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The Born-Einstein The correspondence between Max Born and Albert Einstein has been available for several decades now. Unfortunately, as edited by Born and others, it has stood mainly as propaganda in favor of the Copenhagen Interpretation. I will show several ways it does this, but like many other documents on this subject, it does so mainly by force of numbers. That is, the Copenhagen Interpretation has been a triumph of democracy rather than of science. Einstein was simply outnumbered or outvoted. In this correspondence, it is Einstein against Born, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Dirac, etc., etc.* The letters make this perfectly clear, as we see the cabal attack and then expel its smartest member—a member they are clearly incapable of understanding. If this paper was useful to you in any way, please consider donating a dollar (or more) to the SAVE THE ARTISTS FOUNDATION. This will allow me to continue writing these "unpublishable" things. Don't be confused by paying Melisa Smith--that is just one of my many noms de plume. If you are a Paypal user, there is no fee; so it might be worth your while to become one. Otherwise they will rob us 33 cents for each transaction.
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Letters
by Miles Mathis
But I will not limit my attack here to Born. As is my normal procedure, I will attack in all directions nearly simultaneously. What this means is that the letters give me another opportunity to show how Relativity is flawed. I will be able to use many quotes of Einstein to show the contradictions in his groundwork and in his math.
As proof of my first point, let us go to letter 65, where Born tells Einstein that Rumer has noticed that, "the assumption of a Riemann space leads inevitably to certain assumptions about the matter tensor and fairly necessarily to a curious new kind of field theory of matter." Now, this is precisely the sort of statement that Einstein would have leapt on. Much of what Born tended to say either left Einstein exasperated or speechless, as we see from the terseness of Einstein's other responses, but this quote would have interested Einstein immensely, since it led into a very fruitful discussion. And yet we find no response from Einstein. Born's letter is dated October 6, 1931. The next letter from Einstein is May 30, 1933, in response to another letter of Born's. That is more than a year and a half. Any astute reader must be left with the impression that at least one letter has been lost or destroyed.
This impression is reinforced by a comment of Born added to letter 57, 1927, where he says, "He (Einstein) had tried a different, non-statistical, interpretation of Schrodinger's wave mechanics and was submitting a paper about it to the academy. I cannot remember it now; like so many similar attempts by other authors, it has disappeared without a trace." I find this comment astonishing. How could a paper by Einstein on this subject disappear without a trace? How can we imagine that any paper by Einstein would disappear without a trace? That is like asserting that a painting by Leonardo had disappeared without a trace—not by theft or loss, but by total disinterest. I ask, is that at all likely? No. Without high levels of suppression, it is beyond belief. After all, we are in possession of similar papers by Bohm and many others—scientists of a much lower stature. Even if Einstein's paper was complete drivel, it would still be worth a fortune simply because it had his name on it. If Einstein's paper has been buried, it has been buried on purpose.
In fact it leads to another very curious omission in the letters. In December 1926, Einstein had said, "I am working very hard at deducing the equations of motion of material points regarded as singularities, given the differential equations of GR." Then, in January 1927, Einstein's last letter on this subject said, "I show that one can attribute quite definite movements to Schrodinger's wave mechanics, without any statistical interpretation." Einstein included a draft of this paper for Born. This caused Born's response just quoted, about this paper being lost, by him and by history. But not only was the paper lost, the correspondence of that time was lost, too. An interval of almost three years suddenly opens up in the letters. Einstein's letter 57 is undated, and his next letter is from December of 1929. Born is forced to explain, "Whether letters have been lost, or whether silence really reigned, I do not know." And added to letter 60 is this from Born, "The letter in which Einstein criticizes a passage in my book seems unfortunately to have been lost." Unfortunate and convenient, I would say. It is beyond belief that Born would have had no comment on this subject himself, disregarding the loss of Einstein's letters in this period. Born was always delighted by a letter from Einstein and never once failed to respond—except this one time. We are supposed to believe that he has nothing at all to say about this and that he remembers nothing of it? And that he is both content and unsurprised that Einstein's paper and subsequent letters have disappeared with a trace? It is simply not credible.
Other passages also act as propaganda, even when letters are not being suppressed. In letter 60, Born paraphrases Dirac: the difficulties of QED [like infinite renormalization] "lie partly in the fact that Schrodinger's equations, and not those of Heisenberg, were used as a starting point." Here is a direct quote from Dirac: "For the purpose of setting up QED, Schrodinger's is a bad theory, Heisenberg's a good one." As a sort of clarification of this assertion, Born comments on Schrodinger's mechanics in this way: "The common objection is that one needs waves in spaces of many dimensions, and this canot be visualized." But later Born admits that "Schrodinger himself had shown the mathematical equivalence of wave and matrix mechanics." So there are two glaring contradictions here. First, if wave and matrix mechanics are mathematically equivalent, there can hardly be a great deal of difference in choosing between the two for setting up QED. Of two maths that are really equivalent, one can hardly be good and the other bad. In fact, the simpler and more transparent math should always be preferred, given equivalence. This certainly applies to Schrodinger's equations, not Heisenberg's. Second, it is interesting here that a lack of visualization is a minus for Schrodinger but a plus for Heisenberg. The Copenhagen Interpretation—which everyone knows is connected to matrix mechanics—forbids its adherents from trying to visualize quantum motions and interactions. They treat its mathematical purity as its main selling point: the fact that it cannot be visualized is its main esoteric draw. It must be accepted simply because the math demands it. But then these same purists turn around and complain that Schrodinger does not offer us an easy visualization? The double standard could not be more transparent.
But let us move on to more substantive questions. Let us start with the introduction to the letters by Kip Thorne. Thorne says, "If future experiments were to reveal a non-zero aether drift, then Einstein's relativity would crumble." This quote shows the degree to which Relativity is still misunderstood. Thorne, like all standard-model contemporary physicists, believes that relativity depends on the Michelson-Morley null outcome, but I have shown that this is completely false. The M/M null outcome was due to a faulty conceptualization and a bad diagram and has nothing at all to do with the strength of relativity. Relativity is the Doppler Effect on clocks and other visual data, and the abstraction that has come to be called the aether is beside the point. You can have SR with or without an aether, depending on how you want to do your math. Besides, SR has already been proved without M/M, from mountains of other experiments and data--from pulsars to accelerators. This fact is well-known and I am not stating anything revolutionary or offensive. The reason I mention it is to show that even this recent introduction is riddled with fundamental misunderstandings. The universities apparently could not come up with anyone familiar enough with relativity to write a sensible introduction. This is not a surprise to me, but it should be a surprise to many people. This is proved even more forcibly by the next quote from the introduction: "GR predicts that light rays passing near the sun are deflected half by the sun's gravitational pull and half by its warping of space." This sentence is absurd. It is like claiming that you fall down half because I push you and half because you feel pushed. What kind of logician believes that a cause and its effect are two different forces? It is the gravitational pull that warps the space in the first place. If gravity causes only half the deflection, what causes the warp? On the other hand, if gravity causes the warp, why would it affect space but not light rays in the space? Thorne's statement is just asinine, and it is difficult to comprehend how such gloriously faulty reasoning can end up in any book, much less a high-end physics book.
Thorne will answer that he is quoting Einstein directly: Einstein said just that in Relativity. So if I want to show fault with that reasoning, I will have to take on Einstein directly. And I will. This is one of Einstein's most outlandish claims, and he made it based simply on the numbers. Anyone who studies Einstein's actual equations knows that his first crack at the math of GR gave him the same numbers as Newton for the deflection of starlight, since that is what he thought he needed. I show this in my papers by following the derivations line for line. Some time later, when he found he needed double that amount, he went back and finessed his math to give it to him. In other words, using faulty math, Einstein published a paper that claimed to find about .85 for bending of starlight. Newton's equation had long predicted a bending of starlight, without any reference to SR or GR, and that amount was also about .85. This is the number Eddington later used as the "Newtonian prediction". But Einstein recognized a mistake in his field equations and re-ran them (with the help of Hilbert) a couple of years later. This time he published a paper with equations that yielded 1.7. This is the reason he later said, in the book Relativity, that about half the bending was due to the "Newtonian field of attraction" and the rest was due to "geometrical modification." In another paper I have confirmed that GR contains two curves, one of them due to the Newtonian acceleration and one of them due to the time differential, so it would appear that Einstein and Thorne are vindicated. Problem is, they both state the fact in a very misleading manner. According to the wording of Einstein and Thorne, the sun's gravitational pull and the warp around the sun are two different things. They are two separable causes. But as I have just reminded you, they cannot be separable causes. It is the gravitational pull of the sun that causes the warp, so the gravitational pull is ultimately responsible for the entire deflection, not just half of it. The way Einstein and Thorne state it, it appears that the warp is independent in the math and the field, and this is misleading because it leaves the reader with the impression that the warp is uncaused. It leaves the impression that the curved geometry of the time separation is the causa sui, or the cause of itself. This is important, because it hides the mechanism of gravity. I am not just making up some small semantic or metaphysical problem here; this problem is fundamental and mechanical. As I have complained in many other places, GR appears to go beyond Newton in replacing force at a distance by curvature. But this can be an improvement only if you forget that the curved space is at a distance from the curving object, and that the curvature requires a cause. Einstein makes the math the cause of the curvature, so that we forget that it is the object that is ultimately the cause of the curvature. The central object is the cause of any and all curves in the math, whether they are curves of acceleration or curves of time separation. The object does not create the time separation, of course, but it creates the field in which the separation exists. This must mean that all deflection is caused by the central object. There is no half and half causation. Einstein' original statement was criminally sloppy, and no one since has seen fit to correct him. They haven't corrected him because they have seen his mistake as useful. It hides the mechanics, and modern physics exists only by hiding the mechanics at all times.
Since we are speaking of GR, let us look closely at the theory once more. In Born's commentary to letter number 1, 1916, he says, "The existence and size of a gravitational field inside a small space can thus be assumed only in relation to a certain (accelerated) system of reference." This is indeed the whole point of Einstein's box in space, but Einstein does not follow this procedure himself. For instance, given a person standing on the earth, what system is accelerated? Einstein does not allow the system of reference to accelerate. He does not allow the earth to accelerate toward the person, to create the force. And, the person here is not a system of reference. The person is a test particle. Einstein gives the acceleration to the person, which totally destroys his hypothesis and his postulate. Einstein states a revolutionary axiom and then does not follow it. He pointed out that giving the acceleration to the test particle begged the question (correctly) and then went ahead and continued to flagrantly beg that question on the very next page. By refusing to give the acceleration to the system of reference, Einstein completely bypasses the relativity he had just asserted in the equivalence example. There is no inertial motion in GR, since neither the test particle nor the system of reference is actually accelerating (not relative to eachother and not relative to space or any other system). What I mean is that according to Einstein the person or test particle is not accelerating either toward or away from the earth. Instead, he creates a mathematical equilibrium between the particle and the field. The curvature of an orbiting particle, for instance, is not an acceleration in GR, since according to Einstein a curve is equivalent to a straight line. A straight-line velocity has no acceleration in a Euclidean field, and in a Riemannian field a stable orbit has no acceleration. A curve has no acceleration. That is why an orbiter can "feel no forces". No acceleration, no force. No force, no acceleration.
Einstein's theory actually does away with the centripetal or gravitational acceleration. His person or test particle has no acceleration relative to the field, since the field is already curved and the particle is just following a zero-force trajectory. And the earth has no acceleration relative to the field, since Einstein has created the field as an extension of the earth.
What Einstein does is assume curvature. Curvature is his postulate, not relativity or equivalence. If you study his progression of argument, it is clear that the postulate of equivalence is a dead-end. He proposes it only to drop it and take up the new postulate of curvature. Nor does equivalence act as a lead-in to curvature. There is no connection and Einstein does not even attempt to create one. He simply jumps from one idea to another. Equivalence is offered on one page and curvature on the next, with no transition. Once we have curvature, we don't need equivalence anymore, and it is not only not carried along by the argument, it is contradicted, as I have shown. Curvature trumps and contradicts equivalence, since equivalence concerns accelerations and curvature does away with accelerations.
Even with curvature, we get no foundation. Einstein's choice of math becomes his explicit axiom of curvature, but he provides us with no reason for this choice. As I have shown extensively, equivalence actually implies that we do not have to choose curvature, but Einstein implies, without argument, the reverse. He implies that we must choose curvature. The Riemann space he chooses allows him to do all this almost invisibly. With tensors, you can create curvature without having to define it, notice it, or justify it. To say it another way, a Riemann space automatically supplies you with curvature--curvature with no cause, no force, and no acceleration.
I hope you can see that this is very dishonest, both mathematically and physically. Take a similar case. Let us say that I discover a particle that moves in a zigzag. I want to explain why it does so. One way would be to show the mechanical causes of the motion. This is old physics. But the new physics just asserts a math where the zigzag is the default motion. Then nothing has to be explained mechanically. The choice of math is the whole explanation, and physics is redundant. Physics used to be the answer to the question, "what is happening?" But according to the math of GR, nothing is happening. Einstein has created a curve that is equivalent mechanically to straight-line motion for Newton, so nothing needs to be explained.
In these letters, Einstein rightly complains of the mathematical presumptions of QED, but he does not appear to see how presumptuous the tensor field is. Notice that Einstein never provides a mechanism for the creation of curvature. This is his implied mechanism: gravity creates curvature. But gravity IS curvature, according to Einstein. He says both things. So gravity is the causa sui—the cause of itself. That is not a mechanism, that is just talking in circles. Einstein simply assumes what he is trying to prove. His choice of math gives him curvature and that gives him gravity. His axiom is the Riemann field, and all the rest is deduced from that, with no further necessity of mechanics, metaphysics, foundations, or explanations. Einstein finds this elegant. He says [letter 99], ''the gravitational equations would still be convincing because they avoid the inertial system (the phantom which affects everything but which is not itself affected).'' So he admits what I was trying to show: the inertial system is gone. Born's quote about ''the whole point of GR'' only being seen ''in relation to a certain accelerated system of reference'' is overthrown. There is no system of reference, only a mathematical field that supplies all the motions itself. With a mathematical trick, Einstein exorcizes his ''phantom.'' If there is no inertial system, there is no force, no cause of the field, and no gravity. As with QED, only the math exists.
Now let us use that segue to switch from GR to QED. Let us look at letter 115, where Pauli is trying to mediate between Born and Einstein. Pauli says, ''The appearance of a definite position of a macro-body...is then regarded as being a 'creation' existing outside the laws of nature, even though it cannot be influenced by the observer. The natural laws only say something about the statistics of these acts of observation.'' Here we see the master of illogic, at whose feet Kip Thorne has no doubt sat. Born finds Pauli's explanations ''simple and striking'', and Born is not alone in that assessment. Pauli is generally considered to be a great science writer as well as a great scientist. His explanation of Relativity was one of the most influential in the 20th century—which itself goes a long way toward explaining the current confusion.
This paragraph of Pauli is absolute jactation. Let us pull it apart. Pauli considers empirical data—the outcome of real experiments—to be ''creation''—outside the laws of nature. But if nature did not create this data, who or what did? We know Pauli does not mean God, and he explicitly rules out the observer. So Pauli has given us a verb with no noun. We have data that takes on the character of a miracle, since it arrives uncaused. Facts are neither objective nor subjective here. Instead, Pauli solves the old dichotomy—splits the old dilemma—by giving us a third undefined category: data created by no one and nothing.
Previously, physics was understood to be the description of and explanation of experimental facts like position and time. But for Pauli, this sort of physics is outside the laws of nature. So everything we see and experience is outside the laws of nature. [Can you imagine a greater physical contradiction, a greater assault on the old definition of physics?] The laws of nature say ''something'' about statistics, but Pauli does not say what that something is. But apparently the laws of nature concern only the math, the math is statistical, and the math does not apply to empirical reality. In Pauli's physics, niether the math nor the natural laws apply to empirical or observed reality. Observed reality is a sort of parallel universe or concurrently running movie, one that is self-created, obeys no natural laws, has no math or explanation, and has no possible causal, logical, or definitional link to the statistical world of QED.
In a pinch, one can philosophically achieve the empirical world by the squeeze-play called decoherence, but this is only a paper moon. One gets the impression that this feint is reserved for the public, and that the question never really comes up for the clergy of QED. Pauli doesn't need decoherence, since for him there is no reality that needs explaining. The observable is simply a ghost, and one doesn't need to waste time explaining ghosts.
But I say that rather than decoherence, they should call it incoherence, and include all of QED's foundations--such as they are--in it. Pauli's sentences on the subject are incoherent. They are bafflement—gibberish posing as human language.
For Pauli, an observed fact is not just indeterminate, subjective, or imprecise. Pauli transcends all historical dialectic at once, telling us that the real world is not the subject or object of natural laws, is not created by God, the observer, or any other entity or cause, is neither precise nor fuzzy, determinate or indeterminate, real or unreal. For the new physicist, the observed world is a nothing, a non-question, an extraneous detail.
But the one great paradox—the paradox not even paraded around as a sign of distinction—is that this same new physicist claims to be an experimentalist. For instance, Feynman always boasted that QED matched experiment, so it was good enough for him. But how can he know that QED matches experiment, when all experiment is observed data, and the observed world is a creation not subject to natural laws? To put it another way, how can you dismiss all data as an uncaused ''creation'' and then use that data to confirm your theory? The new physicists want to accept only the statistical data, ignoring the direct empirical data. But they never appear to notice the necessary link between the two. What is the statistical data except a mathematical distillation of large amounts of observed data?
In letter 116 Born says, "Concepts which refer to things that cannot be observed have no place in physics." Pauli, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Thorne, and all the rest would agree. But since when are probabilities observable, or quanta? These physicists appear to think that mathematics is an observable object. Then, to add to the absurdity, they claim that observed things are things that have decohered from statistical blurs, and that these observed things exist outside the natural laws, creations of nothing and no one. So, to recap:
1) Physical concepts must apply to to things that can be observed.
2) Things that can be observed like trees and stars are creations that exist outside natural laws.
3) These things decohere from probabilities in mysterious ways, only in the presence of an observer.
4) The observer does not influence this decoherence, although his presence appears to be a necessity.
5) Once this object decoheres from the probability blur, it can be used as experimental proof of the equations of QED.
If that is not the strangest circle of reasoning I have ever seen, it is close. It is the about the most monstrous stringing together of contradictions one can well imagine.
The new physicist thinks he has done some sort of metaphysical cleaning of his data by refusing to look directly at it. Look directly at it, or at any specific piece of it, and it is worthless, sullied by the human eye and mind. Look at it through the pristine window of probabilistic math, and it is pure and unsullied once more, no longer corrupted by the sin of reality and the hazy penance of the physical.
In the same letter to Born, Pauli also falsely characterizes the difference between classical mechanics and QED. He states that with classical mechanics, repeated measurements with limited accuracy can replace one measurement of high accuracy [as with path of a planet, he says]. But this is false. The path of a body cannot be determined from one measurement, no matter how precise. As I show in my SR papers, any motion requires at least two measurements, and these measurements cannot be done simultaneously. To measure motion you must measure both length and time, and you cannot measure them both during the same observation. This rule is basically equivalent to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but it applies to macro-observations as well as to quantum observations.
Pauli also misunderstands QED, since he says that the repetition of measurements of a given accuracy is of no use at all predictively, since the HUP determines a specific inaccuracy. He says that "this destroys the possibility of using all previous positional measurements to within these limits of error." No, the HUP actually puts into equation form the rule that you cannot see beyond the accuracy of your tools, a thing that was already known in classical mechanics and macro-measurement. Heisenberg gives us an equation to calculate our maximum accuracy, given the width of our tools and observables. But this in no sense rules out the repetition of measurements, retaining old data, or using it predictively. The only old data that is ruled out is old data that claims a greater accuracy than the tools allow. But this is true in the macro-world just as in the quantum world, and it has nothing to do with statistics. In fact, this is precisely my argument against the current interpretation of the calculus, which claims a precision beyond the accuracy of its tools. Calculus now claims an infinite accuracy, which is an accuracy beyond the reach of any possible tools.
In truth, QED as built by Bohr and Heisenberg and Pauli and all the rest does not even assume there IS a path, given a body. QED does not allow them to build an orbit, since no two positions can be connected. The quantum leap, to be consistent, must apply not only to a leap from shell to shell but also from one orbital observation to the next orbital observation, and the new scientists admit this and accept it. Pauli's quote implies that the HUP forces them to admit it and accept it, and that this in itself rules out repetition and prediction based on it. But this is not true. Pauli's choice to believe this is a philosophical choice, not a mathematical one. Your math and tools both have limits to their accuracy and usefulness, and it is wisdom to know this. But beyond this limit, the math and tools have nothing to say, neither positively nor negatively. They do not require that you believe in a continuity beyond this limit, but they do not forbid it either. The new scientists tell us dogmatically that nothing is knowable beyond this limit (and until we invent smaller tools, this much is true). But these limits do not legislate--they do not even imply--that nothing exists beyond this limit. In fact, all logic would dictate that existence does have a continuation beyond our limits of observation, just as logic dictates that the world continues on while we are asleep. In a Humean sense, each thing is equally beyond proof: which means, of course, that it is just as sensible to believe that electrons have a continuous path as it is to believe that the world continues on while our eyes are closed. And this means that it is very sensible to believe both, no matter how much cavilling we get from Hume or Pauli or anyone else.
In letter 86, even Einstein signs on to this Humean philosophy. He says, "I am well aware that no causality exists in relation to the observable; I consider this realization to be conclusive." This is thought by many to be straight out of Hume, but a close reading of Hume will show that he never went this far himself. What Hume showed is that you cannot prove that causality exists. It is neither an a priori fact nor ultimately provable a posteriori. But you must recognize that this is not the same as saying that causality does not exist. That which cannot be proved true is not thereby false. So Einstein is wrong here. He has admitted entirely more than he needs to admit. Beyond this, Popper has shown that physics does not and never did rely on a proof of causality or any other mechanism. Hume's point is completely trivial, since science relies on falsifiability, not provability. Causality is a mechanical assumption, one that is then either fortified or falsified by experiment. As I have said before, all logic, deduction, and science proceeds from assumptions or postulates or axioms, and these assumptions don't and never did need to be proved. The fact that they can't be proved is not only trivial; it is itself axiomatic. Axioms and postulates are DEFINED as things that are either assumed freely or defined as true. If they are defined as true, this definition is also not proved or provable: it is simply an institutional or professional assumption--an assumption in fancy dress.
In misunderstanding Hume, the new physicists have, in effect, outlawed making certain assumptions. Einstein agrees that causality is one of these assumptions we are no longer allowed to make. But he is wrong in this. Physics and science cannot proceed without making mechanical assumptions. Causality is not only allowed, it is likely to be a necessity of all mechanics. Other similar assumptions include the assumption that contact transmits force, that motion must be caused, and that acceleration must be caused. This does not mean that these assumptions are true or that they are prolegomena to all future physics or metaphysics, or that they are preconditions of all human thought. They are simply among the most fruitful assumptions that we have yet made; and if they have not been proved, they have certainly not been disproved. They are both unfalsified and heavily fortified. It has been claimed that some of the experimental outcomes of QED falsify causality or continuity or other historical assumptions of classical mechanics, but in each case the outcomes yield equally well or better to other interpretations. The rush to interpret these outcomes in novel ways is simply due to malaise, or perhaps to careerism. Novelty now sells, and the most logical answer is considered to be the most boring and the least salable. The magazines (both popular and professional) aren't interested in logic, rigor, or consistency. They are interested in seeing the past overturned. They are interested in the continued and continuous revolution, even if it has to be manufactured.
Now let us return again to GR. I begin by looking at another quote of Born: "It seems to me I have followed Einstein's own way of thinking in accordance with his theory of relativity, which recognizes the impossibility of locating any point in time and space absolutely...." I said above that the cabal were incapable of understanding Einstein, and this is a perfect example of that. Here, in 1950, Born shows that he still completely misunderstands relativity. His comment is simply false. Relativity does not do this. Relativity is a matter of perspective of measurement—as its very name tells us—not of precision of measurement. Neither SR nor GR have anything to do with indeterminacy of locus. As proof, look again at Einstein's GR papers, where he is giving us equations that describe the motions of mass points. Not blurs: points. Or look again at his quote above, where he says directly that he is trying to express his field equations in terms of points or singularities. Ironically, it is not Einstein's relativity that deals with interderminacy of locus, but mine. However, my indeterminacy of locus is not caused by probabilities or QED, it is caused by my earlier redefining the calculus based on the constant differential: jettisoning the point from all equations in favor of the interval. In my theory, it is not just relativity or QED that has a margin of error, but all physical math. But of course Einstein couldn't have seen this. If he had he would never have been caught talking about singularities or physical points in equations.
This is not just Born's error, since most standard-model physicists misunderstand relativity in the same way. They think that relativity justifies or underwrites or invents all sorts of contemporary fuzziness and subjectivity, when it does nothing of the sort. Relativity, either Einstein's or mine, says that you must choose a place of measurement and stick to it. But it never says that this place of measurement is arbitrary, or that it is ultimately unconnectable to any other place, or that one place is as good as any other. Yes, you can measure from any point you like, but some points will be better, in that they are easier or that they give you information that will be privileged in some way. In fact, relativity is the exact opposite of fuzzy or subjective or "relative" in the new-age sense, because it demands even more rigor in defining your terms and fields and in being aware of how your mathematical manipulations are affecting your axioms. With Newton and Galileo you could let all that slide, since the whole universe was one co-ordinate system. With relativity, you can't even look at an illustration in a book without considering who is illustrating what from what perspective. As I showed in my paper on the interferometer, you have to do a transform on the historical illustration to make sense of it—a transform no one ever did before I noticed that it was necessary.
Here is another interesting subject in GR revealed by this correspondence: I began this paper by quoting from Rumer, who claimed--if you will remember—that a Riemann space led to a curious sort of matter tensor. What did Rumer mean by this? I will gloss it for you in such a way that you will be glad you didn't search for Rumer's own explanation, which is far from clear. It may be that I am adding content as well as clarity to Rumer, but I think history will forgive me for it regardless.
Since an orbiting body is feeling no forces, a body in freefall must also be feeling no forces. But if this is true, then the body can be experiencing no acceleration. According to the necessary interpretation of GR, the apparent acceleration is only a relic of classical observation, due to the fact that the measurer is not in the same relativistic field as the body in freefall. Only by assuming that space at 1000 ft is the same as space at 10 ft can a measurer achieve an increasing velocity with time. But in GR the curvature of the field means that the values of time—and thereby velocity and acceleration—must change as the free-falling body gets nearer to the earth. And according to this curvature of the field, the body must have a constant velocity.
Stated in this way, you can see why Einstein's theory seemed so imaginative at first. GR does away with acceleration by creating a curved field. But this only solves half the problem--one might say the lesser half. We have no acceleration, so we don't appear to require a force. But with no force or acceleration, it is impossible to explain why the body began falling in the first place. Einstein explains how a test body approaching a gravitational field radially could keep a constant velocity all the way to the center of the "well". But given a test body that is PLACED at a given altitude, Einstein cannot explain its initial impetus toward the earth. A falling body will keep falling in a Riemannian field, but a body that is not falling will not BEGIN falling. The centripetal force is gone, and the mechanics of the field does nothing to impel the body nearer the earth. GR explains motion in the field mathematically, but it does not explain the impulse to motion. This impulse to motion is the primary fact of gravity.
This, I assume, is Rumer's problem with the matter tensor, since matter no longer acts inertially. With no forces, no accelerations, no centripetal force, and no impulse to motion, it becomes impossible to define matter in the old way--or in a new way that is consistent. According to Newton mass was a resistance to a force; mass was defined relative to force and acceleration. Einstein has done away with both force and gravity, so that gravitational mass is now doubly redundant. A body cannot resist being accelerated when it is not being accelerated. It cannot resist a force in a field of no forces. In this state of affairs, calling the matter tensor "curious" is a gigantic understatement.
Remember that I have directly quoted above where Einstein brags about killing the phantom which is the inertial field. Well, you can hardly kill the inertial field and keep inertia, but Einstein tries to perform this miracle. He has, in fact, ditched them both, but he continues in other places to talk about using his math to show the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. Yes, he achieves this equivalence, but he does so by jettisoning all three. Zero=zero=zero. With one stroke of his sword he kills mass, inertia, and gravity. His single postulate of curvature (choosing the Riemann field) achieves the triple murder under cloak of night. They are all equivalent in limbo.
This is perhaps the central reason my theory of gravity is preferable to Einstein's. One might say that Einstein's math is equivalent to mine in many instances, since it achieves the same numbers for bending of starlight and such things. In fact, I have already admitted this. In my merry-go-round example I show that GR is math done from the point of view of a child on the ride, while my simpler math is done from the point of view of the parent watching the ride. However, my mechanics and metaphysics are capable of explaining the impetus to motion in a gravititational field and Einstein's are not. Since Einstein cannot explain the single most fundamental observed fact of gravity--the impulse to motion--I don't see how anyone can claim that GR is a success. So it is not a matter of taste whether you choose my math and theory or Einstein's. It is not a matter of taste whether you choose to be the parent or the child.
Some will say that my no-force argument against Einstein can be turned against me, since my field also has no forces. But this is not true, since although I do not have primary forces as the first cause of the gravitational field, I still have real accelerations and secondary forces caused by those accelerations. This gives me the equivalent of inertial fields, which allows my theory to easily dovetail with classical mechanics. I do not achieve an equivalence of mass and inertia by doing away with both. I define both in terms of the same motion, unifying them at the foundational level. Einstein postulates curvature, which makes inertia and force redundant. I define and resolve all my forces into straight-line motion, expressed spherically. This gives me a mechanically expressed, rectilinear gravitational field that achieves all the numbers of GR, at the same time that it provides a logical and complete picture of physical interactions, with no paradoxes and no difficult math.
There is another way that Einstein failed, and to see it we need to return to his quote above, where he says, "I am working very hard at deducing the equations of motion of material points regarded as singularities, given the differential equations of GR." Here we find confirmation of a claim I have made in my GR papers. Einstein is trying to use "material points" or singularities in his field equations. This was the common goal at the time, and still is. Born says the same thing of GR in his comment to letter 73: "The movement of mass points is determined by the geodetic lines of the space-time world." But this is precisely why Einstein failed to produce a unified field theory. It is also why QED requires renormalization. I have spent an enormous amount of time in my papers addressing the use of points in field equations (or any differential equations), and I did so specifically to solve these two problems. The unification of the fields fails from both ends, and it is the fault of the point from both directions. Born calls the mathematical entity a mass point and Einstein calls it a material point, but in both cases their terms are just contradictions. A mass-point is an oxymoron, since there can be no mass at a point. A point is not a material object, not even potentially or as an axiom or as a variable or as a function. In every case it is a logical error, no more and no less.
The other thing that prevented Einstein from achieving any sort of unified field was that his kinetic energy equation was wrong. The thing he had most confidence in was his biggest mathematical stone in the road. All he needed was a subtle tweek to his kinetic energy transforms and a unified field theory would be in his grasp. I have at last provided that subtle tweek, and the unified field theory is now a reality. Other tweeks were required as well, but throwing out the point and correcting the kinetic energy equation were among the most important.
I mention this because it addresses an important claim in the introduction to the letters. Kip Thorne adds a bit of zest by talking of gravity waves, although they play no part in the correspondence. He offers us the famous Einstein-Infeld-Hoffman method and tells us that it relies on an expansion of powers to find the motion of planets. Newton's equation is the first order and binary pulsars have required the EIH method to be carried up through order five. Gravity wave observation requires order 12, we are informed. At this we are expected to gasp. I do gasp, but only at the idiocy of it all. This expansion of powers relies once again on the expansion of the kinetic energy equation, which I have shown is the outcome of bad math. Once Einstein's equations are corrected, Newton's equation resolves directly and evenly into the relative transforms, with no margin of error and no expansion of powers.
I would like to touch on one final subject before I close. Einstein believed, and stated in these letters, that theorizing should be a private spare-time occupation, in order to preserve ones independence. Born commented on this: "What he did not consider, however, was the organizational rigidity of almost all professions, and the importance which individual members of a profession attach to their work. No professional pride could develop without it. To be able successfully to practice science as a hobby, one has to be an Einstein." Although I may agree with the last sentence here, in the main Born completely misunderstands Einstein, as usual. He says that Einstein did not consider all this, when clearly this is precisely what Einstein did consider. It was in reaction to this organizational rigidity and self-conscious group pride that Einstein made his comments in the first place. Einstein knew that real thinking could not get done in such a social or professional situation, and that is why he recommended the avoidance of professionalism and science as a group activity. This recommendation might be called one of Einstein's greatest insights, since he perfectly predicted the future of physics and its takeover by professionals--particularly university professionals. It does indeed still take an Einstein to do what he did, which is simply to say that it will always require a genius to do the work of a genius. Unfortunately, the demands of the new professionalism currently make the sort of independence Einstein enjoyed all but impossible. A hobbyist is now predefined as a crank, and there is no room even in the margins for an Einstein. The margins have been closed to suit the needs of the careerists.