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by Miles Mathis
This post will be an ongoing reply to selected critiques of my new book, The Un-unified Field. The first negative review of the book has just been posted at Amazon UK, so I take this as the beginning of my science counter-critiques. I have been looking forward to this moment, as many can imagine. I am already well-known—some might say notorious—for my counter-critiques on my art site. For almost a decade I have been making the current art critics look very bad. Using Whistler as my model, I have responded directly to the various writings of the status quo, taking on all the big names, including Greenberg, Saltz, Schjeldahl, Hughes, Danto, Carey, and Hickey. But until now my science site has been a different sort of beast. I have attacked physics and physicists, not science critics. I have written and published science papers, not polemics. Yes, my science papers contain a bit of polemics, but I could never have included them in a folder titled “counter-criticism.” I have not only been criticizing science, I have been doing science. I have not just analyzed, I have corrected and predicted. Now, however, I able to use my polemical skills, sharpened by a decade of art fights, in the field of physics. If these science critics had bothered to read any of my art or science papers, beyond “a passing glance here and there,” they might not have stuck their necks out. But they have stuck their necks out and will continue to, of course, and this will provide me (and perhaps you) with decades of new fun.
In a newer and longer review, a slightly larger kitten in the form of Michael Norris appears. He leads off by calling my book a vanity publication, but a print-on-demand book introduced by a NASA astrophysicist is not a vanity publication. A vanity publication is something like a book of poems that no one wants to read but the author and his mother. If my book were really a vanity publication, Norris would have no need to attack it. It is precisely because prominent people are reading it that he feels threatened by it. My online papers have gotten over ten million hits in the past couple of years, so it is doubtful me and Mom are the only ones reading them. And vanity had nothing to do with the publication of the book. I got an email from NASA, and an astrophysicist who has published dozens of papers in the top journals recommended I put my online papers into book form. He said if I did, he would write the introduction. Yes, that is right. He approached me, not the reverse.
Those who know me know that I love to fight. I was born in the mold of Nietzsche, and I am always on the look-out for new enemies. When I find them, I sharpen my knives with a grin. It is my honest hope that my book will set a record for the worst reviews at Amazon, both in number and heat, since that will give me two things I most want. One, it will give me a never-ending row of necks to cleave. Two, it will be one more broad indication that I am on the right road. As James Mason said in Heaven Can Wait, “The likelihood of one individual being right increases in direct proportion to the intensity with which others are trying to prove him wrong.” If I wanted good reviews at Amazon, I would have written a different sort of book altogether, wouldn't I? I have already chopped these people and their wobbly heroes up in a thousand ways, so I can't be surprised when some of them complain. I could only wish that some of them would complain with more content, so that I had some real hill to climb. As the master Whistler put it, “I could cut my own throat better.”
As the first example of a review that is hardly crushing, we find this:
PURE CRACKPOT
Please don't be tempted to buy this. Reading bits of the html version on the author's website shows it is nothing more than a collection of misunderstandings about mathematics and physics. From not knowing about natural units in the author's "proof" that asymptotic freedom is wrong, to elementary mistakes about the geometry of a circle.
As usual for someone fitting the crackpot stereotype, the author writes as if he knows better than actual physicists and often refers to his theory which simplifies most of physics without the need for all this unnecessary maths.
If he is going to follow true crackpot tradition then there will probably be a reply to this comment saying that I am part of the establishment and that I just have all the same misconceptions that he is talking about in the book etc, etc.
In typing this review I have given this book infinitely more attention than it deserves. I hope this means that no-one else has to.
R. Dowdall
First of all, if we click on R. Dowdall, we find this is his only review at Amazon. That is the sign of a troll. We also have no indication this is his real name. Amazon tells us “real name” in that case, and we don't have that here. Unlike me, Mr. Pseudo-Dowdall didn't even have the guts to post an opinion under his own name. But let's look at the content of this so-called review. In a word, it has none. It is not a review, it is just the opportunity for a nameless troll to say the word “crackpot” multiple times. He says I have misunderstandings, but does not say what they are. He says I don't know about natural units or the geometry of a circle, but doesn't tell me what I am missing.
I will point out that this ghost of a person chooses my paper on asymptotic freedom to lead with, which is very suggestive. It is suggestive because that is one of my most damaging papers, both in terms of math and polemic. I go line by line through their math and show what a terrible fudge it is. I even go line by line through Gross' Nobel paper math, showing his awful cheat there. I then suggest that several Prizes need to be returned to Stockholm. When you compare the content of that paper to the content of this review, you find a gigantic mismatch. The powers that be really need to send in a bigger lion. As it is, this is just sad. “Please don't buy this book”? Do you ever see me using such infantile methods? “Please don't read the books or papers I am criticizing.” Can you imagine me saying something like that? No, I recommend you read and study their papers and books, so that you can understand what a terrible hash it all is. That is why I quote extensively from their books, as well as from places like Wikipedia. You need to know what they are saying.
Dowdall didn't accidently click on my paper on asymptotic freedom first, in his skimming of “bits”. That paper is mentioned here because it drew the most blood from the biggest veins. The owners of those veins are trying to draw some blood from me here, but they need to hire a better swordsman.
Dowdall's second paragraph is even weaker than his first, if that is possible. I am a crackpot because I think I know better. But everyone who has ever published a sentence thinks he knows better than those he is answering. All of our current theory has come from people who thought they knew better, and did know better, so Dowdall is just practicing his hyper-egalitarian whining. According to this argument, anyone with a new idea can be pre-defined as wrong. Anyone who ever thought he knew better, including Jesus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, must have been a crackpot. If “actual physicists” were or are infallible, then physics would have ended millennia ago.
In his third paragraph, Dowdall tries to deflect his opponent before that opponent arrives, which is a sign of weakness itself. I ask for bigger lions, but Dowdall is scared of the mouse before it peeps. Unfortunately, he didn't properly predict the form of my attack, since, as you can see, I am not attacking him as establishment. I am attacking him as a weak and dishonest debater, one without the proper reach. He is fighting outside his weight class.
I can tell you how this is going to go, in the long run. Dowdall's handlers are used to dealing with opposition as they dealt with Velikovsky: slander and hide and rely on Velikovsky not to chew their arms off completely. Unfortunately, that won't work for them this time, since their arms are already gone, as are their legs. They have already been mauled to within an inch of their lives, and any subsequent yaps can be interpreted as bluffs, as with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My papers have been written and they cannot be un-written, so that all this debating is just a meaningless denouement. I don't need to say anything outside the papers, and I only continue to toy with them for fun. I debate them as a pleasant pastime, a pastime somewhat akin to killing cockroaches or mosquitoes. It is not my lot to shoo flies, except insofar as I enjoy shooing flies.
We see the weakness of my opposition once again in their efforts to hack me. They can't answer my papers, and they look like fools on the physics forums, so their last resort is to try to silence me with computer tricks. We have seen this both on my art site and my science site. Both have been hacked recently, and we must suppose that the hackers are related to those losing the argument. I would suggest to them that if they are correct or superior in any conceivable way, they should be able to show that by writing it down. Neither science nor art is a hacking contest.
From my experience on my art site, I know what the initial response to this post will be. A foul will be called on me for playing too rough. My opposition can dish it out but they can't take it. They have been slandering their opponents for decades, existing almost entirely on ad hominem remarks, but when I turn around and take them by the throat, suddenly they want rules enforced. They have been bullying the physics world for a entire century, but when when some lone man with a sling and a rock turns around and whacks them in the forehead, they call him the bully. All I can say is this, Find a Goliath, if you can still locate one. I have larger rocks I need to test.
It is sad that new ideas are suppressed to the extent that people like me have to self-publish, but there it is. Physics is controlled, like everything else. And I have confirmation of that from within. Physicists have told me they are scared to contradict the dogma promoted from above, since everyones careers depend on bowing to the status quo. Norris' comments are just another example of this control: he appears to think I don't have the right to say what I think. Is that not a form of control? Of course it is. They can't stop me through the normal career channels, since I am not a career physicist, so they do what they can. They attempt to shame me into silence by calling me mean and scary names. They attempt to turn the public against me by playing the humble card. I am not humble enough to be a physicist, apparently. You really have to laugh. The humble Michael Norris, full of opinion, finds me lacking in humility. But of course all this is just a diversion. Science has nothing to do with humility, and Norris would be better off showing precisely where I am wrong. That appears to be beyond him.
He also finds it shocking that I would dare to contradict prominent physicists. But the fact that none of these prominent physicists are humble doesn't seem to bother him. He is amused by the hubris of Hawking and Weinberg and Feynman and Witten, one supposes, and only takes umbrage when non-sanctioned or non-sanctified people have confidence or think they are right. He doesn't bother to get jealous of his immodest teachers, and parade his sad jealousy in the open, since they may give him a promotion; but since I won't, he has no use for me. He sneers that I don't mention peer-reviewed scientists in support of my theories, but that is false. I mention peer-reviewed data all the time, and show how it confirms my theories and disproves the standard model, as he is probably aware (and would be more aware if he read a bit more closely and extensively). What he means is that I myself have not been blessed by the gatekeepers, and must therefore be a barbarian. But that of course is circular. It is to say that if they are successful in keeping me out of their journals, they must be right and I must be wrong. Job protection then poses as a scientific criterion.
Beyond that, I can mention a peer-reviewed scientist right now in support of the thesis of this paper. Ivar Gieaver, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1973, recently said, "We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important."*
The protectors of the status quo like Norris have always used the same tactics to suppress new ideas. Einstein's 1905 paper was criticized because it didn't have a long list of references and footnotes. What this sort of critique means is, "Hey, you didn't include us! You didn't reference all your colleagues and 'peers'! You didn't kiss enough ass or work with a big enough committee, therefore we are going to ignore you." Norris then scoffs that I am the last person on earth to believe that particles literally spin. I may be the among the last who believes in mechanics, but I was not the first. Newton and Maxwell believed in spin, and most of the prominent physicists of the 20th century have seriously considered the idea, including Feynman. While Norris is spitting and scratching, he neglects to say how he and his mainstream heroes have explained quantum interactions. The answer: they haven't. They gave up on mechanics almost a hundred years ago and now deflect you immediately into free-floating math. But perhaps most pathetically, Norris jibes, "He might as well show us how quarks have real color." That proves he has done nothing but skim with a green stripe, since I do exactly that. I show the mechanical cause of color, something the standard model doesn't do and couldn't do if it wanted to. It can't precisely because it won't look at real motions of real particles. Norris thinks it is clever to ridicule a physicist for trying to be physical, which is the ultimate foot-shooting. A physics that would ridicule mechanics is already defunct.
As Norris sniffed about my book promotion mentioning Leonardo, he will no doubt sniff at my using a picture of David above. While his anointed mainstream heroes can use any amount of publicity they like, we in the margins are expected to scrape and doff our hats, wiping our feet at the door. We are expected to apply for permits from them to think or to hold our heads up. They are praised for charisma, even when they obviously lack it, while we are crucified for any amount of charm or eclat. The very form of their critiques proves this. My greatest sin in their eyes is not playing by their rules and not requiring their imprimaturs. I am an unsanctioned body. I tell them to stuff their permits and their rules. This burns them up even more than my ripping up of their famous equations. As small people, they can live without their equations, but they cannot live without their rules and permits.
Of course I am confident, gentlemen. Arguing with people like you would tend to make one confident. The more time I spend in your fields, the more I understand how little seed you have planted, and how little seed you are capable of planting. Once upon a time I had thought it might be difficult to climb the fence or to push my plow. At the least I had thought the cattle dogs might bite me. But I find they are toothless. There are no viable beings in the low and rotting rows of corn but a few tattered scarecrows, with painted-on frowns. I find that physics, like art and most other fields, is a cardboard vista fronted by loud music. It is the jingle-jangle of an old circus barker calling us to three empty rings. It is a very noisy merry-go-round, with thousands of spinning mirrors but not a horse left on it. Your practiced patter does not divert me, gentlemen, by any meaning of the word. Check the pulse of your lions, gentlemen, for I fear they are dead.
Addendum: August 2011. My latest fun was had at the expense of James Frazier, apparently from some pathetic debunking site. In an email, he called me a crackpot and a moron, before telling me that he read my papers to his students, and that the "brightest ones" practiced finding my "mistakes and obfustications." I asked him if his brightest students could spot the problem with "obfustications," perhaps by noticing the wavy red lines underneath it? He said I shouldn't trust spell check so much, since the fools who invented it didn't even take into account plurals of words. I asked him, "Are you implying that the correct plural of obfuscation really IS obfustications?" The conversation degenerated from there, as you can imagine, but I already knew enough about James Frazier to go on. He was nice enough to prove to me, within the first three sentences, that he was the sort that 1) lives in his own head completely, 2) cannot admit an error. I suggest he send emails to Spell Check and the Oxford English Dictionary, debunking their use of correct spelling. These rogue entities shouldn't be allowed to make him look bad, after all. This is very much to the point, since it is precisely what goes on in physics and most other "disciplines" now. These people have made an ocean's full of errors, many of them glaring like "obfustications," with the wavy red lines screaming underneath, and they don't have the decency to admit it. Just as the inventors of spell check are "fools," I am a "moron." He ended by suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to pollute the internet. Yes, I thought, How else can science and civilization progress, except by policing the internet and forcing everyone to agree with the current standard model of everything? I thanked him for his staunch support of academic freedom, free inquiry, and free speech, and for his thoroughly charming personality, and encouraged him to write again whenever he had any other spelling questions.
UPDATE April 28, 2013: I recently got an email from jccoleman@ucdavis.edu, and like the others he had nothing substantive to say. I assume this email is coming from the physics department, and you would think they would be capable of arguing facts. Instead I got more ad homs. Here is all he had to say:
I I I I I responded,
Have you ever taken a course in argumentation? You are already losing this one, and you aren't even aware of it.
Surprisingly, Coleman wrote back, but he was already out of arrows after that first email. He only said, "Yes, I have. Your none response is taken to mean that you don't have any
course work in Physics or Mathematics." I replied,
Glad to know those at UCDavis are reading my papers. You might want to read a little closer though, since you don't seem to be getting it. Thanks for writing and let me know when you start to understand physics. If you took your eyes off your diploma every once in a while, it might help. By the way, the proper English is "lack of a response." "None response" just proves to me I am dealing with a failed product of our educational system, which obviously reaches all the way up to the university level. Good luck with your continued coursework. PS Keep writing if you want to keep losing this exchange. It is up to you. I am always amazed when people like you are deluded enough to email me with your little slurs. You don't seem to realize when you're in over your head. You were in over your head the moment you clicked on my website.
I thought it was over with that, since I didn't hear from JCColeman for a couple of days. But finally I got a last sad email, where he suggested some coursework for me, things like "shutupandcalculate101" and so on. He said once I had taken his courses, "Then you can ethically claim to have an opinion." So disagreeing with the mainstream is now an "ethical" issue. I need to first be indoctrinated by their coursework before I can disagree with the indoctrination. I can't just read their texts, I have to pass their classes. And could I pass their classes without agreeing with them? Catch-22, you see. Only those who fully agree with the indoctrination get the certificate at the end. And if you don't have the certificate, you can't "ethically" have an opinion. Convenient, right? This is not a airy point, since we can apply it to my friend Stephen Crothers, who was denied his PhD because he began to question the math. They don't allow that, you see. This gives them the ability to dismiss Stephen just as they dismiss me, without ever addressing the content of his arguments. He doesn't have a PhD, therefore he cannot ethically have an opinion. This is the way it goes now. And of course in the rare case that someone with a PhD in physics disagrees with the mainstream, they dismiss him as well without addressing his analyses, because he went to the wrong university or lives in the wrong country or was refused by peer review.
But it gets even worse. For JCColeman ended with, "Finally, no need to reply to this because I'm adding you to my spam list and won't be given the opportunity to read your reply." The brave JCColeman writes me, and then blocks me from replying. I had to laugh. In the 15 years I have been writing, I have never once gotten a substantive negative email from the universities. I have gotten some positive ones, but never a negative one that had any content. They are like these I got from California. For some reason, these people think they can cow me with a few weak ad homs, but they always end up getting their lungs handed to them. It just proves they aren't reading my papers, since if they were, they would know not to come to the fight unarmed. I prefer to discuss actual physics, but if they want to trade invective, they should at least show up with something cutting. My knives are sharp, and they aren't going to beat me with a wet fish.
I do want to point out one more time how threatened these people seem to be by "my ego". That irks them even more than my ripping up of their equations. I have now pointed out reams and reams of pushes and fudges in their equations, going line by line through their proofs to do it. Do they ever have anything to say about that? It seems they would wish to point out my specific error in the line by line analysis. Nope. Instead, they attack my ego, as if that has anything to do with it. What they seem to mean is that they can't comprehend how anyone can dare to disagree with their masters. Anyone who doesn't immediately bow down before the anointed equations must be crazy. Can't I smell the incense, can't I hear the chanting? Can't I detect the scent of holiness coming from the robes of those seated in the high chairs? I I I I I guess not.
*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8786565/War-of-words-over-global-warming-as-Nobel-laureate-resigns-in-protest.html