To Michael Redhead From
Ivor Catt apr98 [oct98/jan99. Sokal and Redhead
continue to not reply to my letters.]
I noticed that your lecture [about the Sokal Hoax, with Sokal present,]
omitted all the content of my letter, copy below, except that you said
phlogiston and ether had been put into the dustbin. I note that you did not
respond when I said this very briefly in Question Time after your lecture. (At
my suggestion, to save time, the chairman agreed to my giving a copy of my
letter, copy below, to each of the fifty who attended.) I look forward to
receiving a response to my letter, copy below. Yours sincerely,
Ivor
Catt
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THE
CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND
By
Allan Bloom, pub. Penguin 1987, p376
.... protect their dominion over their works
ferociously. University convention submerges nature. It issues licenses, and
hunting without one is forbidden. Moreover, because of these conventions the
professors also listen to one another more attentively than to outsiders, and
are listened to more attentively than others by outsiders, as doctors are more
impressive to laymen in matters of health than are other laymen. A cozy selfsatisfaction of
specialists easily results (until there are rude jolts from the outside, such
as occurred during the sixties).
. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ivor Catt,
121 Westfields,
St. Albans AL3 4JR
(01727 864257
20feb98/21feb/26feb [this copy printed 11/10/98]
Professor Michael Redhead,
1 Orchard Court, Orchard St.,
Cambridge CB1 1PR (01223 321226
Dear Professor Redhead,
The
Science Wars
Retrospect
and Prospect
Lecture. Prof Michael Redhead, mon16mar98, 5pm room 105, 24 Gordon Square, UCL.
Enquiries 0171 391 1328
THE TRUTH
ABOUT TRUTH is elusive;
Is philosophy
merely delusive?
What seems
rubbish to you
May be for me
true,
Which leaves
everything inconclusive.
ed. E. O. Parrott, Penguin Book of Limericks,
1995, p53.
.... it is often
the case that the same scientist who in one context offers resistance to the
antiscientific currents of his milieu, in another context can be found flirting
with propositions intimately associated with those same currents. .... the
German physicists' predisposition toward acausal laws of nature .... arose as a
form of accommodation to their intellectual environment. - Paul Forman, Weimar
Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German
Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment,
Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, vol 3, 1971, p39
I note particularly that the title of your
lecture includes the word "Retrospect".
Retrospect. 2. c.
A survey or review of some past course of events, acts, etc.; esp. in a
particular sphere or line of things 1663.
- Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary 1973.
An early combatant in this matter is Popper
1963, in "Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge. 2 The Issue at
Stake", p100 of Conjectures and Refutations, although Theocharis criticises his partial attack on the
instrumentalists' dubious grip on reality. Popper returned to the fray in his
late writings, throwing much doubt on the philosophical competence of key
elements in Modern Physics. I note that in your inaugural speech you gave
credit to Popper, as well as to your Professor, H Post, who is a renegade in
this matter, as I found when I met him, and when I read his inaugural lecture.
However, I am not concerned that you should mention Popper's role in the matter,
any more than that you should mention my own, see for instance the enclosed
from Wireless World, July 1987.
What I feel must take its proper place as a major landmark in the "Retrospect" part of your lecture on the Science Wars is the article in Nature by Theocharis, Where Science has gone wrong, 15oct87, p595. Theocharis was discussing Science Wars before it was christened; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1cp.pdf , as was clearly indicated at the time by your colleague Jon Turney, when he commented on the Theocharis article;
Theocharis .... maintain[s] that the most fundamental reason for
a decline in political and public support of science is a philosophical
onslaught on objective truth. .... sabotaging the scientific method.... - Jon
Turney, Science Editor, Times Higher Education Supplement, 8.1.88, p2
Referring to the 1987 Nature article
itself, it is clear that Theocharis discusses Science
Wars;
.... in the issue
of 20 February 1986 The Listener published an
article entitled "The Fallacy of Scientific Objectivity". .... these
were attacks against objectivity, truth and science.
.... the RS, SBS
and other scientific bodies do not .... answer such attacks on science ....
This reads exactly like Bernard Ortiz a
decade later, discussing the Sokal Hoax etc. in APS
News, January 1998;
Postmodernists
and adherents of the "social studies of science" school claim that
science .... can no longer claim to be an objective or accurate reflection of
the real world. .... other "ways of knowing" are as valid or better
than science....
Brian Martin corresponds with me on why this
peculiar meta-science, Modern Physics, arose early this century. For him, the
key players are Paul Forman and John Hendry. With this much going on close
around you, (Hendry is at Imperial College), you clearly have to subdivide
"Science" into pre- and post- "Copenhagen Interpretation",
when trying to defend Science (or are you only having to defend Modern
Physics?) from outside attack. All agree that a revolution occurred in 1927
with the Copenhagen Interpretation. ".... dramatic ideological changes
that accompanied the development of quantum mechanics, and as a major milestone
in science historiography. .... acausality in quantum
theory .... Adopting what he [Forman] terms a 'sociological' approach .... the
Weimar intellectual milieu was hostile to physics, and especially to causality
...." -J Hendry, Hist. Sci., xviii (1980)
This is a three-way battle, with Sokal et al. caught in the middle, defending a much less
defensible Modern Physics, against Sociology of Science to his front, and Theocharis to his rear, along with some of Popper. It would
be unscholarly in the extreme to make the mistake of ignoring one adversary, or
group of adversaries, at the rear. In 1987, Theocharis
predicted that the present crisis would emerge if Science continued to ignore
the central theme of this century for science; the question of whether absolute
facts exist. He points out that when the frontal attack by Sociology began,
more than ten years ago, Science, if anything, connived in encouraging it.
"As a
result, the science-studies anti-science phenomenon grew monstrously out of
control. At long last, the science-practice establishment noticed serious
dangers in the 1990s ...." - Theocharis, When
did the Science Wars start?,
Science and Engineering Ethics, July (1997) 3, 271-272
Perhaps this has now to be admitted, and a
change of posture by Science needed. Science needs to defend itself properly,
in particular the basic precepts which distinguish it from religion; for
instance, the attitude of true science to Mystery. Also, the question of
whether Science in general, or only Modern Physics, is under attack, must be
addressed. Thus, the peculiar nature of Modern Physics as a science has
to be discussed. Around p49 in the 1922 version of his 1890 book The Golden
Bough, Frazer defined and classified magic, religion and science before
Modern Physics was invented. His definitions would probably class Modern
Physics (= loss of control) as Religion, not as Science or Magic. I find
it intolerable that the whole of Science should be dragged down with
Modern Physics. After all, Einstein for one objected strongly to all of the
precepts now under attack by sociologists, for instance in his letters;
I am quite
convinced that someone will eventually come up with a theory whose objects,
connected by laws, are not probabilities but considered facts, as used to be
taken for granted until quite recently.
- p158
We all of us have
some idea of what the basic axioms of physics will turn out to be. The quantum
or the particle will surely not be amongst them; the field, in Faraday's and
Maxwell's sense, could possibly be, but it is not certain. - p164
Quantum Mechanics
and Reality. In what follows I shall explain briefly and in an elementary way
why I consider the methods of quantum mechanics fundamentally unsatisfactory.
p168
- ed. Max Born,
The Born-Einstein Letters, pub. Macmillan 1971.
Also, Nigel Cook tells me that in the book Sidelights
on Relativity, Einstein writes; "According to the general
theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable."
Yours sincerely,
Ivor
Catt
Enclosures.
J Turney, Vitriol Spilled ...., Times H. Ed. Supp., 8.1.88, p2.
R Highfield, Science and Sociology Fight .... Telegraph.
11apr97. p14.
Theocharis, When did the Science Wars Start?, Science and Engineering Ethics
(1997) 3, p271-2.
1999; Theocharis on . Faris's Review of the Sokal book…
I Catt, The Betrayal of Science by Modern Physics, Wireless World,
July87.
I Catt, The clever take
the brilliant, jan98.
References.
Catt I, The Rise ands Fall of Bodies of Knowledge, The Information Scientist, 12 (4), dec78, pp137-144.
Catt I, The Catt Anomaly, Science Beyond the Crossroads, pub.
Westfields 1996. Copy in Trinity College Library.