A critique of Mike Fontenot's CADO scheme

[JesseM]

In Einstein's http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/Ether.html , he never once relegates the ether to a metaphysical notion. In fact, he discusses three different positions that can be taken with regard to the ether.

The first is covered in the quotes that you and I made from his talk, which is the view of Lorentz, which Einstein calls the "Lorentzian ether". This is the one that is commonly referred to as LET in which there is a primary frame, K, in which the ether is at rest and many other frames, K', in which the ether is in motion. This is the position that Einstein calls "inacceptable" in your quote of his talk in post #45.

Yes, but I would say he considers it "inacceptable" for philosophical reasons along the lines of Occam's razor...he first says that "from the logical standpoint" this view is "not indeed downright incorrect", just that he finds it "inacceptable". This notion of ether is indeed a "metaphysical notion" which we can never prove wrong logically, or falsify experimentally.

He does go on to talk about a different notion of ether in the remainder of the talk, but this isn't relevant to our discussion of whether he intended to rule out what is now known as a "Lorentz ether theory" (i.e. the metaphysical notion above, which involves a metaphysically preferred frame which defines "true" simultaneity), instead he's expanding the definition of ether to mean that space has definite properties of its own even when empty of observable matter/energy, which of course is true in general relativity.

 

[ghwellsjr]

Yes, but I would say he considers it "inacceptable" for philosophical reasons along the lines of Occam's razor...he first says that "from the logical standpoint" this view is "not indeed downright incorrect", just that he finds it "inacceptable". This notion of ether is indeed a "metaphysical notion" which we can never prove wrong logically, or falsify experimentally.

He does go on to talk about a different notion of ether in the remainder of the talk, but this isn't relevant to our discussion of whether he intended to rule out what is now known as a "Lorentz ether theory" (i.e. the metaphysical notion above, which involves a metaphysically preferred frame which defines "true" simultaneity), instead he's expanding the definition of ether to mean that space has definite properties of its own even when empty of observable matter/energy, which of course is true in general relativity.

But before he goes on to talk about the ether of general relativity, which I didn't comment on, he first goes on to talk about what he considers to be an acceptable ether of special relativity, which is what I discussed in my previous post.

What I would like for you to focus on in my previous post is Einstein's discussion about the ether of special relativity and his statements that we cannot track light's progress through it as a function of time.

 

[JesseM]

"Think of waves on the surface of water." He says "we can observe how the position of the separate particles of water alters in the course of time" or we could observe "the shape of the space occupied by the water as it varies in time" [emphasis mine]. In other words, we can observe, see, measure, identify, etc, the one-way speed of the waves. We can know where in space each wave is at each moment in time.

He says absolutely nothing about the "one way speed of the waves" here. He's just making the point that even if there was no way to measure the motion of particles of water, one could still measure the shape of waves in water.

By analogy, "We have something like this in the electromagnetic field. For we may picture the field to ourselves as consisting of lines of force." Here he is talking about the motion of light in the ether as lines of force. He then says, "we are tempted to interpret the dynamic processes as motions of these lines of force, such that each separate line of force is tracked through the course of time." Here he is describing our desire to know the one-way speed of light

No he isn't, he's saying nothing about one-way speeds or our desire to know them. I think your own interest in the subject of one-way speed is badly distorting your reading of his words, he's really just making the very simple point that we are still free to think of electromagnetic waves as compression of an "ether" as long as we give up any notion that this ether is an ordinary physical substance (like water) made up of particles that have their own rest frame (see the next paragraph where he says "There may be supposed to be extended physical objects to which the idea of motion cannot be applied. They may not be thought of as consisting of particles which allow themselves to be separately tracked through time.")

So the bottom line is that, once again, as I said in my first post and in contradiction to what Mike Fontenot says, Einstein is stating that we cannot know, observe, or measure the one-way speed of light.

And once again your interest in this subject is causing you to see things that aren't there, his comments in this talk have nothing whatsoever to do with the one-way speed of light, if he was concerned with that subject he would have used some phrase like "speed of light" but he doesn't in those paragraphs about the SR "ether", in fact he doesn't even bother mentioning electromagnetic waves in the paragraph about the electromagnetic field, he just talks about lines of force which are present even in field with no accelerating charges and therefore no electromagnetic waves.

Please note also throughout this talk that Einstein repeatedly discusses many other great scientists of the past and of his present, some of which he disagrees with and some of which he agrees with, and he never once says anything in disagreement with Lorentz, rather always affirming Lorentz, except this one issue with regard to his concept that the ether is immovable.

Why do you want me to note this? Do you think my own arguments should somehow lead me to think he would express disagreement with Lorentz about things other than the purely philosophical question about whether we should continue to believe in an ether with its own rest frame even though no experiment could ever determine what its rest frame is?

 

[ghwellsjr]

Thank you for responding as I requested. Let me see if I understand what you are saying.

With regard to Einstein's paragraph concerning "waves on the surface of water", he is only talking about the up and down motion of the waves and not the forward progression of the waves, because the particles of water are not actually moving laterally, merely up and down, and so when he says the shape of the waves, he's referring to the vertical displacement as a function of the lateral distance and not as a function of time, correct?

And the next paragraph about the electromagnetic field is not concerned with waves at all, but merely static lines of force caused by stationary charges, and so when he talks about "the dynamic processes as motions of these lines of force", he doesn't mean as a function of lateral position but as a function of "pressure" or "compression", correct?

 

[JesseM]

Thank you for responding as I requested. Let me see if I understand what you are saying.

With regard to Einstein's paragraph concerning "waves on the surface of water", he is only talking about the up and down motion of the waves and not the forward progression of the waves, because the particles of water are not actually moving laterally, merely up and down, and so when he says the shape of the waves, he's referring to the vertical displacement as a function of the lateral distance and not as a function of time, correct?

No, I didn't mean that, my point was just that describing how "the shape of the space occupied by the water as it varies in time" is just a normal physical question, it does not require some kind of odd philosophical belief that there must be a "true" value to coordinate-dependent aspects or our description of shape vs. time, such as one-way speed. Different observers describing a set of water waves can use different coordinate systems which give different values for speeds, time intervals between events, etc., but if they know the coordinate transformations that relate their different coordinate systems, they can see that all their descriptions are physically equivalent, so they are not saying anything different from one another about "the shape of the space occupied by the water as it varies in time."

And the next paragraph about the electromagnetic field is not concerned with waves at all, but merely static lines of force caused by stationary charges, and so when he talks about "the dynamic processes as motions of these lines of force", he doesn't mean as a function of lateral position but as a function of "pressure" or "compression", correct?

Not saying he was excluding waves or talking only about static lines of force, just that waves weren't central to his comments as your notion that he was talking specifically about one-way speed of electromagnetic waves would suggest.