Void: an epistemological error
"Very well," you may ask, "if space is our visualization of geometry, what are we to call a place from which everything has been removed?" The name for this notion is "void," but like the unicorn, there ain't no such animal!
If everything were to be removed, what would be left would be nothing. As Parmenides pointed out about 2500 years ago, and as Ayn Rand reminded us more recently, there is no nothing. To say that a void exists is to say that there is a place where non-existence nevertheless exists. Void is absurd--an epistemological error, a figment. There is something everywhere; reality is full. It has no "gaps." This conclusion has puzzled thinkers since ancient times, and their struggles are instructive.
If reality is full, how can we see gaps all over the place? To perceive a number of entities is to perceive that they are separate; to see this cat and yon dog is to see a gap between them.
Faced with this, Parmenides himself lapsed into collectivism and rationalism: he declared that there are no separate entities, that our senses deceive us; there is only a mystic unity: The One.
Ancient atomists sought to preserve individuality and the evidence of perception by ditching Parmenides' axiom: they declared that everything is made up of atoms and the void, and that void--non-existence--exists every bit as much as the atoms! Their desperate expedient was doomed from the start, for a trivial exercise in logic will extract from it the same rationalistic, collectivist conclusion: "Void is nothing, and void separates the atoms; so nothing separates the atoms. So all is One, and individuality is mere sensory illusion." Atomists raised the specter of a real void, and it has haunted the outer reaches of science ever since.
Parmenides and the atomists share the error that perceptual gaps are voids. They differ only in the way they use the error. Parmenides says, contrary to perception, that gaps do not exist; because voids do not exist, and gaps are voids. The atomists insist, contrary to the axiom of existence, that void exists; because gaps exist, and gaps are voids.
The solution is to admit--on the warrant of perception--that perceptual gaps exist, and--on the warrant of the axiom of existence--that gaps are not nothing: something exists between perceived entities.
What is it? Void is not an option, and space is no answer. Space is merely our system of reference lines. Our new question is "What is the stuff through which we draw those lines between entities?" This stuff is prior to our lines, prior to space. What's the stuff?
Rationalists may as well leave right now, for this question cannot be answered by deduction; we have no premises from which the deduction could proceed. The only positive fact we know about our "stuff" is that it exists, and you cannot deduce what a thing is from the premise that it is something. To learn more, you must observe more.
Bricks, to air, to vacuum, to ...?
Suppose we observe a cat and a dog on opposite sides of a brick fence. What is between them? Obviously there are bricks between them. That's no problem for anyone: we all know that bricks exist.
But if we remove the bricks from between our critters, they don't merge into the mystic unity of The One. They are still apart; they are still distinct entities. Now what's between them?
You might hazard the suggestion that there is air between them. Congratulations! That recognition marks a great and difficult advance of science. The existence of air was not always obvious; as late as Alexandrian times, experiments demonstrating the reality of air were thought to be necessary. After all, air is shapeless, colorless, invisible, non-dog, non-cat, non-etc. If you focused on these negatives, you would be led to think that air is mere void. But you would be wrong; there is air between our cat and dog; air exists.
Gradually, by further observation and experiment, man learned that air is not a fundamental, elemental constituent of reality. Rather, air is made of entities: air is a mixture of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles. But those particles aren't merged into mystic unity; there is something between them. What is it?
In the context of knowledge sketched above, the answer is vacuum, or if you prefer, ether. The description of vacuum involves even more negatives than the description of air; but no list of negatives, however long, can justify the conclusion that vacuum is void: void is a mere figment. To the contrary, we have positive evidence for the existence of vacuum, namely, the separateness of particles.
There is vacuum between particles: vacuum exists.
If we look ahead to a hypothetical future, it may turn out that vacuum, too, is made up of some kind of entities. Then the axiom of existence will oblige future scientists to ask what exists between those entities. Or, if future scientists find they can remove even vacuum from a vessel, then the axiom of existence will oblige them to ask what exists between the walls of the vessel. Or, perhaps, vacuum will turn out to be elemental, a primary constituent of reality. Only further evidence can decide the issue.
Vacuum
What can we say about vacuum? Not much, but some. Vacuum transmits electrical and magnetic forces with a time delay which depends on distance. Vacuum transmits gravitational force. If one assumes that gravitational force travels through vacuum at the speed of light and is aberrated like light, one arrives at the correct orbit for the fast-moving planet Mercury. (Paul Gerber published this calculation in 1898. See Petr Beckmann's "Einstein Plus Two," Sec. 3.1) Vacuum transmits light and, near massive bodies, it deflects light. Certain kinds of clocks run more slowly as they move faster through vacuum. Particle masses increase with their speed through vacuum.
These facts are all certified by uncontroversial experiment. They are conventionally "explained" in terms of relativistic space-time curvature, but such explanations are worthless. Curvaceous space and dilatory time are means to delude yourself by using squidgy measuring sticks and inconstant clocks. What delusion might one seek by means of variable units? Relativists choose their variable units to maintain the delusion that vacuum does not exist.
I'm not guessing about this; it is implicit in their procedure. They begin by denying a real vacuum--in their jargon, an "ether" or "preferred reference frame"--and they derive units which vary precisely as required by that dogma. Their fudged units obediently conceal much of the evidence for vacuum. (The evidence that they have fudged the units--namely, their curved space and inconstant time--remain manifest to all who look.) Relativists' denial of vacuum revives the irrational metaphysics of the ancient atomists, for it amounts to the assertion that non-existence exists between particles.
We can now understand why relativists must postulate the speed of light in vacuum to be a universal constant. They equate vacuum with void; and if vacuum were nothing, there would indeed be nothing which could change the speed of light in vacuum! Relativists have no grounds to be smug about this fragment of consistency, for it comes at a terrible price: it banishes reason and causality from physics.
Just as a void would be unable to cause any change in the speed of light, it could not cause light to have a speed, and certainly could not cause it to have one particular speed rather than another. Instead of regarding the motion of light in vacuum as an experimental fact to be explained by its causes, relativists must regard it as a metaphysical miracle, forever and in principle inexplicable: absolutely causeless. Indeed, light itself and all forces between particles become miraculous; for they would have to propagate through a void, i.e., through nothing at all! To equate vacuum with void is to spawn an endless torrent of contradictions, for void is itself a contradiction.
Back in reality, variations in the speed of light in material media are commonplace; they cause the everyday effect of refraction. Refraction between air and glass or plastic makes eyeglasses work, and refraction between air and water makes a stick which is partially immersed in water appear sharply bent at the water surface. Refraction between warmer and cooler air causes the "heat waves" that you can see over a paved road on a sunny day.
There is positive evidence that vacuum (or ether) is pretty much like any other medium, being affected in specific ways by specific causes. For example, starlight passing near the sun is deflected from its usual course. The straightforward conclusion is that vacuum is a refracting medium, i.e., that the speed of light in vacuum is reduced near massive bodies.
It's high time for physicists to expel the void from their minds, and to admit that vacuum exists. They will then be free to standardize their measuring sticks, to steady their clocks, and to use these tools to study vacuum.
There's no telling what they'll find! The potential of vacuum studies for human progress and prosperity is boundless. Vacuum occupies most of the volume of the universe, and even most of the volume of every atom of ordinary matter. If men can devise methods to make this ubiquitous stuff (or stuffs!) serve human purposes, what might they achieve!
I appreciate your input here. SteveO I think reading the other Miller article on time should do the trick for differentiating the most recent "space-time" confusion . Klypp may I reccomend "THE PHILISOPHICAL CORRUPTION OF PHYSICS" and "PHYSICIST LOST IN "SPACE" by David Harriman. Millers ideas are directly derived from the same source. I just wanted to add that Wal actually prefers the term "Natural Philosophers" instead of "physicist" in case of any objections to my relevent comments.
