|
x |
|
First published as a letter in Electronics and Wireless
World, July 1987, p683 |
|
What
follows is Appendix 5 in the book “The Catt Anomaly” http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm The Betrayal of science
by 'modern physics' DHJ – Davies, Howie, Josephson 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. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x231.pdf 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 |