Null Physics Anyone?

[Birdjaguar]

An ad in the most recent issue of "Discover" prompted me to look further into Null Physics: a non physicist's self published book on the standard model and why the universe exists.

The author's website is a bit sparse and mostly about teasing one to buy the book, but a forum thread at the James Randi site turned up a discussion with the author from last month. Its pretty hard core physics, but interesting.

http://www.nullphysics.com/

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94861

He raises fundamental questions about the state of physics today and whether it has lost it way.

From the book's Preface:

Spoiler :

Physics is currently in a sad, sad state. Theorists have, upon their global failure to provide
coherent solutions to nature’s toughest questions, chosen to relinquish much of their
responsibility. They have reached the internally-agreed-upon consensus that their job is not
to explain reality, their one and only job is to describe it, using models that need not even
reference real, physical entities. Yet at the same time, many physicists go to great lengths to
explain why they needn’t explain certain things. Further, in what might be best referred to as
physics chauvinism, interested bystanders are told that the only reason they ask questions
such as “Why does the universe exist?” is because they lack the formal training and expertise
of scientists. The bystander may also learn, if they request further clarification, that a
number of questions about nature, especially those driven by common sense, are
meaningless and without merit. Such hubris! Other fields of science, from molecular
biology to geology, still seek a deeper understanding of the phenomena they study. Physics,
from the realm of subatomic particles to galactic superclusters, is the only branch of science
that claims an unwarranted exclusion from the pursuit of understanding. Where else does
not knowing the answer make a question irrelevant?

Suppose a primitive native, with no prior contact with modern civilization, found a digital
watch on a jungle trail. Being the shaman of his village, he studies this object and soon
recognizes patterns in the symbols it displays. Eventually, he develops a model of the
precession of these symbols, and wows his tribesman by predicting the appearance and
moment of arrival of the next cipher. Yet he has no idea what the watch is or why it was
laying on the trail in the first place. These are insignificant details, he tells his ignorant
compatriots, because he knows what the next symbol is going to look like and
approximately when it will appear, and this remarkable foreknowledge transcends all other
considerations. As physics creeps into the twenty-first century, its methodology bears an
uncanny resemblance to the approach used by our friend with the digital watch. Scarier
still, many physicists would not see this as a problem. We can do better, far better.

 

[Fifty]

Sounds like uninformed crap designed to sell books to me. For one, his claims that biologists and geologists and such DO ask similarly deep questions about the nature of what it is they study is wrong on several levels. I don't see e.g. geologists asking about the mereology of rocks, or metaphysical questions about whether mountains can even exist, or whatever. I'm guessing by "deep question" abotu geology he means stuff like "WHAT R ROCKS MADE OF?", which surely is not an analogously deep question to "What is the nature of the universe".

In short, it sounds like he doesn't understand physics, other sciences, the philosophy of science, or metaphysics, or any of their respective domains of discourse.

Oh and "self-published" should always send up warning bells. If a major UP won't pick up the book, that doesn't mean there is some giant academic conspiracy against it, that usually means its just a crappy book.

 

[Mise]

So wait, this is a non-Physicist, telling Physicists what their own subject is supposed to be about, and what it actually is about, without knowing anything about Physics itself...?

And yeah, Fifty made good points about him seemingly holding Physics to higher standards than other sciences... I'm flattered, but still.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well I spent a hour or so reading the whole thread and the "home team" did a pretty good job of blasting Terry Witt out of the box. It reminded me alot of how new posters here are often treated when they come in uprepared for how the locals deal with things they disagree with.

I am not curious enough to spend $60 for the book, but I will see if the library gets it.

 

[Reality Check]

See this review of “Our Undiscovered Universe” by Terence Witt from a professional physicist:
http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html

Also see my review at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html
The flaws of this crackpot book are many and include:

• Redefining the concept of infinity as a length with magnitude.
• Defining a line as a series of points written as zeros, treating them as numbers so that they add up to zero and then treating the number zero as a point again!
• A really bad atomic model "proving" that a electron orbiting a proton has a ground state that it cannot decay from by creating a new physical law.
• Using the high school description of a neutron as a proton plus an electron and not realizing that this is just his atomic model!
• Postulating that galaxies have "galactic cores" which are super massive objects that are not quite black holes and not realizing that the centre of the Milky Way is well observed. These recycle stars into hydrogen. Oddly enough astronomers have not noticed dozens of stars vanishing from the galactic centre in the many images that they have taken over the last few decades.

Conclusion: Bad mathematics and even worse physics.