english flag picture ----> Chasque aqui para leer este weblog en español (traducida por Google) ---- Klicken Sie hier, um dieses weblog auf Deutsch zu lesen (übersetzt von Google) ---- Cliquetez ici pour lire ce weblog en français (traduit par Google) ---- Scattisi qui per leggere questo weblog in italiano (tradotto da Google) ---- Estale aqui para ler este weblog no português (traduzido por Google)
English ----> Español ---- Deutsch ---- Français ---- Italiano ---- Português ... If translation leaves the bottom of a page still English, copy and translate HERE.

social exclusion graphic

History of Science - problems with the history of physics

physics history graphic Homepage . Albert Einstein . Isaac Newton . Rene Descartes . William Gilbert ....... General Image Theory ..... Sitemap physics history graphic
inactive atoms photo

Science teaching, in schools and in universities, now often includes bits of science history - and there are some courses specifically on History of Science.

While most older fiction works like Shakespeare's are freely available to all on the internet, older science works generally have very restricted availability and can involve substantial charges. This website will seek to improve that.

Much of what is now taught on the history of science, including much history of physics, includes some major errors discussed below. And the education of most scientists in science history is probably at its most limited ever today.


science history graphic

Problems with science history.

As a separate subject History of Science tends to be chiefly concerned with people and especially with ;

1. who first produced a new science idea.
2. who helped with or helped inspire that new science idea.
3. who opposed that new science idea.

This can certainly be very interesting, but an excessive concern with people can mean that the actual science ideas are not examined closely enough and so can include major errors. And a science idea itself can also have significant actual problems from ;

1. a scientist publishes a new science idea, but then develops and amends it.
2. other scientists develop and amend that science idea.
3. others opposing that new science idea misrepresent it (unintentionally or intentionally).
4. others merging that new science idea with their own amend it or misrepresent it.
5. any new terms, or new use of existing terms, involved in a new science idea can be misunderstood.

When science was all books written and read in Latin, that had some big advantages and disadvantages for scientists in allowing publication to be international but often very limited and censored so the education of early scientists mostly involved Plato, Aristotle and Euclid. But after Newton local natural language science journals took over and scientists were soon addressing only recent journal articles in their own language and were generally poorly educated on wider science theory. Hence, Einstein was chiefly knowledgeable only on other German language physics of his time and grossly misunderstood Newton and earlier physics theory ideas - and almost all modern physicists are similarly ignorant.

Also now scientists publish their theories in ad hoc articles, encouraged by government funders and science journals wanting newsworthy briefs. But science theory write-ups need to be comparable to show where they are compatible or incompatible to identify their proof issues - in physics, 'Principia' basics compatible write-ups are needed. Of course Newton's Principia was essentially a write-up of three theories in one - Newton blackbox physics, Gilbert attraction physics and Descartes push physics - though they would maybe be more useful as three separate write-ups. And without comparable write-ups a new physics theory may seem to explain some claimed cosmology issues but hide the fact that it cannot explain two marbles colliding.

This website presents a lot of history of physics, trying to concentrate on theory ideas, as the final published thoughts that you may be able to read especially of four specific famous physicists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes and William Gilbert. There are of course many others, but these four give a good range of basic theories of the universe worth considering here in an interrelated manner. And here it is the scientific ideas that are examined, ignoring whether part of Descartes optics may have come from Snell or parts of Gilbert, Newton and Einstein ideas may have come from others. Not the textbook physics history of rubbish and lies pretending smooth scientific advance, but the real history of physics of both religious non-scientists limiting its advance and of ignorant unscientific scientists limiting its advance.

(While early science faced strong opposition from some powerful religious factions, many early scientists were themselves strongly religious and those that were not generally tried to present their science as not challenging any religion. Even today some religious factions argue strongly against evolution. But the mechanism of evolution is genetics and its basics were the work of Gregor Mendel (1822 - 1884) who was an Augustinian Christian monk who did his genetics experiments in his monastery. Mendel was a skilled hobby scientist like Gilbert, at least until he gained promotion to being in charge of his monastery and his increased religious work made him too busy to continue his science. Neither he nor his church viewed science and religion as having any basic conflict, but some do see science and religion as supporting conflicting truths.)

Of the four sets of physics ideas examined around this website, those of Albert Einstein and Rene Descartes are somewhat less problematic in that their ideas were generaly taught reasonably accurately though often not very clearly. Of course Descartes simpler physics is not taught now, and modern General Relativity is taught with key aspects not compatible with Einstein's theory. But the theories of both Isaac Newton and William Gilbert have both benn long taught as differing substantially from the ideas that they published, often robbing Newton's theory of its Black Box base and robbing Gilbert's theory of its Robot Matter base. Since there is no good reason for Newton's and Gilbert's theories being so misrepresented, extra efforts are made to ensure that they also are presented as correctly as possible on this site.

Gilbert had formulated from experiments his 'attraction physics' involving matter responding to signals that travelled through empty space from other matter (and with no reference to god or to humans), in the 1580's when religions and governments with their scholars and philosophers backed Aristotles non-experimental 'logical divine science'. But experimental science only really began to be accepted from around 1650, when the semi-experimentalist philosopher Descartes won wide backing (including often by religions and governments) for his 'logical semi-divine science' with a mechanical push universe including a matter ether that filled space - and giving god and humans a separate special place. Early supporters of Descartes claimed that Gilbert-style signal response physics was 'unscientific' because it required bodies to be 'animate' - but animals are animate and still obey the laws of physics, so those claiming that the animate was unscientific were being idiotic and Gilbert's physics was dismissed without being disproved. Not the only case of physicists being idiotic. Later attempts by Newton to disprove with experiments the strongly entrenched Descartes' logic-physics, especially on its ether, were so fiercely opposed by what were then peer scientists that he had to moderate his opposition to Descartes physics and moderate his support for Gilbert-style attraction physics. That was enough to allow Newton's physics to be falsely presented as being an improved-Descartes push-physics that included Descartes' ether.

To date there have been 4 basic types of causal theory explaining the behaviour of physical bodies, including gravity behaviour, that have had some substantial support. These have had variants, and there have been some other less well supported physics ideas also, but the 4 main theory types are characterised in the diagrams below ;

1. God/Magic physics

god / magic science picture

2. Gilbert physics ............................................... 3. Descartes physics

william gilbert physics picture - rene descartes physics picture

4. Einstein physics

albert einstein physics picture

Of course there have long been some prefering 'non-causal universe' physics often based on views of the universe having been created by a God having chosen to create eg. a musical universe or a mathematical universe. Hence early Kepler creationist physics included a Geometry Mathematics Physics and a Music Mathematics Physics. And post-Einstein physics today maybe also seems based on the view that mathematics is primary in the universe, with its Wave Mathematics Physics and Quantum Mathematics Physics. Of course after Kepler studied William Gilbert, he concluded that the universe is NOT really Mathematical but is 'Experienceal', though Kepler's physics then went with a Descartes 'touch' experience rather than a Gilbert 'signal response' experience. And such creationist physics requires not just a God creating the universe using existing laws of nature, but a God creating the universe and also creating the laws of nature as Descartes supposed in 'The World'.

Newton, the probably most astute of physicists ever if not always entirely correct, concluded that NO causal explanation fell within science proper and that EITHER of the causal theory types 2 or 3 above might be correct and give compatible mathematics. And comparison of the diagrams above suggests also that a post-Newton type 4 theory Einstein physics could be a mirror image of Gilbert type 2 physics.

Some of Newton's specific ideas were readily accepted, like his almost-new conclusion that terrestrial gravity and planet motion involved the same thing, but were not immediately taken as disproof of anybody. Newton's experimental disproofs of chunks of Descartes' logical physics were only fully accepted some generations on, and his main blackbox theory was never widely accepted by scientists. When there was a developed body of scientists their 'peer review' generally worked well for smaller bits of science, but often worked badly for big science ideas that required a complete rethink of established science.

As a different alternative to part of Descartes push physics theory, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) produced an early light wave theory, and later James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) developed light and 'force field' wave theory. And using such ideas, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) unsuccessfully tried to link gravity and electricity, saying 'The long and constant persuasion that all the forces of nature are mutually dependent, having one common origin, or rather being different manifestations of one fundamental power, has often made me think on the possibility of establishing, by experiment, a connection between gravity and electricity ... no terms could exaggerate the value of the relation they would establish.' Einstein also unsuccessfully tried the same later, though of course early physics had produced two theories that gave a common basic mechanism to all forces in Gilbert attraction physics and Descartes push physics. Both are now ignored by modern physics, though many did make unsuccessful attempts to develop push physics and only Newton made any real attempt to develop attraction physics.

When Einstein arrived on the science scene later, he started with smaller science ideas like the photoelectric effect and built-up to his bigger ideas like relativity. And when he claimed to disprove 'Newton's ether theory' - he was actually disproving Descartes again, or rather the Lorentz modification of Descartes' ether, and was really ignoring and not disproving Newton's real physics or indeed Gilbert's. Often a majority of scientists have rejected a better theory to support a weaker theory. And if England was one of the earliest centers of emergence of experimental science from before 1600, it was also early in the bureaucraticising of science from around the 1700's that was to limit its development for hundreds of years.

Interestingly, 2005 saw an attempt in the USA to introduce a new law called "The Restore Scientific Integrity to Federal Research and Policymaking Act", requiring that science be controlled by government science agencies rather than by central government ! But the internet in 2009 looked close to opening up the long-closed shop of science publishing, as 41 Nobel laureates call for open access. Especially helped by one open-science website, Cornell University's arxiv.org, and maybe a little by this website and others. However 2010 raises some concern with Cornell considering some possible charging policies for future users of ArXiv.org to cover its rising running costs, hopefully limited to charging bigger institutional users and/or publishers orr maybe it carrying paid advertising ? 2007 did see the UK's Channel 4 TV disprove the theory being supported by most environmental scientists that the Global Warming weather changes that Earth is getting now are NOT mainly due to man-made CO2 from burning oil, gas and coal. It certainly seems to be due to some other cause - natural or man-made ?

William Gilbert and others had strongly argued for science theory to be based on direct deduction from experience and experiment on natural phenomena only. But Kepler and Newton supported the validity of general logical deduction as from mathematics in science theory, and Descartes also allowed religion deduction a role. (Newton failed in trying to develop his physics to fit with his religious ideas, and in trying to develop its effluvia/spirits and chemistry.) And Einstein's adoption of 'thought experiments' has perhaps encouraged many physicists now to confine themselves to only logical theorising, now perhaps mostly based on manipulating equations or mathematical language ? Of course as experiments have revealed more complex natural phenomena needing more complex maths, it is maybe understandable that real physics explanation has become more problematic. And experiments (like the Mitchelson-Morley experiment in our Albert Einstein section) are designed to demonstrate something specific, and strongly tend to being interpreted only in that regard even when they might more realistically be demonstrating something different in fact.

The Unteachability of Science

It seems well proven that many people can be correctly taught small bits of science. But it is not proven that many people can be correctly taught major science theories, and substantial doubts regarding that have been expressed by all four of the key physicists considered on this website.

Gilbert, Descartes and Newton were all slow to publish their works and both Descartes and Newton claimed to be publishing only after major pressure from others to do so. In England, Gilbert waited until he felt that he had gained some sufficient support from Queen Elizabeth, and in France, Descartes' science waited until he felt that it had been made sufficiently acceptable to the prevailing church.

Gilbert, Descartes and Newton certainly all saw one major problem to the teaching of any major new science as being previously learnt wrong thinking - or, as Newton explained in his Principia's introduction to Book 3, 'prejudices to which they had been many years accustomed'.

But they all seemed to also conclude that most people would never be able to correctly understand any major science. Gilbert specifically wrote that his work was not for the 'common person' or 'common scholar', while Newton basically said that his science rested only on the work of 'science giants'. Einstein explicitely said numbers of times that he did not beiieve that anybody fully understood his physics.

While small bits of science are certainly teachable, the history of physics theory certainly supports the conclusion that major science theories are actually almost unteachable. And that casts major doubt on the modern view that science generally can progress by 'peer review'. Clearly peer review should work fine for small bits of science, but might not work for major science theories.

And the history of physics theory does indeed seem to confirm just that. Gilbert's theory was correctly understood by almost nobody, as was the case with Newton's black-box physics and with Einstein's physics. Of course there are always lots of people who will falsely claim that they do correctly understand those theories. Science has always had lots of fools and liars posing as experts successfully, chiefly by understanding some smaller bits of science.

This maybe backs Gilbert's trusting chiefly in nature experience and experiment, more than in merely deductive or mathematical reasoning. But the biggest case of experience or experiment being misleading is of course the fact that on Earth it clearly appears that the Sun orbits the Earth every 24 hours - though we now know that it is actually the Earth revolving every 24 hours. Some of the supposedly key experiments of physics are probably open to different interpretations than those normally being assumed. And though useful human invention began BEFORE science developed, science ideas have helped useful invention - even science ideas that were later fully disproved !

In more recent years, developed countries governments have taken a strong lead in greatly dumbing-down and politicising education - including science education - pushing to a-degree-for-everybody policy. And in science, governments are now also pushing views of everything being relative and of theorised ideas being as valid as fact based ideas - or non-science being as valid as real science. Physics theory, like most science theory, is being driven backwards to mere government-sponsored philosophy as governments have concluded that science theory is unimportant and has little effect on technology. See Science Teaching Today.

Is modern physics dumbed-down or what ?
2009 saw two physicists claim proof that 'the LHC was disabled by a bird from the future' ;
"Sometime on Nov.3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.
While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.
The LHC, a 17-mile underground ring designed to smash atoms together at high energies, was created in part to find proof of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. According to current theory, the Higgs is responsible for imparting mass to all things in the universe. But ever since the British physicist Peter Higgs first postulated the existence of the particle in 1964, attempts to capture the particle have failed, and often for unexpected, seemingly inexplicable reasons."
Quoted from November 2009 Stealthfusion.com

The number of people entering science professions in more recent years is much greater than a hundred years ago, but in some respects the range of people entering science professions has been greatly narrowed. Hence though much good Physics has been done using relatively simple mathematics, and now a physicist will commonly have a computer or an assistant that can do more complex mathematics for them, but physics exams lately have generally been designed to fail all who have difficulty with complex mathematics. And much good Biology has been done using no art drawing, and now a biologist will commonly have a camera or an assistant that can do art drawings for them, but biology exams lately have generally been designed to fail all who have difficulty with art drawing. Exams needed to enter science professions often severely limit the range of entrants and help limit the scope of the sciences concerned. This compounds science funder restrictions and science teaching restrictions.

Some bits of science with seemingly strong proofs are not believed by a majority of the public, though other bits of science that seem to have weaker proofs may be widely believed. This can be due to poor science teaching or due to the science being actually wrong, or often really due to the science having some conflict with popular cultural thinking of the time.

PS. For a very interesting and good if imperfect recent work on some issues of science history and theory from a philosophical viewpoint, see Laura Aline Ward's Objectivity in Feminist Philosophy of Science PDF 250 kb - allow up to 1 minute for this to load !

science history graphic

The physics time chart below for the chief physicists considered here, has bars for when they lived and filled when their science chiefly published ;

William . Johannes Galileo ... Rene ....... Isaac ........ Albert .
Gilbert .... Kepler ... Galilei . Descartes . Newton .... Einstein

physics history timeline picture

Of these six, only Gilbert and Newton seem to have studied most physics theories available and Newton seems unique in being able to both understand and use very different types of theory. Hence for gravity Newton used Gilbert-like attraction theory but he also used particle and wave theories elsewhere - while using a blackbox theory and not committing to any one explanation theory. Gilbert publishing very late in his life, had little time for defending or further developing his theory.

It is common for modern physics theories to use terms like 'Field' or 'Continuum' or 'Particle' or 'Wave' with no full or specific definition of the term, but with partial definitions or implied definitions that can contradict the terms common meanings and can include logical contradictions. So often the use of such terms in modern physics has little or no real scientific meaning, as see - Definitions. Much modern physics can be taken as blackbox science where it is the mathematics of processes that is being defined rather than physical reality, and that may or may not be taken as generally being satisfactory. But mathematics can be taken as having no limits so that it can support anything, while actual nature has real limits. In principle experiment on nature should set limits to the mathematics acceptable in a science. But some particular science theory and its mathematics might fit well with the well established and understood experimental results of many common natural phenomena, while concentrating on the experimental results of some one abstruse natural phenomenum might not fit that theory well and may seem to fit some more abstruse theory and its mathematics better. It is not clear that this always disproves the first theory, though it may cast some doubt on it.

It is also common on modern physics websites to see comments asserted as being scientific like 'Revisionism is a serious offence'. (Google it !) This basically means 'Trying to disprove a current science theory is a serious offence' - and is of course what Galileo was put under house arrest for and other good early scientists were executed for. Current science's 'anti-revisionism' is really anti-science.

Google Books - a great new growing resource

New Science theory really has to commend Google Books on becoming a great new growing resource for older and rare books - and increasingly so for early science books that are not readily available otherwise. To search them yourself go to Google, More, Books and then to Advanced Search and click FullView with an author or book name.

New Science Theory will be keeping a keen eye on Google Books for good new additions that we can offer freely to you, this often depends on good universities or others helping Google - unfortunately far too few to date. You might do some real good for this world, by helping Google Books, if you have a good older science book that they do not now have in FullView or if yours is a better copy than Google Books have.

For now, thanks to Google Books, you can download below from this site three great physics books in PDF ;
(if you need one, a good FREE PDF reader is available (from www.Adobe.com)
1. download Isaac Newton's Principia (1848 English 24.1mb - imperfect),
2. download Isaac Newton's Opticks (1730 English 16.2mb),
3. download William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600 Latin 27.6mb).

OR see our helpful book sections ;

USA science books or UK science books
USA Einstein books or UK Einstein books
USA Newton books or UK Newton books
USA Descartes books or UK Descartes books
USA Gilbert books or UK Gilbert books

PS. This site strongly believes that much more science should be freely available to all on the internet - now there is regretably little available even on the many subscription sites. The internet should have more science books and papers, but also more science computer models - nice working computer models of Gilbert's terella, of Kepler's rudolphine tables, of Newton's tide forces, big bang models and more ? Ideally computer models that allow user inputting and good numerical result reporting. Some could use a spreadsheet like Excel that can do iterative calculation on equations to some accuracy.

Todays many well paid career scientists seem unable to produce much of use for computer or internet users, but if YOU have or know of some good science that this site could host or could link to, then do tell New Science Theory.

science history graphic

Two websites to help inform you on what physicists and astronomers are up to lately are Physics World and Universe Today.
For imperfect free online Latin translation see here.



Or you may want to learn a bit about Learn or relearn how to kiss and how to date.

otherwise, if you have any view or suggestion on the content of this site, please contact :- New Science Theory
Vincent Wilmot 166 Freeman Street Grimsby Lincolnshire DN32 7AT.

science history graphic

You are welcome to link to any page on this site, eg http://www.new-science-theory.com/albert-einstein.html


IF you like this site then AddThis Social Bookmark Button

OR maybe make a small donation ;
(it will help with site development, and just possibly with some experiments long planned but never afforded.)

english flag picture....This Homepage in some other languages :- Español Français Deutsch Italiano Portuguese
For the full website in these languages, at the top of this page click language name for other language, then use normal 'around the site'. science history graphic

© new-science-theory.com, 2010 - taking care with your privacy, see Sitemap.

Hosted by :- Hosting