "Riposte", see my www Home Page, is a more recent
idea. A critical factor is the efficiency of the search engines such
as Yahoo. Ironically, The Kernel Machine (see my website), on which my world patents
have run out, would have enabled the signal to stay above the noise. Just one
such machine owned by Yahoo would increase that company's valuation from $9
billion to $90 billion. (The whole Kernel development project only costs £40
million.) However, it is likely that it will never be built. Society's
commitment to limiting each computer to only one processor is very strong.
(The Kernel Machine has one million processors.) Thus, Search will evermore
limit the power of the Internet. The scientific reception
system as a servomechanism - I. Catt. The Journal of Information
Science 2(1980) 307-308. In order to survive, a body of knowledge must attract funding.
'Funding' can mean, quite crudely, supplies of cash. It can also mean the
support of acolytes, or 'researchers', willing to 'work' for nothing and
therefore subsidize the body of knowledge. Instead of money, such people
accept as payment pieces of paper called 'degrees', institution membership,
etc. We shall call this activity 'zero purchase'. To attract funding, the
body of knowledge must stabilize and create an easily recognizable
destination for funding. This destination may be a university faculty or a
scientific institution. Credibility is gained by such an institution if it
owns known leading knowledge brokers, or 'experts'. An individual achieves
expert status by accumulating status symbols, from Nobel prizes down to A
level passes, and by becoming the editor of an obscure journal or by
publishing papers and obscure books. An important distinguishing feature of
virtually all of these status symbols is that they are not directly
profitable at point of purchase. Anticipated fringe benefits are all. For
example, the book with low sales and low royalty counts as a status symbol
for the author, but the profitable best seller does not. By indulging in unremunerative activity helpful to a body of
knowledge, a would-be knowledge broker gains 'credit points' for
'selflessness' and 'scientific honesty'. If he gains enough such credit
points, he may become one of the leading members of the knowledge
establishment and recoup his investment of unpaid toil during the previous
decades. However, most people who run in the 'academic selflessness'
sweepstakes never recoup in cash terms, but have to be satisfied with the
periodical reception of further pieces of paper - M. Sc., Fellow of the
Institute, CBE, etc. When a scientist has attained guru status within an organization
and helps it to attract funding, it is important for him and for the
organization that his guru status should be made secure. He can ensure this
either (1) by continuing to maintain mastery of the evolving body of
knowledge, or more simply (2) through his refereeing and editorial power, by
stabilizing that knowledge and preventing it from developing, or (3) by some
combination of the previous two techniques. In practice, he opts for
stability but garnished with gradual growth at a pace well within his
(possibly by now failing) capabilities. As well as by ownership of gurus, an organization uses its
official journals to establish itself as a proper destination for funding
(and zero purchase). However, in the same way as a salesman tries not to
disturb or confuse the customer when making a sale by throwing doubt on the
merit of his product, journals can only serve their purpose if they contain
no hint that the fount of knowledge may not reside within the organization.
On the other hand, totally bland discourses in its journals (and totally
bland lectures by its resident gurus) pose another threat to an
organization's money supply; the charge that they have gone to sleep, or are
old, decadent and rusty. Discussion and dispute must be seen to occur, and
this needs to be reasonably orchestrated so as to give both the indication of
internal division (or life) in the organization, but not at such a level as
to threaten fragmentation leading to the need for the money source (perhaps a
government committee or charitable foundation) to take sides by deciding
which fragment to finance in the future. Organizations which fail to 'fine
tune' this orchestration have disappeared, so those that survive have
succeeded. A money source (and even more so a 'zero purchase' Ph. D.
student) also has to achieve status by pointing to the status of the
organization or organizations it supports. In engineering terms, any 'life',
or 'dispute', represents positive feedback, a destabilizing factor with
dangerous possibilities, contrasting with the stabilizing effect of the
reiteration of antique ideas. Once, many years ago, I designed a triple Darlington amplifier,
and was surprised to find that in addition to the heavy D.C. current, it
could oscillate at low amplitude and very high frequency, the frequency of
the first, small, drive transistor, with the following two high power, low speed,
transistors acting passively as forward biased conducting Vbe diodes. This is
a good model for the compromise invariably reached by the organizations
milking a body of knowledge in order to secure their continued funding. The
high frequency, superficial, harmless oscillation, or argument, shows the
signs of life needed to reassure the funding sources, while paradoxically at
the same time the large, steady, bland communication lower down serves to
reassure. This is why [owners of] a
body of knowledge will tolerate, and even encourage, argument and violent
disagreement about trivial detail while at the same time blocking all
questioning of fundamentals. To change the metaphor, a body of knowledge is
like a large raft on which all kinds of violent games can and must be played,
but no one must attack the raft on which they stand, because then everyone
would drown in new ideas. Reference. I Catt, The rise and fall of bodies of knowledge (see above). @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Letter to the Editor, Electronics World
+ Wireless World, published in May95 What Conspiracy? In a letter to WW in nov81, JL Linsley Hood writes that
"censorship has been effective throughout my own professional
career....". He lists nine authors who could not have been published
anywhere but in Wireless World. As Pete Davis (EW+WWDec94) asserts, there is usually no
conspiracy to suppress heretical views. There is no need of one, except in
some specific instances, because as Charles McCutcheon wrote in the New
Scientist (itself a notorious
suppressor, but not as bad as Nature) on 29 April 1976, p225, "An
evolved conspiracy" suffices. For example, I ran into a discussion in
the interval at the Royal Institution seminar to celebrate the centenary of
the Michelson-Morley experiment. An
American who was setting up an international conference on relativity
discussed with one of the lecturers whether ether buffs should be suppressed
at that conference. He also asked the lecturer how Harold Aspden should be
dealt with. They concluded that if ether believers kept to Establishment
mathematics, they should be allowed to put their case. The American told me he regarded heresy in science much as he
regarded heresy in religion. However, more generally, suppression in science
results from fear that a new idea will disrupt the normal, calm progression
of academic career progress and research funding. Suppression is the norm rather than the exception. Even Maddox,
Editor of Nature, now says he is worried1. With his track record, that is
mind-blowing. Scientists have successfully resorted to false authorship and
false addresses to get into Nature. The most interesting, and most
destructive, is the pandemic suppression of advances relating to the AIDS
epidemic. Other experts, whose names I can supply, specialise in the allied
subject of fraud in science. Stewart and Feder lead this field. My first publication on suppression in science was "The
Rise and Fall of Bodies of Knowledge", published in The Information
Scientist No 12 (4) dec78, pp137-144, where I discuss some of the cases of
suppression which litter science. My article was re-published in my book
"Electromagnetic Theory vol 1", 1979, p117. All of the content of
that book is suppressed, including the point that I raised at the
Michelson-Morley centenary seminar, asking about the apparent paradox in
their experiment that although Michelson-Morley pre-date wave/particle
dualism, both wave and particle have to be assumed at different stages in the
experiment to suppress anomalies. It appears to me that for the experiment to have any value, the
light must act as particles during its travel, because parallel waves would
interfere with each other and ruin the experiment; but it has to act as waves
on arrival in order to determine transit time difference by interference
fringes. In the Michelson-Morley centenary seminar, speaker Professor
Kilmister said, "That has never been mentioned before". It has
never been mentioned since - being suppressed for good reason. To raise such questions, and there are many, is cheating, like
making your pawn move as a combination of knight and bishop in a chess match.
Science today is the manipulation of pre-agreed axioms and old knowledge,
nothing more. Further, the request for more detailed statements of the
axioms, as in my case with Michelson-Morley, is resisted to the death.
Today's science resembles the religious service, which should not be
interrupted by the raising of theological questions. My work on Wafer Scale Integration, described in Wireless World
July 1981, was always rejected for publication by all learned journals, even
though it attracted £16m of funding - including government funding - and
became a widely praised product in the field. Of course, its suppression
reduced the threat that it would upset the research funding being received in
their universities by journal referees for their own approaches to WSI. In
spite of my track record, my new WSI invention, see EW+WW March 1989, for
which I have worldwide patents, cannot be published in any learned journal. In a letter in Wireless World, January 1983, I wrote that during
25 years of work, I have never succeeded in publishing any of my work on e-m
theory in any British learned journal. This ban now extends to 35 years.
However, Davis should particularly think about the refusal of the
Establishment, when approached, to clarify the classical theory they are
defending. Professor M. Pepper FRS and his boss Professor A. Howie FRS, head
of the Cavendish, disagree with each other2 as to where the negative charge
comes from in the Catt Anomaly, EW+WW sep87 They refuse to discuss it with us
or with each other, or to say that the matter is of no importance. Not only
are new theories ignored and suppressed. We also find that the Establishment
is nonchalant about its contradictory versions of old theory. See also the
co-existing, hopelessly contradictory, versions of a TEM wave pointed out in
'The Heaviside Signal', WW july79, which has been totally ignored. Ivor Catt 1 He says that suppression is increasing. "The epoch-making
paper by Francis Crick and James Watson outlining the structure of DNA, which
appeared in nature in 1953, would 'probably not be publishable today', Mr
Maddox laments ...." - Daily Telegraph, 1may89, p18. 2 Howie says it comes from the west. Pepper says that (since
electrons would have to travel at the speed of light,) it cannot come from
the west, and must come from the south. Until this is resolved, we do not
have a classical theory. Before it can exist, a theory has to be stated. The Betrayal of science
by 'modern physics'. We can classify disciplines as ranging from hard to soft; from
physics, engineering, chemistry, biology; through sociology, psychology; to
geography, history, literature, religion. The hard disciplines are described
as 'science'. In a soft discipline, a model, theory or fact is still of value
even if it is imperfect, flawed. The definition of a hard science could be
that it is capable of sustaining a perfect, true, model, theory or fact. For prestige reasons, the soft sciences - sociology and
psychology - try to take on the mantle of the hard sciences by using
'scientific method'; a method of arriving at rigid, 'true', facts, models and
theories. They do this in order to gain access to the prestige and funding
(NASA-type) that the hard sciences command. So we see subjects trying to move
to the left, from soft to hard. Unknown to the soft science careerists, struggling towards the
left, the position of their colleagues at the hard, physics end is
uncomfortable. This is because if a theory can be exactly true, it is also
brittle; more vulnerable to complete overturn by new developments than is the
softer, imperfect theory. Now career advancement is, if anything, a soft
subject, not a hard one. So for career reasons, a traitor group in physics
has developed a soft discipline called 'modern physics'. These careerists
betray science by softening their discipline and so stabilizing the
theoretical status quo and with it their career status quo. An individual's career in hard science is brittle, because it is
based on more absolute, therefore more brittle, theories and models. He then
makes his position more pliable, and his status and career more secure, by
softening the brittleness of his discipline. In doing this he betrays his
discipline in order to protect and further his career. 'Modern physics', a
bastard pseudo-science, is a soft discipline which has been developed by
career physicists unwilling to risk a brittle career in hard science. Meanwhile, the soft sciences (sociology and psychology) trying
to obtain the prestige and funding of the hard sciences are not fearful of
this brittleness. In any case 'modern physicists' are telling them that
physics is soft. The signposts on the road from physics to modern physics - from
hard science to soft - are: uncertainty; (wave-particle) dualism; confusion
of the observer with the observed; relativity; and the use of statistics and
probability. Paradoxically, one of these, statistics, also signposts the
opposite march of the soft sciences towards the hard. - Ivor Catt. First published as a letter in Electronics and
Wireless World, July 1987, p683 The Conquest of Science We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. - T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. The rise of digital electronics has
highlighted weaknesses in our approach to the fundamentals of electromagnetic
theory. My twenty years of research into digital electronics led me to put
forward a revolutionary theory of electromagnetism, "Theory C", in
Wireless World, December 1980. I concluded as follows; The direct transition from [classical electromagnetism] to
Theory C is similar to the change in combustion theory from phlogiston to
oxidation, but is more difficult. Phlogiston is very similar to electricity,
being a strange 'fluid' which permeates solids. But whereas the oxygen which
'replaced' phlogiston was still within the same body, the energy current
which replaces electricity is not where the electricity was; it is where it
was not. This is a very difficult transition. If the idea of replacing
phlogiston caused mirth at High Table, we have to expect Theory C to generate
widespread hilarity. In the event, Theory C took off like a
lead balloon. It has during the subsequent ten years been totally ignored by
all accredited members of Academia, and I have had no success in my attempts
to publish it in any learned journals. Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. The scurrilous reason for suppressing
advances in science is easy to outline. Entrenched professors and the like
need a stable knowledge base which will form a sound launching pad to project
them into higher career orbits - FRS, Nobel Prize etc. This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. However, this easy rationalisation for
suppression should not blind us to the other, less immoral justification for
suppression, which results from the present fashion in the Philosophy of
Science. Both K. Popper and T. S. Kuhn regret the
majority view in the Philosophy of Science, which Popper calls
"Instrumentalism". What
they now care about, as physicists, is (a) mastery of the mathematical
formalism, i.e. of the instrument, and (b) its applications; and they care for
nothing else. - K.
Popper, Conjectures and Refutations,
R.K.P. 1969, p100. According to the instrumentalist view,
the validity or falsity of a theory has no importance. All that matters is
its usefulness as an instrument for predicting practical results. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For
Thine is the Kingdom An entrenched academic will value past
practical results, attributing them to traditional theory, and be suspicious
of promises for the future from the new theory. Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life
is very long Given this situation, it is unfortunate
that the "Catt Anomaly" (Electronics and Wireless World Sept.87)
should have been discovered after the discovery of Theory C (WWdec80),
because the instrumentalist
justification for ignoring Theory C does not apply to the Catt
Anomaly. Quite the reverse. The Catt Anomaly discusses matters which an
instrumentalist regards as central to scientific activity - the prediction of
practical results by an established theory. The Catt Anomaly is a question,
not a theory; and it is a question about the operation of the established
theory of electromagnetism. To an instrumentalist, it is of the utmost
importance that Classical Electromagnetism (i.e. Theory N, EWW Oct84) make
some statement as to where the extra electric charge comes from in the lower
conductor. If the current fashion in the Philosophy of Science enables
accredited academics to evade what I regard as some part of their duties, it
provides no defence at all for ignoring the Catt Anomaly. Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For
Thine is the Kingdom If a Reader in Electromagnetism makes no
written comment on the Catt Anomaly, then he is in dereliction of his duty. Now that it has been clearly pointed out
that I rest my case on the Catt Anomaly, we have a clear test of the good
faith of those who are receiving salaries from electromagnetic theory. If
there is no response, then we will have proved that there is no competence in
electromagnetism within academia. The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. -T.
S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. Basil Bernstein was the first to point
out that knowledge is property with its own market value and trading relationships,
to be defended by the group who administer that body of knowledge. Today,
each group of knowledge Barons defends his demesne, his body of archaic
knowledge, by the cynical use of
spurious pseudo-philosophical double-talk and double-think; wave-particle
duality, uncertainty principle and the rest. This is the way Science ends. This is
the way the Renaissance ends. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang
but a whimper. Ivor Catt, January 1993. Additional notes follow,
also written in 1993. ".... I am probably the best known
name in this field, but nobody with accreditation in the subject will admit
to having heard or read my theories, or comment favourably or unfavourably on
my theories or competence. In particular, nobody with accreditation in
electromagnetic theory will admit to having heard of, or comment on, the Catt
Anomaly (EW+WW September 1987), on which I rest my case [Note 1]. As a result, the question of whether
text books and college courses should be modified cannot be addressed" -
Electronics World and
Wireless World June 1993, p469. ".... All those with accreditation
in electromagnetic theory, that is who earn salary or royalty or Nobel Prize
on the back of it, keep their heads down, as usual. Could their students have
a go at them [to] put something in writing? I will give £50 to the first student who
gets a Reader in Electromagnetism or equivalent to comment in writing on the
Catt Anomaly. The editor of this magazine will judge (Not if I can help it - Ed.) the matter
of whether the comment is a serious contribution. - Ivor Catt, EW+WW Aug93,
p677" There was no response to any of this.
It's frozen out. -IC Note 1.
Aspects of my theories were discussed in almost every monthly issue of
Wireless World from 1978 to 1988. However, even those accredited experts who
published responses to my theories; Professor Bell (ex-Reader in
Electromangetism at Birmingham University) and Ken Smith/Joules Watt
(University of Kent), claimed that they had not read them and were not
rebutting them. However, the then editor Tom Ivall confirms that they were
commenting on my theories. See Electronics and Wireless World dec87 p1251;
"The solution to the conundrum, that Bell claims that he was not
replying in August 1979 to the Catt article of December 1978, is that the way
the Establishment replies to a new theory is to restate the old theory, and
so his claim arises out of semantic ambiguity". The Master, Trinity College, 10sep96 Cambridge. Dear Sir Michael Atiyah, I enclose a copy of "The Catt Anomaly", pub.
Westfields Press, 1996. Please instruct Professor M. Pepper FRS to advise as to whether
he finds contradiction between his explanation of the Catt Anomaly, p4, and
that of The Reader in Electromagnetics, University of Bradford, p6. I promise
that his response, and any further comments by him, will appear in future
issues of the book, along with this letter. Yours sincerely, Ivor
Catt. [Second copy sent recorded delivery to
Atiyah on 1oct96, requesting acknowledgement] [Third copy sent to Atiyah 1nov96,
enclosing copy of Gardiner's 1oct96 letter (below)] [Fourth copy sent 2dec96; fifth on
23dec96; sixth on 20jan97] p54 The Dean of Engineering, 10sep96 Bradford University BD7 1DP (01274 733466 Dear Professor John Gardiner, I enclose a copy of "The Catt
Anomaly", pub. Westfields Press, 1996. Please instruct Neil McEwan, HoD
Electronic and Electrical Engineering, your Reader in Electromagnetics, to
advise as to whether he finds contradiction between his explanation of the
Catt Anomaly, p6, and that of Professor M. Pepper FRS, Trinity College and
The Cavendish, p4. I promise that his response, and any further comments by
him, will appear in future issues of the book, along with this letter. Yours sincerely, Ivor Catt. [Second copy sent recorded delivery to
Gardiner on 1oct96, requesting acknowledgement] From Prof. Gardiner 1oct96 Dear Mr. Catt, Thank you for your letter,
received today by recorded delivery, regarding the copy of 'The Catt
Anomaly', which you sent to me in September. I can confirm that this has now
been forwarded to Dr. Neil McEwan for his comments. I will get in touch with
Dr. McEwan and request that he contacts you direct regarding his response. Yours sincerely, Professor J.G. Gardiner To Professor Gardiner From Ivor Catt 1nov96. [repeated
16nov96, 23dec96, 20jan97] I have not heard from McEwan. Yours, Ivor
Catt p55 The log-jam identified. To the Chief Executive, IEE 25/11/95 Dear Dr Williams, The Catt
Anomaly The enclosed letters, all written by IEE officers,
show disarray in the IEE. You may recall that matters started with Catt's
letter to you highlighting the discrepancy between Bradford (McEwan) and
Cambridge (Pepper). Secker and the IEE backed Cambridge, until suddenly on 25
Oct. 95 they switched to backing Bradford. On 26 Oct. 1995 your representative Secker
disqualified himself from the matter. I am certain that Catt only wants the IEE to fulfil
its role as outlined by Secker on 4 Sep. 95 and "promote the general
advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and
to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects".
This performance of its stated duties is also requested by Miller OBE,
Simmonds FIEE, Turin (subject of BBC Horizon Program on 27 Nov. 95), Ivall
(former Editor of Wireless World) - an IEE Journal announces forthcoming
discussion; discussion occurs; agreed summary of discussion is reported in an
IEE Journal. Please advise if financial considerations are
restraining the IEE from doing its duty. Yours faithfully
[signed] Eugen Hockenjos, B.Sc., DipHE. encl.
Hamlin/Miller 9nov95; Secker/Ivall 25oct95; Secker/Catt 4sep95; Secker/Metzer
19sep95; Secker/Simmonds 26oct95; Wilson/Simmonds 9nov95; Turin/Williams
15nov95 The
silence is deafening. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Further Reading Political-sociological References on p37. Caton, Hiram, Truth management in the
Sciences. Search (Australia) vol. 19 no. 5/6, sep/nov88, 242-244. On my
website ibid., Product Control in the Truth
Industry. Search vol. 20, jan/feb89, pp24-26 ibid., letter to Catt, 15mar96,
available from Catt. Catt, I., The deeper hidden message in
Maxwell's equations, Electronics & Wireless World, dec85. Also A
mathematical rake's progress, jan86. ibid., The conquest of thought, EWW,
dec87. ibid., The conquest of truth, EWW,
jan88. Hoyle, Fred, et al., Our Place in the
Cosmos, pub. Dent 1993. See ch.1 in the 1996 Phoenix issue, p7; "On the
tendency of human societies to depart indefinitely from the objective
truth." Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, pub. Univ. of Chicago Press 1970, pp109, 132, 148;
"....talk through each other...." repeated three times MacRoberts and MacRoberts, The
Scientific Referee System, Speculations in Science and Technology, vol. 3,
no. 5, 1980, pp573-578. Polanyi, M, Personal Knowledge, pub. RKP
1969, pp146/8. Popper, K.R, Conjectures and
Refutations, pub. RKP 1963, p97. The Science of Galileo and its new betrayal.
cf this book, p48. Theocharis et al., Where science has
gone wrong, Nature, vol. 329, pp595-598, 15oct87, at http://www.ivorcatt.com/2817.htm
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Take the Catt Anomaly.
. Faced with evidence of a
problem, a group of idiots have a choice between ignoring it, which is a short-term
option only, or trying to discredit it by foul means. The idea of a third
choice, of proper discussion, or fear-of-all-fears, of actually making
progress in science by bringing clarity to bear on an important problem,
would be admitting ignorance. Hence, every point raised is seen to be such a
danger to a fragile subject that it must be guarded against the slightest
inspection. An anomaly must be ignored or ridiculed. Progress would be a
threat to the authority of those who fear revolutionary progress. So they
would prefer to shoot themselves in the foot in the long-term
. They can
still hope that the short-term cover-up will sweep away a problem for long
enough for it to literally die.
. Editorial, Electronics World, August 2003, p3. |