- "[youtube channel "Dave":] Now, back to Mr. Thornhill and his lies. When lying about physics, Wal has a mantra,
which is that most of modern physics is not really physics, but rather mathematics.
There are two reasons for this. First, he doesn’t understand math, and would rather ignore it. Second, he knows that his target demographic probably also does not understand math, and would also like to ignore it.
So Wal cultivates an environment where he and his followers can treat math like a mean bully, and pretend that physics can be done without it. The problem is that science requires gathering evidence. This means making quantifiable predictions that can be tested by way of some observation. And with physics, that means math. When it comes to mountains of firm quantitative, reproducible evidence supporting things like general relativity and other aspects of physics Wal denies, he either ignores the relevant experiments and applications, or attempts
to explain how physicists are misinterpreting experimental results, to sell the story that it’s just a bunch of scary numbers that have no correlation with reality. He’s had his work cut 17:15 out for him over the past decade or so, with all the scientific breakthroughs that keep occurring."
There are quite a few ad hominem arguments here, plain and simple. This is extremely poor quality debate and he gets an F in logic also.
But the real underlying problem is that this man made a video about something that he never even researched ! While he does say that Electric Universe physicist Wal Thornhill often points out that "most of modern physics is not really physics, but rather mathematics" (which is a fair summation), he then claims that he is "cultivating an environment that treats math like a bully," "doesn't understand math," and his "targets don't understand math." That is a personal attack based on a false allegation [] and has nothing to do with what physicist Wal Thornhill has published or presented in his papers or conferences.
To illustrate, we can go back as far as you like. Here are his statements in January of 2006 for example:
A Real 'Theory of Everything'
Wal Thornhill
"To be gifted in mathematical ability does not imply comparable gifts in perception and critical reasoning. We perpetuate a popular delusion, fostered by mathematicians, by equating the two. As a result, theoretical physics has gone nowhere for the past century.
Where have the natural philosophers and epistemologists gone? Relativity theory, quantum theory and string theory cannot even claim to be physics. That the equations may appear to work says nothing about the validity of the concepts involved. We need to distinguish between mathematical representations and physical concepts, and we need to subordinate the former to the latter. Often, interpretation of data using these theories involves circular reasoning. Or the analysis may switch unnoticeably between incompatible models, for example between a wave and a particle; or between Einstein’s and Lorentz’s relativity theory.
A growing number of scientists are now questioning the hero worship of Einstein, not least because the Michelson-Morley experiment did not give a null result for the existence of the æther. That tells us that the earlier Lorentz relativity theory, which has the same form as Einstein’s, is more empirically correct.
“… Lorentz, in order to justify his transformation equations, saw the necessity of postulating a physical effect of interaction between moving matter and æther, to give the mathematics meaning. Physics still had de jure authority over mathematics: it was Einstein, who had no qualms about abolishing the æther and still retaining light waves whose properties were expressed by formulae that were meaningless without it, who was the first to discard physics altogether and propose a wholly mathematical theory.” 2
Einstein’s general theory of relativity continued this trend. The theory has nothing to say about why matter should affect empty space. Clearly, the mathematical concept of three dimensions being warped in a fourth dimension is meaningless in the real three-dimensional universe. String theory is far worse, proposing up to 26 mathematical dimensions. But a real physical dimension can be measured with a ruler. So time is not a dimension and the term “spacetime dimensions” is exposed as meaningless gobbledygook. It is no wonder that the layman is confused when countless books have been written on the subject of relativity by those superior minds who imagined they glimpsed some profound meaning on the other side of “Alice’s Looking Glass.”
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night,
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
It did not last; the Devil, howling “Ho!
Let Einstein be!” restored the status quo.
– Anon
Likewise, quantum theory is purely mathematical and has no connection between cause and effect. A given atom in a radioactive element decays for reasons unknown. It is a probabilistic theory. Einstein was unhappy with quantum theory because of its probabilistic nature. So it is no surprise that quantum theory and relativity theory are incompatible. The noted science fiction author Douglas Adams hilariously parodied quantum metaphysics with his spaceship driven by an “infinite improbability drive.” Neither theory has any concept of matter that can explain the effects we observe. This kind of thinking has allowed theoreticians to propose almost anything they can imagine as having some finite probability of occurring. When mathematicians dismiss the physics principles of “every effect must have a preceding cause” and “no creation ex nihilo,” we can understand why modern physics and cosmology reads like science fiction.
So the recent news from the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics came as no surprise. David Gross, who received a Nobel Prize for his work on the strong nuclear force and who is a leading light of string theory, admitted “we don’t know what we’re talking about.” “Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory,” he said. “But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break.”
He compared the state of physics today to that during the first Solvay conference in 1911. Then, physicists were mystified by the discovery of radioactivity. The puzzling phenomenon threatened even the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and physicists had to wait for the theory of quantum mechanics to explain it. “They were missing something absolutely fundamental,” he said. “We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then.” 3 It seems not to have occurred to attendees at the Solvay conference that quantum mechanics explains nothing. It merely provides mathematical probabilities of experimental outcomes. Mathematics can only advance science when the physical concepts are correct. If we want physics to become a real science of the natural world once more, we should not allow mathematicians to take the lead. Mathematics is a useful tool once the physical concepts are correct. Mathematics ain’t physics."
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer