In my post How to Settle the Science: Ban an Applied Mathematics Textbook, I described how the introductory applied mathematics textbook, BodyAndSoul: Mathematical Simulation Technology, written by Claes Johnson, Emeritus Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), was banned in 2010 by his university, while a course was being given using said book, simply because among the 227 chapters and 1693 pages, there are a total of 5 chapters covering 34 pages that are somehow related to, and sometimes critical of, the topic of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).
Even the orthodox and officially sanctioned academic history and philosophy of science, from Kuhn onward, is brimming with smaller stories of this kind, although the dirtiest tricks are, in general, politely obscured. Regardless of method, any branch of human knowledge is an inherently social and thus inescapably political endeavor.
The framing of a singular, big-S "Science" as somehow above and apart from all other human institutions and activities, granting the deserving and patiently submissive acolyte grad student a unique (but entirely revocable) access to the otherwise ineffable secrets of the universe, bound up with a salary and professional reputation... what else can that be but the contemporary form of the ancient mystery cults? Only through our relentless and perpetual curation and reinterpretation of history can this obvious identity be obscured. Scientists in training are nowadays given the shallowest and most slanted of historical education, continually revised to fit the ideological trends. Not real history at all, but "heritage".
The internal politics of the sciences are depressing enough to contemplate (as you've done here) without getting into the external factors. But especially in our age, there is no longer such thing as academic freedom in any of the sciences whose knowledge products facilitate control of the world; psychology, the life sciences, and medicine being the most obvious examples, but also anything to do with technology. Grants are made and withheld by powerful interests strictly on the basis of the work's expected practical outcomes. This is now the normal --- and in some fields the only --- path to publication in the elite journals.
Happily, the life of the mind outside the tower has never been richer nor the fields outside the garden walls more fertile. Looking forward to your upcoming posts!
Terminology is also used to confuse, confound, and deflect. While Lord Kelvin was wrong about nothing existing between Earth and Sun, we now know that the misnamed "solar wind", actually a current of charged particles, does connect the Earth and Sun.
Naming this stream of electrical charges a "wind" hides the true nature of these solar discharges from anyone who is unfamiliar with the phenomenon, or those who are incurious about its effects.
It’s evident that nothing much has changed over the centuries.. Any challenge to the established narrative about the nature of the universe is likely to provoke backlash from the establishment physicists, who are more focused on safeguarding their reputations and funding streams than advancing scientific understanding. Their reaction follows a predictable pattern, with censorship, straw man arguments, then derision and ad hominem attacks.
But scientific progress often hinges on challenging established paradigms, and those who do—though dismissed as "cranks" at the time by their peers—later have their ideas recognised as groundbreaking.
Thank you for bringing these excellent examples from the history of science to the fore. One day they will be vindicated.
Very interesting piece thank you. The Einstein material took me back. When I was doing my Masters (Chem. Eng.) - a research only thesis - and was doing the lit. review, I told my supervisor that something I was reading, that was gaining popularity (and he fully supported) was pure nonsense and I didn't want to include it in my thesis. He said (I paraphrase) don't worry, put it in anyway. I did and he was happy.
John, you have scratched my curiosity about Western Reserve University. Somehow a fertile field of being able to honestly think, had been planted there. Because, of all the English translations of Plato, my favorites are those done by Harold Fowler, who became a professor at Western Reserve in 1893, the same year that Miller began teaching there, I believe. Coincidence? Thanks John.
Harold Fowler worked at the College for Women at the Western Reserve University, while Dayton Miller worked at the Case School of Applied Science. They were neighbouring institutions, but technically separate. The two merged into Case Western Reserve University in 1967.
But you do have an interesting point to make. At the end of the 19th century in the U.S., there were some very important developments, both in the sciences and in the humanities.
An excellent read John, but a lamentable state of Physics :\
"It appears Einstein was a part of this incompetency or deception."
This raises a thought that has often niggled at me; is this really just about the egos of long out-of-date faculty heads and publishers, or is there a more sinister game at play with this absolute refusal to allow progress in particular realms of Physics, chiefly being where energy and gravity are concerned? I am leaning more to the latter these days.
In our time, it seems the first skill to master for the up-and-coming physicist, is the handling of the Shotgun.
It's a happy coincidence to read this a few days after citing Lerner, van Flandern and Arp against the big bang in a comment on "The Egg and the Rock" interview on the Infinite Loops podcast.
Other neglected figures in science I've been studying:
William Kingdon Clifford (died young; philosophy, neuroscience and math several decades ahead of his time; Cliffird Algebras are better for physics than vectors or matrices)
Charles Sanders Peirce (applied logic pioneer, polymath, shut out of Harvard by president Eliot)
William Stanley Jevons (another contemporary of Clifford, economics still hasn't caught up).
A recent semi-excluded giant figure, David Hestenes, who resarted Clifford's programme, see his "The Genesis of Geometric Algebra:
The good papers on Clifford Algebra all refer to it as Geometric Algebra and nearly all start from first principles, without assuming prior knowledge and are much more comprehensible than Wikipedia's “Bourbaki virus” Hestenes’ term) -infected obscurantist pseudo-rigor. Try:
for the Cambridge group's papers, e.g.: “Imaginary Numbers Are Not Real”.
Top authors: Hestenes, Doran, Dorst (esp. GA Viewer SW), Lasenby & their co-authors - if none of these names are cited, the paper is in a different field.
John Denker also has a good intro which gets into ctual calculations - also see his EM in GA pages elsewhere on his site:
Even the orthodox and officially sanctioned academic history and philosophy of science, from Kuhn onward, is brimming with smaller stories of this kind, although the dirtiest tricks are, in general, politely obscured. Regardless of method, any branch of human knowledge is an inherently social and thus inescapably political endeavor.
The framing of a singular, big-S "Science" as somehow above and apart from all other human institutions and activities, granting the deserving and patiently submissive acolyte grad student a unique (but entirely revocable) access to the otherwise ineffable secrets of the universe, bound up with a salary and professional reputation... what else can that be but the contemporary form of the ancient mystery cults? Only through our relentless and perpetual curation and reinterpretation of history can this obvious identity be obscured. Scientists in training are nowadays given the shallowest and most slanted of historical education, continually revised to fit the ideological trends. Not real history at all, but "heritage".
The internal politics of the sciences are depressing enough to contemplate (as you've done here) without getting into the external factors. But especially in our age, there is no longer such thing as academic freedom in any of the sciences whose knowledge products facilitate control of the world; psychology, the life sciences, and medicine being the most obvious examples, but also anything to do with technology. Grants are made and withheld by powerful interests strictly on the basis of the work's expected practical outcomes. This is now the normal --- and in some fields the only --- path to publication in the elite journals.
Happily, the life of the mind outside the tower has never been richer nor the fields outside the garden walls more fertile. Looking forward to your upcoming posts!
Terminology is also used to confuse, confound, and deflect. While Lord Kelvin was wrong about nothing existing between Earth and Sun, we now know that the misnamed "solar wind", actually a current of charged particles, does connect the Earth and Sun.
Naming this stream of electrical charges a "wind" hides the true nature of these solar discharges from anyone who is unfamiliar with the phenomenon, or those who are incurious about its effects.
None so blind as those who just won't see.
Love your work, thanks John.
Very well articulated.
It’s evident that nothing much has changed over the centuries.. Any challenge to the established narrative about the nature of the universe is likely to provoke backlash from the establishment physicists, who are more focused on safeguarding their reputations and funding streams than advancing scientific understanding. Their reaction follows a predictable pattern, with censorship, straw man arguments, then derision and ad hominem attacks.
But scientific progress often hinges on challenging established paradigms, and those who do—though dismissed as "cranks" at the time by their peers—later have their ideas recognised as groundbreaking.
Thank you for bringing these excellent examples from the history of science to the fore. One day they will be vindicated.
Every physicist who has pointed out the strawman nature of Bell's theorem has been silenced and canceled.
Very interesting piece thank you. The Einstein material took me back. When I was doing my Masters (Chem. Eng.) - a research only thesis - and was doing the lit. review, I told my supervisor that something I was reading, that was gaining popularity (and he fully supported) was pure nonsense and I didn't want to include it in my thesis. He said (I paraphrase) don't worry, put it in anyway. I did and he was happy.
How’d I miss this one? Brilliant. Thanks. EU is the way forward imho. EEU. Ether Electric Universe
complimented -> complemented
Thanks, fixed.
Great article! I am fortunate to have stumbled upon your substance and look forward to following your train of thought. Thanks!
We must therefore conclude that mathematicians should be kept in their lanes.
John, you have scratched my curiosity about Western Reserve University. Somehow a fertile field of being able to honestly think, had been planted there. Because, of all the English translations of Plato, my favorites are those done by Harold Fowler, who became a professor at Western Reserve in 1893, the same year that Miller began teaching there, I believe. Coincidence? Thanks John.
Harold Fowler worked at the College for Women at the Western Reserve University, while Dayton Miller worked at the Case School of Applied Science. They were neighbouring institutions, but technically separate. The two merged into Case Western Reserve University in 1967.
But you do have an interesting point to make. At the end of the 19th century in the U.S., there were some very important developments, both in the sciences and in the humanities.
An excellent read John, but a lamentable state of Physics :\
"It appears Einstein was a part of this incompetency or deception."
This raises a thought that has often niggled at me; is this really just about the egos of long out-of-date faculty heads and publishers, or is there a more sinister game at play with this absolute refusal to allow progress in particular realms of Physics, chiefly being where energy and gravity are concerned? I am leaning more to the latter these days.
In our time, it seems the first skill to master for the up-and-coming physicist, is the handling of the Shotgun.
It's a happy coincidence to read this a few days after citing Lerner, van Flandern and Arp against the big bang in a comment on "The Egg and the Rock" interview on the Infinite Loops podcast.
Other neglected figures in science I've been studying:
William Kingdon Clifford (died young; philosophy, neuroscience and math several decades ahead of his time; Cliffird Algebras are better for physics than vectors or matrices)
Charles Sanders Peirce (applied logic pioneer, polymath, shut out of Harvard by president Eliot)
William Stanley Jevons (another contemporary of Clifford, economics still hasn't caught up).
A recent semi-excluded giant figure, David Hestenes, who resarted Clifford's programme, see his "The Genesis of Geometric Algebra:
A Personal Retrospective" 29 pp. 2016
I really do need to study Clifford algebra.
The good papers on Clifford Algebra all refer to it as Geometric Algebra and nearly all start from first principles, without assuming prior knowledge and are much more comprehensible than Wikipedia's “Bourbaki virus” Hestenes’ term) -infected obscurantist pseudo-rigor. Try:
https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual-introduction/
to start with, then:
https://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/
for the Cambridge group's papers, e.g.: “Imaginary Numbers Are Not Real”.
Top authors: Hestenes, Doran, Dorst (esp. GA Viewer SW), Lasenby & their co-authors - if none of these names are cited, the paper is in a different field.
John Denker also has a good intro which gets into ctual calculations - also see his EM in GA pages elsewhere on his site:
https://www.av8n.com/physics/clifford-intro.htm
Bourbaki virus. I love the expression.