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19manbk1 Scandals in Electromagnetic Theory http://www.ivorcatt.com/28scan.htm Non-technical philosophy from the book http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anomp.htm The Catt Anomaly Science
beyond the Crossroads Ivor Catt Westfields Press, 121 Westfields, St. Albans AL3 4JR, England 1996,
2001 First published in 1996 http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm Republished with additions in 2001 Computer files nos. 19manbk1, 19nanbk1, 166anbk2, 16danbk3, wa8anbk4 16ganbk5, 074anbk6, 16kanbk7, 178anbk8 18sanbk9, w98jakv, w9aspine, w9ajaku Copyright Ivor Catt 1996 [Original ISBN was 0 906340 13 6] British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data Catt, Ivor The Catt Anomaly : science beyond the crossroads - 2nd ed. 1. Electromagnetic theory I. Title 530.1'41 ISBN: 0 906340 15 2 19nanbk1 Contents Page iv Preface
to 2001 Edition Meeting with
Huxley 1 Introduction 3 The
Question Definitive
formulation of The Catt Anomaly 4 University
of Cambridge Letter from Pepper 6 University
of Bradford Letter from McEwan 9 Institution
of Electrical Engineers Letter
to the I.E.E. 10 Reply
from Secker 13 The
repeat experiment Letter
to the I.E.E.E., New York Reply
by Mink 15 Sundry
letters to Mink 17 The
background Why
did I latch onto the Catt Anomaly? 18 The
Earlier Background My
career 20 Knowledge
is Property He
who brings new knowledge is a vandal Definition
of new knowledge 22 Strategy 23 Philosophy Relativity 25 The
Remedy 26 AIDS:
The failure of contemporary science 27 Black
is White Theocharis 28 The
End of Error 29 The
Description Theories
become Descriptions 31 Appendix
1 The Rise and Fall of Bodies of
Knowledge 38 The
scientific reception system as a servomechanism 41 Appendix
2 Battery
drives load via long transmission line. Mathematical analysis. 44 Appendix
3 What Conspiracy? Letter to Wireless World 46 Appendix
4 I.E.E. Review of my 1994 book 47 Appendix
5 The Betrayal of Science by 'modern
physics' 49 Appendix
6 The Conquest of Science 55 The
log-jam identified 56 1999
letter to Establishment members. p62,
McEwan reply 58 Further
Reading 59 Lynch/Catt
1998 I.E.E. paper on The Catt Anomaly 62 McEwan's
Snow Job 67 Letter
from Andrew Huxley 68 Catt's
reply 70 Footnote [71 Invitation
to speak to Cambridge University Engineering Society] Preface to 2001 Edition On 6th May 2000, Sir Andrew Huxley, Master of Trinity 1984 - 90;
President of the Royal Society 1980 - 85; (joint) Nobel Prizewinner for
Physiology or Medicine 1963, was Master of Ceremonies at Trinity College High
Table. Ivor Catt, as a member of
Trinity, is allowed to bring a guest to High Table once per year. Although
Sir Andrew invited me to sit next to him during dinner, I placed my
Physiology guest from Dublin next to him instead. Later, upstairs, where I sat next to him, while the Combination
Wines; Ch Guiraud 1988, Ch Lynch Bages 1982, and Warre 1970, went round with
the Stilton, I began by regaling Sir Andrew with the contents of my article
"The Clever take the Brilliant" (on my website), which he found
very interesting. I said that my special interest was censorship in science,
and that I had lectured on it to the Ethical Society in London. Sir Andrew
said it had not occurred to him that professionals might block scientific
advance because it threatened their careers. However, he then volunteered
that, to his great regret, a great deal of very good work in his field early
in the twentieth century had been suppressed, and had disappeared from the
record. He also cited the neglect of Mendel, also in his field. I then took him through the case of the Catt Anomaly. He told me
that he knew Pepper. After half an hour to an hour, when I said that I did
not need to tell him more, because my book The Catt Anomaly was in the
library of Trinity College, he said he would get the book out. That night, back at home in St. Albans,
I put what he had said onto my website, and sent him a copy. He replied by
letter, see p67. [sep01
Catt was invited to speak to the Cambridge University Engineering
Society on The Catt Anomaly on 15nov01. See p71 and www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/07091.htm ] 1caanbk2 Introduction "Although the principle of free communication of ideas is a
basic tenet of the scientific community, there are numerous examples of their
suppression. Professor Herbert Dingle, who wrote a book on relativity in the
1920s as well as the section on relativity for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and
was the man chosen by the BBC to give the eulogy on Einstein when he died,
developed doubts about the special theory of relativity around 1955. To his
astonishment, he found that the scientific journals and institutions suddenly
closed their pages and doors when he wanted to say something unorthodox; that
is, heretical. A scientist might say, 'something that was incorrect'. He
describes his experience in his book, Science at the Crossroads, pub. Martin
Brian O'Keefe, London, 1972." The above paragraph is the start of my 1978 article "The
Rise and Fall of Bodies of
Knowledge", reprinted here in appendix 1. The present book takes us forward 25 years from the experience
of Dingle, a Quaker like me, with whom I once talked briefly on the
telephone. Dingle's centrepiece was the Twin Paradox, which I argue is a
kosher argument; the one argument that is allowed at the fringe of relativity
theory. Louis Essen, elected FRS for developing the Caesium clock, told me
that Dingle queered the pitch by making a mistake. Essen also told me that he
himself had been suppressed. His most exciting story was that the Institute
of Physics broke its contract with Essen to publish an article of his even
after he had checked the galleys. The Inst. Phys. also broke its contract
with me to publish the article which later appeared in Wireless World in
March 1979. The case of the Catt Anomaly goes to the heart of elementary
electrical theory. It is much simpler and much more important than Dingle's
Twin Paradox. The best introduction to the politics of knowledge in science,
and the best scientific demonstration that the scientific Age of Reason is
over, is to study the present status of the Catt Anomaly. The reader can stop
here and test the following proposition for himself. No scientist is willing
to take a scientific approach to the problem of suppression in science - the
allegation of widespread censorship, to be tested by the usual criteria of
repeatability, corroboration, Popper's falsification and the rest. Try to get
a scientist to remain a scientist when addressing these matters! He will
start talking about Catt's paranoia or egotism, which are not scientific
concepts. Perhaps more properly called 'The E-M Question', the Catt
Anomaly is an elementary question about classical electromagnetism which
experts refuse to answer in writing. We will first consider the contradiction
between Pepper and McEwan, and the response of London's Institution of
Electrical Engineers (IEE) to the problem created by this contradiction. It is important for the reader to keep struggling with the
problem until absolutely convinced that it is beyond his comprehension.
Unlike the Twin Paradox, the Catt Anomaly is an elementary problem in
electricity which most people with a B grade pass in GCSE Physics should be
able to understand well enough for the purpose of reading this book. When a battery is connected to a resistor via two parallel
wires, a current flows which depends on the voltage of the battery and the
resistance of the resistor. Also, electric charge appears on the surface of
the wires, and we concentrate on the electric charge on the bottom wire. In
the case of a 12 volt car battery and four ohm car headlight bulb, the
electric current is three amps and the resulting power in the lamp is 36
watts. Consider the case when the battery and lamp are connected by two
very long parallel wires, their length being 300,000 kilometres. When the
switch is closed, current will flow immediately into the front end of the
wires, but the lamp will not light for the first second. A wave front travels
forward between the wires at the speed of light, reaching the lamp after one
second. This wave front comprises electric current, magnetic field, electric charge and electric field. Negative
charge appears on the surface of the bottom wire. All of this is agreed by
all experts. The question asked by
the Catt Anomaly is where this charge on the bottom conductor comes from, and
the answers given to this elementary question are contradictory, with the
academic establishment split down the middle. Half of the academics, led by
McEwan, say that the charge comes from the battery to the west and reaches
its proper place along the bottom conductor without having to travel at the
speed of light. The other half of the
academics, led by Pepper, say that it is impossible for the charge to
come from the west because it would have to travel at the speed of light,
resulting in the charge having infinite mass. Pepper says that at the moment
when charge is needed to help the wave front along, it comes to the surface
of the wire from inside the wire, travelling at right angles to the direction
of the wave front. More technical discussion of battery and lamp, taken from my
book "Electromagnetics 1", is in Appendix 2. The standard version of the Catt Anomaly, as presented to Pepper
and McEwan and the IEE, is on page 3. January 2000. In 1998 the IEE published
a paper discussing the Catt Anomaly. See page 59 and http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y7aiee.htm For more information, see www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk and www.ivorcatt.com Ivor Catt is at ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk Animation of the Catt Anomaly http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/catanoi.htm p3 CATT'S ANOMALY The
Question
Traditionally. when a TEM step (i.e. logic
transition from low to high) travels through a vacuum from left to right,
guided by two conductors (the signal line and the 0v line), there are four
factors which make up the wave; - electric current in the conductors - magnetic field, or flux, surrounding the
conductors - electric charge on the surface of the conductors
- electric field, or flux, in the vacuum
terminating on the charge. The key to grasping the anomaly is to concentrate
on the electric charge on the bottom conductor. During the next 1 nanosecond,
the step advances one foot to the right. During this time, extra negative
charge appears on the surface of the bottom conductor in the next one foot
length, to terminate the lines (tubes) of electric flux which now exist
between the top (signal) conductor and the bottom conductor. Where does this new charge come from? Not from the
upper conductor, because by definition, displacement current is not the flow
of real charge. Not from somewhere to the left, because such charge would
have to travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. (This last sentence is what
those "disciplined in the art" cannot grasp, although paradoxically
it is obvious to the untutored mind.) A central feature of conventional
theory is that the drift velocity of electric current is slower than the
speed of light. [Published in Electronics & Wireless World sep84,
reprinted sep87. For further information on the Catt Anomaly, see letters in
the following issues of Wireless World; aug82, dec82, aug83, oct83, dec83,
nov84, dec84, jan85, feb85, may85, june85, jul85, aug85.] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ p4 1caanbky Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote to
past members of the college including myself asking for money to finance
their expansion programme. They argued that Trinity had been in the forefront
of academic advance, and my money would help to keep them there. I replied that Trinity and Cambridge had
for twenty-five years refused to comment in any way on Catt's theories on
electromagnetism, and for ten years on the Catt Anomaly, a problem in
classical electromagnetism, of which I enclosed a copy (above). I suggested
to Atiyah, Master of Trinity, a mathematician, that he cause his leading
expert to comment. The result was the following letter from Pepper. I also
include a part of his later letter to my colleague Raeto West, which
clarifies his position; UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS CAVENDISH LABORATORY MADINGLEY ROAD CAMBRIDGE CB3 0HE From: Professor M. Pepper,
FRS June 21, 1993 Ivor Catt, Esq., 121 Westfields, St Albans AL3 4JR Dear Mr Catt, As a Trinity physicist the Master suggested that I
might provide some comments on the questions raised in your recent letter to
him on aspects of electromagnetic theory. If I understand the position correctly, your
question concerns the source of the charge at a metal surface which by
responding to the presence of the EM wave ensures that the reflectivity of
the metal surface is virtually unity, hence providing waveguide action and
related applications. If I may restate the basis of your question, what is
the maximum frequency of radiation which is reflected? It is this parameter
rather than light velocity which is important. The solution lies in the
maximum frequency response of the electron gas, which is the plasmon
frequency w p and is calculated in a
straightforward way. If light frequency is greater than w p
then the electron gas in the metal can no longer respond and the
reflectivity tends to zero. The problem you are posing is that if the wave is
guided by the metal then this implies that the charge resides on the metal
surface. As the wave travels at light velocity, then
charge supplied from outside the system would have to travel at light
velocity as well, which is clearly impossible. The answer is found by considering the nature of
conduction in metals. Here we have a lattice of positively charged atoms
surrounded by a sea of free electrons which can move in response to an
electric field. This response can be very rapid and results in a polarisation
of charge at the surface and through the metal. At frequencies greater than w p
the electron gas cannot respond which is the reason for the
transparency of metals to ultra-violet radiation. However for frequencies
used in communications the electron gas can easily respond to the radiation
and reflectivity is unity. If a poor conductor is used instead of a metal, i.e.
there are no freely conducting electrons, then there is no polarisation, and
as you point out charge cannot enter the system, and there can be no surface
field. Consequently reflection of the radiation will not occur at these low
frequencies and there is no waveguide action. I hope that these comments provide a satisfactory
explanation. Yours sincerely, [signed] M Pepper cc: Sir Michael Atiyah - Trinity College [Master] Mr. A Weir - Trinity College Telephone: 0223 337330 August 23, 1993 Dear Raeto West, I write with reference to
your letter of August 19. Your description of the process is correct; as a
TEM wave advances so charge
within the conductor is polarised and the disturbance propagates at right
angles to the direction of propagation of the wave .... .... Yours sincerely, M Pepper The portions of Pepper's letter which strike you as either too
erudite for your comprehension or else as drivel, are drivel. Generally, he
has copied out irrelevant slabs of material from text books. Portrait of a Drivelmaster;
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/annualreport/1996-7/c.html This was an exciting development. For the previous decade, all
experts, when trapped into commenting, had insisted that the charge came from
the west, and did not have to travel at the speed of light. Now we had an
accredited expert, writing under instruction from his boss, saying that the
charge could not come from the west, but came from the south. There the matter rested for two years, until a group of mature,
dissident Combined Humanities undergraduates at Bradford University organised
a week-end conference entitled "What is Education For?" I offered
to give a paper entitled "The Politics of Knowledge in Science".
This was accepted, Kathy Symonds telling me that I served a useful function,
because apart from me they had failed to link up with science, and also
because the lecturers who asked to speak all turned out to be Establishment,
which I was not quite. This was the second time that I became kosher for a short period
in a university, admittedly only Bradford, and so had more power to elicit
rational comment on science. As part of my presentation, I asked Kathy
Symonds in advance to ask the appropriate official to instruct the top expert
to comment on the Catt Anomaly. Here is her letter, and McEwan's reply. Dear Professor John
Gardner [Dean of Engineering] As part of our program,.
"What is Education For?", we need comment from the accredited Bradford
University expert on the subject below. I shall be very grateful if you send
me written comment before the start of our seminar on 22apr95. Thank you very much for
your time and trouble [signed] Kathy Symonds. P.S. I enclose an S.A.E. for your reply. p6 To Kathy Symonds 20 April 1995 Phone 01274-384006 Dear Kathy, John Gardiner has passed
this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably competent to discuss it. To deal first with the
problem raised in "Catt's Anomaly", there is definitely a correct
answer, and it is just that the new charge required in the one foot of cable
DOES flow from somewhere to the left! The charges DON'T have to travel at
anywhere near the speed of light to do this! The sentence that begins
"Not from somewhere to the left ....." is fallacious ... such charge would NOT have to travel at the
speed of light in a vacuum! The reason that the sentence cannot be grasped by those
"disciplined in the art" is because it happens not to be true!!! It
may be obvious to the untutored mind because they haven't had the theoretical
training to see why it is wrong. It is exactly at the point where the
assertion seems really obvious that you need to think most clearly to see
where the logical deduction is unsound - and perhaps this is where the lesson
for educators lies. The heart of the fallacy is as follows: (a) If the voltage step
originally at a transverse plane "A" on the conductors moves one
foot to the right to a plane "B" (indeed about one nanosecond
later) then it is true that a certain amount of charge must have entered the
portion of the conductors between A and B. What is not true, however, is that
any of the electrons that were in the neighbourhood of A actually had to
travel to B to keep up the wave! (b) The charge that appears
between A and B is required to be uniformly distributed along the length
between A and B. This charge really does enter at plane A - so how is it
possible that the electrons didn't have to rush to the right at the speed of
light? - I will now explain:- (c) When the wires are
electrically neutral, they are actually composed of vast numbers of positive
charges and negatively charged electrons in equal densities - the total
charge balances out. The thing we call the "charge on the line",
which is required to account for the voltage wave is actually the unbalance
between the two sets of charges. (d) Imagine that, between A
and B, you have 100 electrons and 100 positively charged nuclei arranged
uniformly in pairs along one foot distance. There is no net charge. (e) Now imagine that you
push in one extra electron in at the left hand side A, and you squash the
electrons up a bit so that they remain evenly spaced but now 101 electrons
fill the distance that was previously occupied by 100. There is now a total
of one unit of "charge on the line" between A and B, and, rather
surprisingly, this unbalanced charge actually appears to be fairly uniformly
distributed between A and B. The electron originally at A would only move
about 1/100 of a foot as you squeezed the electrons closer together, and it
would have to move this distance in the one nanosecond it took for the
voltage wave to move from A to B. The electrons further to the right would
move even less. (f) If you imagine that you
did this again with a larger number of positive and negative charge pairs -
say 1000 becoming 1001, then as you squeezed in the extra electron the one
next to it would only have to move up about 1/1000 of a foot in the one nanosecond - and so on. If you go on increasing the
density of available charges, you can easily see that the velocities required
of the electrons to produce one unit of unbalance becomes smaller and
smaller. (Also, the one unit of unbalance appears to be more and more uniformly
distributed across the one foot of distance.) It turns out that when you
"put the numbers in" that the real number of free electrons in the
one foot wire is colossal, and that consequently they only need to move at
walking pace or less! You can summarise all this
by saying that the "charge" that is required to account for the
voltage across the line is not produced simply by a small number of charges
moving in to the section of line but by a very slight redistribution of a vastly
larger number of charges that were already in that section! Putting it in
still another way again, there has been a confusion over the identity of the
charges that account for the voltage across the line. You can go on describing
this problem at deeper and deeper levels and it will go on revealing more and
more interesting physics - which soon gets very hard. For example, there is a
quite noticeable effect because you do need some force to keep the electrons
moving against the collisions with the stationary atoms. This appears as
resistance in the line and it can cause the advancing voltage step to become
distorted, ie it smears out into a more gradual step. At a higher level of
precision there is even a very small effect from the finite acceleration of
the electrons. As the voltage step passes over them, the local electrons in
the conductor are accelerated (very rapidly!!!) to the very small speed that
is needed. There is no paradox about the rapid acceleration of the particles,
they are very light. This produces an extremely small effect on the velocity
of the wave travelling down the line, but you would not be able to detect it
at the frequencies used in ordinary electronics. I hope this has helped and
given you something to think about. The "anomaly" is very instructive
educationally, it is a real challenge for the teacher to explain clearly, and
a very good example of how fruitful it can be to be wrong about something! Turning more generally to
your 2 - day event, I am extremely intrigued about how "Catt's anomaly"
came into the discussion. I do realise that progress has often been made by
challenging orthodoxies, but in the case of Catt's problem I happen to think
that the accepted theory gives a pretty good account, but you can learn a lot
if you are really made to set out how. I would be very interested to hear
what you make of my comments, and how they have been used in your event. Best wishes [signed] Neil McEwan (Dr.),
Reader in Electromagnetics [University of Bradford] [Copy typed by I Catt, 1oct95] p8 1caanbk3 McEwan was the orthodox response that I
had been waiting for. I had not previously had it styled 'ex cathedra'; that
is, stated by the accredited expert from an institution (Bradford
University), under instruction from the appropriate top official of the
institution (Dean of Engineering). I was now in a position to approach the
accredited learned institution and ask them to help. This was a better chance
to get rational comment on scientific fundamentals than I had had during the
previous quarter of a century of searching. I had to tackle it in the best
possible way, using comprehension and techniques that had developed since
Dingle's day, as the whole of twentieth century science slid deeper into the
morass of its own careful devising. Here was the best chance to
scientifically establish the facts about today's science; possibly the last
chance. I took the Pepper/McEwan contradiction
to the head of the IEE. Ivor
Catt, 121 Westfields, St.
Albans AL3 4JR, England (01727
864257) 26may95; Second copy sent 27june95 Third copy sent 18aug95 Fourth copy sent 3sep95 The
Secretary, Institution
of Electrical Engineers, Savoy
Place, London. WC2R 0BL (0171 240 1871) Dear Dr.
J. C. Williams, The Catt Anomaly. An
essential component of classical electromagnetism remains unstated. There is
disagreement about this feature by accredited experts, Professor Howie FRS,
Professor Pepper FRS, McEwan Reader in Electromagnetics, but no discussion by
them to resolve the matter. Is the IEE
the accredited institution with a primary responsibility for Electromagnetic
Theory? How does the IEE proceed in a situation like this, where the theory
which is the basis for its raison d'être turns out to be unstated and
unclear? Yours
sincerely, Ivor Catt encl. 21june93
statement on the Catt Anomaly by Pepper 20apr95
statement on the Catt Anomaly by McEwan apr95 Half
page note from Symonds to McEwan plus description of the Catt Anomaly Catt
letter to Electronics and Wireless World, May95 [end of encl.] Summary of
disagreement, or confusion, in classical electromagnetism, below. Summary of disagreement. "Dear Professor John Gardiner, As
part of our [Bradford university] program, 'What is Education For?', we need
comment from the accredited Bradford University expert on the subject
below" - Kathy Symonds, 4apr95. "[Professor] John
Gardiner has passed this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably
competent to discuss it.... .... the
new charge required in the one foot of cable DOES flow from somewhere to the
left! The charges DON'T have to travel anywhere near the speed of light to do
this! .... It may be obvious to the untutored mind [plus Pepper FRS]
because they haven't had the [Bradford univ.] theoretical training 1.... The [Catt] 'anomaly' is very instructive
educationally...." - Neil McEwan
(Dr), Reader in Electromagnetics [Bradford University], 20apr95. "....
As the wave travels at light velocity, then charge supplied from outside the system [i.e. from the left, or
west,] would have to travel at light velocity as well, which is clearly
impossible. ....we have a lattice of
positively charged atoms surrounded by a sea of free electrons which ....
move in response to an electric field...." - Pepper, 21june93. "....
as a TEM wave advances so charge within the conductor .... propagates at right angles to the
direction of the wave. ...." Professor
M. Pepper, FRS., Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 23aug93. "Institution of Electrical
Engineers - to promote the general advancement of electrical science and
engineering and their applications, and to facilitate the exchange of
information and ideas on those subjects; 130,000 members." President Sir
David Davies - from p1557 of
"The World of Learning 1995", Europa Pubs. Ltd. (italics by I.C.) As you will see from the dating of my
letter, the reply, from Williams' deputy, was long in coming. I learned later
that Williams and Secker were new men, anxious to show more willing than
their predecessors. This led them into the quagmire. The new broom got stuck
in old, sticky cobwebs. p11 Dear
Mr Catt Thank
you for your letter of 18 August, to which the Secretary, Dr Williams, has
asked me to respond. Firstly,
I should mention that we have had your book reviewed and that the resulting
report will be published in the Electronics and Communication Engineering
Journal - either in the October or December issue. [Actually oct95.] The
Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the general advancement of
electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate
the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects to the members of the
Institution'. The general view of the experts within the IEE is that the
so-called 'Catt anomaly' is not an anomaly at all, and does not, therefore,
require discussion or exposition. The favoured explanation aligns with the
statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper, namely that as
a TEM wave advances, so charge separation occurs close to the conductor
surface effectively giving a transitory current flow at right angles to the
direction of wave propagation. Yours
sincerely [signed] Professor Philip E Secker Deputy
Secretary IEE 4sep95 Secker was politically inept to admit
that the IEE had a responsibility in this matter, and in so doing he betrayed
the forces of darkness. However, he showed better obfuscatory tactics by
introducing the irrelevant question of the review of my latest book, which
had been hanging over the IEE for more than a year. (Up to that date, there
had been no evidence in IEE literature that Catt had ever contributed to
electromagnetic theory. Except for the belated admission, fifteen years too
late, of his contribution in another field, Wafer Scale Integration, Catt
remained a non-person. The reader can learn about all these matters in Catt's
may95 letter to Electronics World + Wireless World, reprinted here as
appendix 3. Its present editor Eccles has since turned chicken and will not
publish anything more by Catt.) The important point is that Secker wrote
that his IEE experts had backed the wrong horse, opting for Cambridge with
its aberrant Pepper; (defying Gauss's Law by) producing charge from the south
from inside the conductor like a rabbit from a hat. The IEE opted for
prestige rather than for the more tenable explanation from lowly Bradford;
that the charge came from the west, and somehow managed to do so even though
it travelled too slowly. The IEE did not know that Pepper's boss Howie FRS
was a Westerner, or they would have gone for his revered Cavendish seniority,
and avoided the quagmire. The Westerner view could have been brazened out,
and had been for the previous decade since the discovery of the Catt Anomaly
in aug81, for instance in many letters to Wireless World. Pepper's ingenious
but mad Southerner view could not. I now no longer had to take sides, but
only to get Westerners and Southerners to resolve their differences, a task
which was to prove Herculean, as I expected. That is, I knew that the forces
of darkness in today's science were entrenched, strong and determined. Much activity followed during the next
few weeks, but first we should jump to two further comments by Secker, to
give a brief taste of what followed. Whereas above, on 4sep95, Secker wrote "....The favoured explanation
aligns with the statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper,
....", seven weeks later, on 25oct95, he wrote; "Dr. McEwan really has the answer;
....". Thus, he was backing both the views whose
contradiction was the cause of Catt writing to Secker's boss in the first
place, and his boss instructing Secker to reply! Further, although on 4sep95
Top Dog in the IEE chose him as the appropriate expert to reply, after seven
weeks of repeated pontification and obfuscation, Secker wrote on 26oct95; "I should explain that I am no
expert in the area to which the 'Catt Anomaly' refers....".
He repeated this claim on 19dec95. This earned the riposte on 15nov95 from
Luca Turin, lecturer in biophysics in London University; "To claim, as Professor Secker does, that this is a
problem requiring unusual erudition and expertise is disingenuous. It belongs
in chapter One of all the textbooks." It also raises the
question as to why Top Dog Dr Williams delegated to Deputy Dog Professor
Secker the task of replying to Catt's letter. Was Professor Secker Emeritus
Professor of the London School of Ducking and Weaving, not of
Electromagnetism? Had Top Dog from the start seen the Catt Anomaly as a
political, not a technical, problem, to be handled by his most senior
political, rather than technical, Deputy Dog? Who then was Top Dog's most
senior expert on electromagnetism? We get a clue from Secker writing on
19dec95; "I asked a number
of 'experts' familiar with Ivor Catt's views if they would .... [review his
book], but all declined." This leads us to a statement on
8nov95 by Wilson of the IEE; "The
Institution does not have Technical Committees which address scientific
principles." In turn, we compare this with Secker's
original 4sep95 letter, above, which quoted; "The Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the
general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their
applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these
subjects....'", which Catt had copied to Top Dog in his
original 18aug95 letter. Also we note Secker 25oct95; "The reason that the Catt Anomaly has been around so
long is that the 'experts' have not thought it of sufficient standing to take
the trouble to demolish it!" p13 The repeat experiment Membership of the London I.E.E. totals
130,000. That of the New York Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) totals 300,000. All other electrical and electronic
engineering institutions in the world have tiny memberships of around 6,000.
Thus, a repeat of the experiment - finding that the institute 'top expert'
disqualifies himself after a period - could only be usefully made with the
other large institute, the New York IEEE. I wrote to the Chief Executive of the
IEEE; John D
Powers, 12sep95 Executive
Director, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 345 East
47th St., New York, NY10017, USA Dear Dr.
John Powers, The Catt
Anomaly. A hiatus
has recently become apparent in classical electromagnetism, described in the
attached sheet. This is a matter of growing concern. I enclose
the 'Southerner' viewpoint presented under instruction by M Pepper FRS in his
21june93 and 23aug93 letters. On the reverse side you will find a description
of the Catt Anomaly, followed by the 'Westerner' view, presented under
instruction by Neil McEwan, Reader in Electromagnetics at Bradford
University. Please
would you instruct your leading expert(s) on electromagnetism to comment on
the matter, with a view to resolving a worrying uncertainty? As you know, the
IEEE is the leading learned institution in the world in this field, and so
will carry very great weight. Its high status is backed up by its massive
320,000 membership. Yours
sincerely, Ivor
Catt Powers caused his top expert, Mink, to write the following
letter to me. I have retained Mink's errors and exotic punctuation. However,
the key point is that his letter is drivel, much on the lines of Pepper's
drivel. Since Pepper came from the semiconductor theory stable, not Mink's
microwave stable, their drivel does differ somewhat. (Compare Anglican with
Catholic liturgy.) Dear
Mr. Ivor Catt, As
chairman of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society committee on
Microwave Field Theory, MTT-15, I have been asked to respond to your request
to Dr. John Powers, Executive Director, Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers. I
reviewed the previous responses you received from Professor M. Pepper and
Neil McEwan. I am in general agreement with their assessment of the
"Catt Anomaly". I
will limit my comments to the region of the electromagnetic spectrum
corresponding to "microwave" frequencies. Hence, the wavelength of
electromagnetic waves are very much greater that the atomic and hence,
electron spacing in a good conductor. Our, view is one of looking at the
macroscopic effects, not microscopic. Conductors
are material whose atomic outer shell (valence) electronics are not held very
tightly and can migrate from one atom to another. These are known free
electrons and for metal conductors they are very large in number. Assuming,
one valence electron per atom, then the number of free electrons equals the
number of atoms in the material since the material maintains charge
neutrality. Hence, we have a "sea" of electrons in the metal. With no
applied external field, these free electrons move with different velocities
in random directions producing zero net current through the conductor. If an
electric field is applied, there is a net migration of electrons parallel to
the electric field, hence current flows. However, if we consider individual
electrons, when an electron is added at one end of a structure (e.g. a
transmission line), one leaves the other end of the structure and charge
neutrality is maintained. If we tag the entering electron, we find that it is
not the electron that leaves the structure. The electron that leaves, is one
that was already near the output and was forced out by the addition of an
electron at the input. This is the same phenomenon that we see in fluid flow.
When a liquid flows through a pipe, adding a droplet of fluid at the input of
the pipe causes an immediate expulsion of a droplet of fluid from the output
of the pipe, however, it is not the same droplet. When viewed from the input
and output the system exhibits a finite yet extremely fast response time,
however, the time required for any given droplet to propagate through the
system is much longer than the input/output system response time. Back, to
the electrical problem, when a free charge is first placed inside a conductor
it is subjected to a static field, the charge density at that point then
decays exponentially until the static electric field in the conductor goes to
zero. The time constant of that exponential decay is known at the
"relaxation time constant", tr. For conductors, such as copper that
time constant is of the order 10-19 s. This time constant is much shorter
that the period of a microwave signal, therefore, we can consider the
electrons to always be is a state of equilibrium in the material. Concerning,
the question of charges terminating electric fields incident upon the
conductors. With no applied electric field, free electrons on average are
positioned in the conductor to exactly compensate for the positive charge of
the nucleus of the atoms making up the material. When an electric field is
applied, the electrons, on average move so that the total electric field
inside of the material remains at zero. (Ei + Ea = 0). Where Ei is the field
within the conductor due to slight net movement of the electrons relative to
the fixed atom position. This results in a polarization of the atoms. The
distances that any individual electron has to move is extremely small because
of the collective effects of many electrons involved and occurs within a
period equal to a few relaxation time constants. Ea is the applied field. The
net effect of all this is that, a equivalent surface charge appears which
terminates the applied electric field. Since the displacement of any
individual electron is small, it can follow a rapidly changing electric field
as discussed in the Catt Anomaly description. In
conclusion, from the microwave point of view, which is macroscopic, the so
called "Catt Anomaly" is well understood and does not play a role. Sincerely James W. Mink Ph.D. Chairman MTT-15 (IEEE) Dept. of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, North Carolina State University 16nov95 p15 Mink's letter is such a mess that we
cannot tell whether he discerns a contradiction between Pepper and McEwan. In
an attempt to establish this, the following letter was sent to Mink; Dear
Mr. Mink, I
recently received some interesting correspondence from a dear friend of long
standing in England. I find the whole subject most fascinating and need some
assistance in clearing up this apparent ambiguity. I wonder if you could help
clarify this apparent duality. Do you believe that there is a contradiction
between Pepper and McEwan? In thanking you for your time I remain, Yours
sincerely, Francine Russo New York 24feb96 The
reference documents are enclosed This letter was repeated two months
later, and still there is no response. Similarly, McEwan and Pepper keep
themselves totally incommunicado, apart from the initial letters which their
superiors instructed them to send. They all ignore all enquiries by third
parties. Here are further letters ignored by
Mink; 200a
Merton Road, London SW18 5SW 26
January 1996 Dear
Dr. Mink, second copy sent 7may96 The
Catt Anomaly I
have seen your letter to Catt dated November 16, 1995. Is
there a fundamental contradiction between Pepper 21june93/23aug93 and McEwan
20apr95? Yours sincerely, T S Harriss London encl. Catt anom EWW sep84; Pepper
21june93/partial23aug93; McEwan20apr95 Dear
Dr. Mink, The
Catt Anomaly With
regard to your letter to Catt on November 16, 1995, do you not find a
fundamental disagreement between Pepper, June 21, 1993, and McEwan, 20 April
1995, over the direction from which the charge comes? Yours
sincerely, Graham Lyons London 29
May 1996 Dear Dr.
Mink, 5oct96 [Second copy sent
8nov96] The Catt
Anomaly Thank you
for your letter dated 16nov95 You appear
to find no contradiction between Pepper and McEwan. Is this so? Yours
sincerely, Ivor
Catt Here is a further letter which has been
ignored by an embattled professional. Note that these punkah-wallahs all draw
salaries from electromagnetic theory. They will ignore every communication,
be it from the President or the Queen! (The only exception is their immediate
boss, whom they will obey once only, and then defy, see p54. Whether they
hide under 'academic freedom', or the Fifth Amendment, or both, I know not!
However, we can rest assured that they continue to draw salary.) See how you
fare! Write to them, or telephone them! Dear
Professor Pepper, [second
copy sent 7may96] 11th February 1996 The Catt
Anomaly I shall be
including a brief section on the alleged Catt Anomaly in the book on
electromagnetism that I am writing. I have read the exposition of the alleged
anomaly in Wireless World Sept84, copy enclosed, and your comment on it in
your letter dated June 21, 1993, copy enclosed. I am
anxious to paraphrase you correctly, and so I shall be very grateful if you
confirm the following detail; As the TEM
step passes, the electric field is terminated initially by charge rising up
from inside the conductor at right angles to the direction of travel of the
TEM step. This is because such charge coming from the left would have to
travel at the speed of light, which is clearly impossible. I enclose
a s.a.e. for your reply, which need only be to initial the second copy of
this letter. Yours
sincerely, T S
Harriss London McEwan, Pepper, Howie, Mink found that
they passed examinations with high marks. This gradually took them further
and further up the hierarchy of academe. We have only limited evidence, e.g.
McEwan on p6, that they claim competence in electromagnetic theory. It has
usually been attributed to them by others. This is the way in which the vital
disciplines underpinning our culture gradually disintegrate. Those very few who
do have a grasp of electromagnetic theory are elbowed aside by ignoramuses
who have floated to the top on a sea of confusion. I have found the same
grave situation in my other fields of research; computer architecture and
Wafer Scale Integration (see Wireless World, July81 and March89). McEwan,
Pepper and Mink show us how scientific knowledge gradually descends into
liturgy, examples being their letters. In the same way as the parish priest,
having forgotten his theological training, thinks he still retains the key to
his religion, so these scientific quacks think they hold the key to their
subjects. However, the unanswered questions give them a rare glimpse of the
real subject that they should study and discuss. Concern to continue to pay
their mortgages and retain the respect of their wives makes them ignore the
letters with their awkward questions. Our task is to square the circle; to
bring them back into the scientific fold. Unless we do this soon, science
will remain at best sterile, and will more probably disintegrate. http://www.ivorcatt.com/em_test04.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/08101.htm http://www.ivorcatt.com/2698.htm p17 The background. Why did I latch onto the Catt Anomaly,
and pursue it with vigour? Catt, Davidson and Walton had already
been prevented from publishing their lesser advances in electromagnetic theory
for a decade by earlier officials who preceded Secker. Then, in May 1976,
they made major advances. First, Walton excised Displacement Current. Then,
in the same month, Catt discovered Theory C. They withheld this theory for
some years, but finally published it in Wireless World in dec80. However,
still, today, members of the IEE or of the IEEE, the two major relevant
learned institutions in the world, do not know that this team claim a major
scientific advance made in may76. Even the fact that an advance is claimed,
let alone the nature of the claim, has been suppressed for twenty years! The
first admission of the claim is made in a ridiculing aside in Lago's review
of my last book, in the IEE's ECEJ journal, oct95, partly reproduced as
appendix 4. I had already known about suppression in
science, and published my first paper thirty years ago in IEEE Trans. Comp.
feb66 under a misleading title, and because of this, it was the only paper on
the subject to pass the referees. Nobody else succeeded in publishing on the
very important subject of The Glitch until many years later, (Couranz in IEEE
Trans. Comp., June75,) because the subject was taboo. This suppression led
inevitably to frequent computer crashes, and meant that computers were
unreliable. This caused the computer industry to lose the real time market
for two decades. My third (and major) paper, finally published in the IEEE
Trans. Comp. EC-16 dec67, was delayed for three years in horrendous political
wrangling, which involved Narud, the head of R&D in Motorola Phoenix,
where I worked, instructing my boss Emory Garth to fire me. Because Emory
failed to fire me, he himself had to leave. My paper began to outline the
techniques needed to interconnect the fastest ECL logic systems, which we had
developed. Our failure to educate our customers meant that the market fell
back to our competitors' ten - times - slower TTL circuit, and we lost our
market to Texas Instruments. Also, computers ran much slower for decades.
(Narud had refused to develop the slower TTL circuits.) Twenty years later, in The Daily
Telegraph on 1may89, the worst suppresser of all, Maddox, long time editor of
Nature (recently retired), re-enacted Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and
the Carpenter" when he expressed concern about suppression in science.
He wrote that a discovery like Crick and Watson's Double Helix could not be
published in today's heavily censored scientific journals. Certainly,
censorship is more severe than twenty years ago, when my 1967 paper was
delayed for a mere three years. 'It seems
a shame,' old Maddox said, 'To play them such a trick. We've led
them up the garden path, And made them write so quick!' J C
Williams said nothing but 'My carpet's not too thick!' 'I weep
for you,' old Maddox said: 'I deeply sympathize.' Holding
his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. 'O
Scientists,' called Prof Secker, But answer came there none - And this
was scarcely odd, because They'd censored every one. The Earlier Background After graduating from Cambridge, I published everything that I
wanted to publish in the leading learned journals for the next twelve years.
These included the Fall Joint Computer Conference, The IEEE Transactions on
Computers, and later New Society and New Scientist. By 1972, it was clear
that the British were determined to get out of hi technology. As for me,
after twelve years of increasing disillusionment with the slow progress of
digital electronics, I decided to start a new career. First, I went teaching
Remedial English. I had already written a book about hire and fire in the U.S.A.,
which was published in six languages. Now, as a parting shot, I published a
further book, "Computer Worship", which discussed the idiocies of
the computer industry. So far, so good. However, the trouble came with my
third book, a text book on digital computer hardware design. While
researching this, I made major breakthroughs in fundamental electromagnetic
theory which were more important than anything I had published in the past.
Suddenly, I found that I had gone from 100% acceptance of all my articles for
publication to 100% rejection. Since that date, 1973, I have generally failed
to publish anything in learned journals, particularly failing in Britain, but
also failing round the world. Now that my material was more advanced and
important, it was totally rejected for the next 25 years. During that time I
have made periodic written approaches to the President of the IEE and similar
potentates expressing concern, but to no avail. However, as my reputation
worldwide grew, the resulting difficulty for the IEE and other relevant
learned institutions kept increasing. Still, they have held to their policy,
not even admitted to themselves, to suppress all major advances in the art. Denied information on my work of even decades ago, other
researchers in my specialisms fall further and further behind. They now have
no chance of catching up with me and my team; D. S. Walton and Malcolm
Davidson, so that today we stand totally unchallenged and unexampled.
However, to be such an unnoticed Historical Object gives us no satisfaction. The decades of suppression have increased the divorce between me
and all accredited journal referees for my work, leading to the totally
uncomprehending review of my latest book by Lago in the oct95 issue of the
IEE Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal. Twenty years
earlier, in Wireless World, July79, Lago had attacked our first major dec78
and mar79 publications, on Displacement Current; ".... the articles are
wrong in every detail and it is vital that this should be clearly
demonstrated before undue damage is done." Now he surfaced again with a
second attack, ending with the flourish; ".... this reviewer, after
lengthy and careful consideration, can find virtually nothing of value in
this book.". That first important dec78 article in Wireless World was
photocopied by staff and circulated within U.K.A.E.A. Culham, followed by a
meeting there to discuss the situation. The meeting delegated to B. G. Burrows
the task of telephoning Tom Ivall, Editor of Wireless World. He threatened
Ivall that if he published any more material by Catt et al., Wireless World
would be boycotted by the scientific community. (This is exactly the
treatment previously meted out to the intended publishers of Velikovsky's
first book.) Ivall should have capitulated. However, he reacted in my favour
for two reasons. Firstly, he had independent means. Secondly, he had spent
many hours with me and many hours with Burrows, and found my technical
stature to be no lower than that of Burrows. Ivall continued to publish
material on my theories every month for the next ten years, making me the
most published and most read suppressed author in history. However, the
reader may not know that if a scientist reads Wireless World (now called
Electronics World) he loses caste, much as you would lose caste if you read
the "Sun". Certainly, before I published in the semi-reputable
Wireless World, I had never read it. Thus, my theories did not reach graduate
engineers and college lecturers by being published in Wireless World. Quite
the reverse. Wireless World was read by technicians, not by engineers, even
though Ivall did not allow such dismal rubbish as slips into the journal
today, for instance page 937, dec96. As the decades drifted by, I continued to fulfil my duty of
attempting to get my work published. I also delved deeper into the theory of
the Politics of Knowledge, or the Sociology of Science. Basil Bernstein, of
the Institute of Education, London, gave me the first clue, which can be
paraphrased as follows; Knowledge is Property,
with its own market value and trading relationships, to be protected by those
who trade in that body of knowledge. It was many more years before I realised that He who brings new knowledge
is a vandal, much as the Nazis who burned the books were vandals. The reason is that the intrusion of new knowledge results
in the rejection of the old books. New knowledge has to
be defined. Knowledge is new
if its acceptance would lead to a
change in an A level syllabus. It is also new if it would lead to the change of a first degree syllabus.
It is not new if it would merely lead to the addition of an extra
section in a first degree syllabus, leaving the text books untarnished. This
last is merely new (written
without italics). One has to consider the knowledge broker, or lecturer, with his
slabs of lecture notes. Each slab of notes represents capital which brings in
sixty pounds of income each year from two hours of lecturing. The professional
is unwilling to tear up those notes, or to give up the royalties on his text
book. His text book probably gained his promotion. The professionalisation of teaching in around 1850, and the
merging of research with teaching, set the stage for the inevitable
ossification of science a century later. The professional cannot afford to
allow knowledge to advance. Any attempt to push forward
the bounds of knowledge by paying professionals to do so must fail. Even when
employed specifically to advance knowledge, the professional will freeze it. The existing knowledge
base is the professional's identity, his security, and his income. New
knowledge threatens all of these. It took further years for me to realize that the role of the
professional institution was similar to that of the educational
establishment. In the 1970's, when the IEE was obstructing our efforts to
publish and to initiate discussion of fundamentals, we naively assumed that
if only we could get past the 'decadent' officials to the 'vibrant'
membership, all would be well. I am now convinced that this was a delusion,
for the following reasons. Those students who studied, learned, and passed exams in the
IEE's static knowledge base developed subject loyalty and also a vested
interest in its maintenance and defence against new knowledge. Some
had even passed the IEE's own exams. They now paid their subscriptions to the
IEE, not to encourage it to advance knowledge, but so that it would defend
the knowledge base which was now their
identity and their security. When working at Lucas forty years ago, the manager told me that
the average time a production line girl worked for the company was six weeks.
This made nonsense of the SDP idea of worker participation in management
decisions. We might as well ask British Rail to have its Board meetings on a
platform of Victoria Station and ask the passengers waiting for their trains
to help to make decisions on running the railway system, there and then. Decades later, my son pointed out that the worker's interest was
best served if reinvestment were held to a minimum, and his company closed
down when he took retirement. That way, his income would be maximised. We can
apply the same rule of thumb to the professional engineer, member of the IEE. My article "The Scientific Reception System as a
Servomechanism", Appendix 2, gives the next stage in the argument. Like the Catholic Church, the IEE paying member would allow the
IEE to sin a little - to allow small increments, or changes in, the knowledge
base. This mirrors the production line worker benefiting from minor
improvements to the existing production line. However, major theoretical
advances must be held up until the IEE paying member retires. At that point,
the bulk of membership would be younger, of an age to want further delay in
the publication of major scientific advance, and so ad infinitum. Thus, the
IEE and its members mirror the conservative stance of the professional
lecturer. Neither benefits from major advance, which would cause short and
medium term damage to his career. The professional engineer has no interest
in major advance in the art. Major advance benefits only; (1) putative future generations of
engineers, who do not yet pay their membership fees to the IEE, and (2) society at large, which does not pay
membership fees to the IEE. The more exposed, and the more absurd, Williams and Secker were
to appear, the more supportive and grateful the IEE membership would be that
they had risked so much to protect and maximise members' careers. In the case of electromagnetism, there was good reason why the
blocking of advance was particularly easy for the official to come to terms
with, without feeling of guilt or compunction. Books on electromagnetism
state that the theory was completed a century ago, and no further advance is
possible or necessary. Thus, the IEE officials knew that any purported
advance was fallacious [But see http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm
] p22 Strategy At first instinctively, later by design, I devised a strategy
based on the following behavioural model. A college lecturer or an IEE
official sets out to block major scientific advance while not admitting even
to himself that that is what he is doing. It was the intrinsic hypocrisy and
self-deception of my adversaries that gave me the possibility of success in
causing the Catt Anomaly to become a legitimate subject for discussion. This
pioneering attempt to bring one institution, the IEE, back to basics, and
causing it to legitimise one subject only, the Catt Anomaly, might be the
model for the opening up of the IEE to other matters. We might then move on
to reviving all our other defunct institutions, giving us the possibility of
scientific advance in the next century, something which the twentieth century
lacked. (David Quinn, page 26, had the same idea.) This last assertion is supported by my experience in
electromagnetic theory. In 1964, Motorola hired me to solve the problems
involved in interconnecting their very fast ( 1 nsec ) logic gates. This I
did, without the help of theoretical ideas generated in the twentieth
century; the scientifically dead century. Later, I found that I had been
rediscovering the ideas of Oliver Heaviside, who published them late in the
nineteenth century but had since been suppressed. Modern Physics pundits have
no knowledge of Heaviside's ideas and of the Heaviside tradition. For
instance, nobody in Modern Physics knows about the impedance of free space,
377 ohms, although it is an essential feature of electronic design. I pointed
this out in my paper at an IERE/IEE International Conference on EMC, Surrey
University, sep84, and nobody has since cited a case where 377 ohms appears
in the literature of Modern Physics. The claim that Modern Physics (= The
Copenhagen Interpretation) enabled us to reach the moon is false. Neither
semiconductor theory nor my interconnection theory and practice rely on
Modern Physics. I was there when major advances were made in integrated circuit
technology. They did not rely on Modern Physics; quite the reverse. Modern
Physics confused the situation. If it is true that advanced computers got us
to the moon, then credit goes to Oliver Heaviside and his successors
including Ivor Catt, who did their work in spite of the obfuscations of
Modern Physics. (However, the reality is that rocket fuel is what got us to
the moon, not computers. It's difficult to miss the moon with your eyes
open!) The missing ingredient in all our institutions is of course
accountability. This means that Williams and Secker need to be brought to
account, and to be widely known to have been brought to account, pour
encourager les autres. One possibility is to serve a Writ in Chancery
demanding that they perform the function outlined in Secker's own first
letter, to 'promote the general
advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and
to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects....'.
Since they are breaking the Rules of Conduct for members of the IEE, they are
vulnerable, and in principle the mainstream sludgy IEE members cannot protect
them. It is of course true that when brought to account, the IEE disciplinary
committee, packed with sludge members, will also break those same rules, as
it has done in the past, for instance when I reported Professor D A Bell to
them. That will also have to be publicised in further editions of this book.
The salvation of our civilisation will not be achieved easily, and the forces
of darkness will fight a determined rearguard. Philosophy We have to make considerable effort to gain some understanding
of the behaviour of captains of science like Atiyah, Pepper, McEwan,
Williams, Secker and the rest. This will enable us to control and limit their
destructive activity more effectively, and direct them towards doing what
they are paid to do. The picture is clarified if we think of them as
politicians first, administrators second and scientists third. However, it is
probably more useful to think of them as not scientists at all, as Stalin was
not a communist or Marxist. More accurately, whether Stalin was a Marxist or
not had minimal influence on his behaviour, which was driven by other forces. The attack on scientific principles was mounted a few decades
following the professionalisation of science in the mid-nineteenth century.
Professionals feared the career insecurity when they stood on a shifting
knowledge base. At a subconscious level they realised that they had to freeze
their body of knowledge. Further, they had to suppress the knowledge that
they were doing so. This is the dialectic which makes these commissars of
knowledge vulnerable and manipulable. Most of them will go to considerable
effort to avoid admitting to themselves, and more particularly to their
admirers - wives, maiden aunts and so forth, that they represent the forces
of darkness. p24 Relativity Relativity came at an auspicious moment. Professional scientists
had already made minor errors before 1905, but it was the major error of Relativity
which set Modern Physics on its way to ever more nonsense. The beauty of
Relativity was that it was self-referencing in that, claiming no absolute
space, it seemed to claim no absolute truth. Modern Physics, the new
religion, then set upon a lucrative half-century of profitable obfuscation
before the chickens came home to roost in 1971 when Shirley Williams, then a
Member of Parliament and later (1976-9) Secretary of State for Education and
Science, spelled out an unmistakable warning in The Times, 27feb71; For the scientists, the party is over
.... Until fairly recently no one has asked any awkward questions .... Yet
there is a growing suspicion about scientists and their discoveries .... It
is within this drastically altered climate that the dramatic decline in
expenditure on scientific research in Britain is taking place. Much like the incessant, superficially profound, content-free,
intoned propaganda for the Holy Ghost, the unremitting propaganda for Modern
Physics blinds us to a rational appraisal of its content, including its
philosophical content. After much reading of Einstein, Heisenberg, Born and
the rest, I have been forced to conclude that the intellectual level of
Modern Physics, and of the bizarre Philosophy of Science that it has spawned,
is shallow. (See my letter, The Betrayal of Science by Modern Physics,
re-published as appendix 5.) Philosophers, who should have known better, but
who preferred to pick up the crumbs of funding falling from the wealthy
Modern Physics table, now buttress a nonsensical Modern Physics with a
nonsensical Philosophy of Science. The Catt Anomaly goes to the core of all this nonsense, since
Einstein and the rest put electromagnetism at the centre of Modern Physics. The special theory of relativity owes
its origin to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field - written by Einstein in P. A. Schilpp's
book "Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist", pub. Library of
Living Philosophers 1949, p62. If none of the Modern Physics Wallahs can answer the most simple
question about where the electric charge comes from, then we can dismiss
their Quarks, Strangeness, Neutrinos and the rest as hog-wash. I have to emphasise this extraordinary principle. If a band of
Wallahs were to put out unremitting propaganda that they were all brilliant
and revered mathematicians, but persistently failed to agree on the sum of 2
plus 2, then you would dismiss everything they said; even more so if, half of
them having given the answer three and the other half five, they followed up
by saying that they were in agreement! So much for the whole 'scientific'
razzmatazz called Modern Physics. The apparent pretence that Pepper and
McEwan agree means that the Modern Physics pundits are stocking their armoury
with dishonesty as well as ignorance. p25 The Remedy The blocking of new information by all our institutions means
the end of civilisation. It is of the utmost importance that the facts of the
situation be established soon and that remedial action be taken. The remedy
is simple - to introduce accountability. I fear that at present a knowledge
broker is rewarded for blocking new information. The necessary reform will be that should a knowledge broker be
proved to have blocked new information, he will be dismissed. p26 AIDS: The failure of contemporary science. In his above-titled 1996 book on AIDS,
Neville Hodgkinson quotes David Quinn on page 335; The
scientific establishment ... bears an uncanny resemblance to Medieval
Christiandom. It is as totalist and unified in its world view as was the
Medieval Church. While heretical movements exist, as they did in the Middle
Ages, they are kept at the outer margins of the scientific world via various
time-honoured devices for maintaining doctrinal control such as censure,
ridicule and de facto excommunication. Organs such as Nature act as a sort of
Holy Inquisition. But the
early symptoms of a schism are beginning to develop. The authority of the
Catholic Church was challenged over an issue which is to us relatively unimportant,
i.e. the doctrine of justification. Yet once that authority was successfully
challenged on one issue, it did not take too long for the great unified world
view of the Middle Ages to unravel. One can envisage the current scientific
'Magisterium' being successfully challenged over an issue such as Aids, and
then, with its credibility damaged, finding itself challenged over a host of
other issues. On page 393, Hodgkinson himself writes; Perhaps
when the illusions are shed and a clearer picture of Aids finally emerges,
the enormity of what went wrong will be turned to good advantage by the world
of science, as a catalyst for a radical rethink about its observational
methods, assumptions, and institutional checks and balances. I would argue that the Catt Anomaly is
the simplest, best honed focus for our attempt to analyse, reform and so save
science before it is too late. wa8anbk4 p27 Black is White Theocharis, Turin and myself see the
denial of absolute truth as the central failure of the twentieth century,
from which all its other failures follow. The decline of science into the
obscurantist meta-religion of Modern Physics is best grasped by looking as
the religious parallel. So long as a religion has one or more
central mysteries, it is invulnerable to attack. Similarly, when the
professionals sought to secure their long term career positions, they
installed religious mystery at the centre of Modern Physics, flanked by much
the same genuflexion as that surrounding the central mysteries of a religion. Theocharis has compared and contrasted
the mysteries of Christianity with those of Modern Physics, as follows; CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY ONE GOD - THE HOLY TRINITY JESUS - FULLY GOD & FULLY MAN Nicene Creed (4th century) Gregory Palmas (14th century) Soren Kierkegaard (19th century) MODERN PHYSICS LIGHT/ELECTRONS - EACH IS BOTH WAVES AND PARTICLES Albert Einstein
(1905) Louis de Broglie
(1922) Niels Bohr (1927) ONE
GODEVIL - THE UNHOLY DUALITY NEILS BOHR
- BOTH FULLY MAN AND FULLY WOMAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY GOD IS LOVE - John GOD IS LIGHT - John I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, & THE LIFE MODERN PHYSICS ENERGY HAS MASS -
Einstein ENERGY HAS WEIGHT -
Einstein MASS (OR IS IT MATTER?) AND ENERGY ARE
EQUIVALENT. LIGHT IS A FORM OF ENERGY MAN IS
THOUGHT. THOUGHT HAS WEIGHT. A TREE IS A FORM OF LEAVES CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY I BELIEVE THE RESURRECTION BECAUSE IT IS
ABSURD -
Tertullian ca 200 AD MODERN PHYSICS WE ARE ALL AGREED THAT YOUR THEORY IS CRAZY.
THE QUESTION WHICH DIVIDES US IS WHETHER IT IS CRAZY ENOUGH TO HAVE A CHANCE
OF BEING CORRECT. MY OWN FEELING IS THAT IT IS NOT CRAZY ENOUGH. - Bohr's
reply to a far-fetched idea of Pauli, ca 1957 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY How about the metamorphoses of Zeus, or
Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. Are they not absurd and crazy enough? UNLESS YOU BELIEVE, YOU WILL NOT
UNDERSTAND - Isaiah BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE WITHOUT
SEEING - John FAITH MUST PRECEDE REASON -
Augustine I have observed in teaching
quantum mechanics (and also in learning it) that students go through the
following experience: The student begins by learning how to make calculations
in quantum mechanics and get the right answers; it
takes about six months. This is the first stage in learning quantum
mechanics, and it is comparatively easy and painless. The second stage comes
when the student begins to worry because he does not understand what he has
been doing. He worries because he has no clear physical picture in his head.
He gets confused in trying to arrive at a physical explanation for each of
the mathematical tricks he has been taught. He works very hard and gets
discouraged because he does not seem able to think clearly. This second stage
often lasts six months or longer, and it is strenuous and unpleasant. Then,
quite unexpectedly, the third stage begins. The student suddenly says to
himself, "I understand quantum mechanics", or rather he says,
"I understand now that there isn't anything to be understood". The
difficulties which seemed so formidable have mysteriously vanished. What has
happened is that he has learned to think directly and unconsciously in
quantum mechanical language, and he is no longer trying to explain everything
in terms of pre-quantum conceptions - Freeman J Dyson, "Innovation in
Physics", Scientific American vol. 199, pp. 74-82, sept 1958. The End of Error The gimcrack post-Einstein ambience fathered much nonsense, and
all of it is inter-related. One gets the hang of what they were up to if one
realises that their objective was and remains job security. They all asserted
that they were creating a revolution, but none admitted that the purpose was
to entrench their careers. The New Physics was characterised in various ways.
Heisenberg might replace causality by intentionality, in a bizarre reversion
to Aristotle. However, it is convenient to summarise their activity as
centred on the denial of Absolute Truth. Although I can easily conceive of a universe with no absolute
space but containing a moral system with absolute validity, the shoddy
intellectualism of Brussels-Solvay 1927 (The Copenhagen Interpretation)
thought that relativity must needs introduce relativity in morals and in all
else. They also introduced the idea of Great Mystery at the centre of their
physics, which puts them into the world of religion instead of science. p29 16ganbk5 The Description The re-classification of theories as merely descriptions by
Modern Physics pundits gave a fillip to the job-security of professional knowledge
brokers. Whereas a theory had to be rigorously stated, a description was
always imperfect, incomplete. Further, a description was a description of
Reality, so that it could not be untrue, since reality is true by definition.
New experimental evidence would merely help to enrich the description.
Popperian refutation became impossible. Under the new science of Modern Physics, the reigning theory is
a description of physical reality. Thus, it could never be wrong in the old
sense of classical science. Phlogiston and Caloric could be later adjudged
wrong because they pre-dated Modern Physics. Today, no such concept could be
excised from the reigning science. Let us analyse the behaviour of Pepper, McEwan, Secker and the
rest over the Catt Anomaly within the ideological framework of Modern
Physics. All parties agree that the charge appears on the lower conductor,
because Aristotle - oops! - I should have said Maxwell - said it did and the
gentry at the Brussels-Solvay Conference in 1927 accepted this into the creed
of Modern Physics. All that is outstanding is the description of where the
charge comes from. Pepper and McEwan both described the process of appearance
of the charge. Since they only described, as one might describe a sunset,
Secker could later on agree with them both! One does not, one cannot really,
disagree with the description of a sunset. Under the new reign of Modern
Physics, the more descriptions, the better, each description enhancing our
grasp of the mystery of the charge's appearance. Wave - particle dualism set
the scene for apparently discordant descriptions to be accepted into the
glossary of scientific knowledge. We know that the charge appears; any
contribution to how it does so is to be welcomed. It is noticeable that Occam's Razor has disappeared from Modern
Physics, while Bohr's Correspondence Principle, which is the opposite of
Occam's Razor, is celebrated nightly. Way back in 1980, I claimed that a Mistake was impossible within
the bogus, unscientific context of Modern Physics. Today, I ask Modern
Physiics Wallahs to (a) show an example of a Mistake in Modern Physics, and
(b) show us how a Mistake could be identified within their 'system'. I claim
that their system excludes the possibility of a mistake; that it is
specifically designed to make a mistake impossible, so that a hiccough in a
career is an impossibility. Thus by Popper's criteria, Modern Physics is
unscientific. Sycophant Karl Popper, bless his little cotton socks, was
career oriented enough not to notice this. He dismissed various disciplines
including Marxism as unscientific, but failed to subject Modern Physics to
the same analysis outlined in his book "Conjectures and
Refutations", pub. RKP 1963. However, Popper's later books address the
nonsense in Modern Physics, and he claims that Modern Physics Wallahs refuse
to respond to his questions. He was later undoing the damage done by his
earlier sycophantic books, but too late. "de
Broglie and Schrödinger were far from happy with Bohr's views (later called
'the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics')" -p91 "Schrödinger,
who told me that he was deeply unhappy about quantum mechanics and thought
that nobody really understood it." -p92 "Yet
I could not [understand] Bohr's 'complementarity', and I began to doubt
whether anybody else understood it .... This doubt was shared by Einstein, as
he later told me, and by Schrödinger." -p93, K
Popper, "Unended Quiest", pub. Fontana 1976. 074anbk6 p31 Appendix 1 The Rise and Fall of
Bodies of Knowledge. -
I. Catt, The Information Scientist 12 (4) December 1978, pp. 137-144. It is argued that the self-protecting nature of the knowledge
establishment leads to the suppression of new ideas. Proposals are put
forward for the establishment of 'Communication nets' which having no central
points are incapable of suppression. Introduction. Although the principle of free communication of ideas is a basic
tenet of the scientific community, there are numerous examples of their suppression.
Professor Herbert Dingle, who wrote a book on relativity in the 1920s as well
as a section on relativity for ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, and was the man
chosen by the BBC to give the eulogy on Einstein when he died, developed
doubts about the special theory of relativity around 1955. To his
astonishment, he found that the scientific journals and institutions suddenly
closed their pages and doors when he wanted to write or say something
unorthodox; that is, heretical. A scientist might say, 'something that was
incorrect'. He describes his experience in his book, SCIENCE AT THE
CROSSROADS (1). Immanuel Velikovsky
painstakingly developed the heretical theory that Venus as a planet is only
some 3,500 years old, that it moved for centuries on a very eccentric orbit,
and about 1500 BC made its two closest approaches to the Earth. During the
eighth and seventh centuries BC, the comet Venus repeatedly approached Mars,
and Mars in turn menaced our planet. Only after all these encounters did
Venus finally lose its last cometary characteristics and settle down to its
present planetary behaviour. Velikovsky believes that the effects of these
encounters on the Earth, especially the earlier ones, where truly
catastrophic. He wrote a book about his theories, called WORLDS IN COLLISION
(2). Without reading
Velikovsky's book, the Professor of Astronomy at Harvard warned Macmillan not
to publish anything by Velikovsky, saying that if they did, Macmillan would
be boycotted by the academic community. Macmillan bowed to the pressure, and
fired the editor who had accepted Velikovsky's manuscript, because he had
accepted heretical material (3,4). The computer journals
and conferences in Britain and the USA consistently evaded 'The Glitch', the
way in which computers spontaneously go mad for no apparent reason. The
lengthy private correspondence with the editor of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN which
culminated in his being forced to give 'The Glitch' a passing mention, in
April 1973, is very revealing. It took ten years of dedicated hard slog by a
group of scientists in the University of Washington, St. Louis, to get it
into the professional journal, the IEEE Transactions on Computers, in June
1975. Many other instances
could be cited of the suppression of new or unusual, that is 'heretical',
ideas by scientific institutions. The system of refereeing technical articles
before publication (and I myself have acted as a referee) is a system of
censorship, the censor having no training in how to differentiate between
'wrong' and 'heretical'. Superficially, it is
easy to look at the suppression of free communication in science from the
Basil Bernstein point of view (6), that 'knowledge is property with its own
market and trading value', to be protected by the practitioners of that
particular brand of knowledge - it may be sociology, mathematics, psychology,
or some sub-set of these. We might regard the suppression of new ideas and
the obstruction of outsiders when they try to trespass into a branch of
knowledge as pernicious and retrograde. As one example of many suppressions,
digital electronics, otherwise called computer hardware design, can be taught
in virtually no college in the world today. It is suppressed by the older
knowledge groups of computer science, which means programming, and by
electronics, which means telecommunications. Dr Charles Seitz was chased out
of the University of Utah when he opened up a laboratory with digital
electronic hardware within the Computer Science Department. He then called
himself a 'defrocked computer scientist'. (After a long gap, he is now
lecturing at CALTECH.) If we were certain
that the suppression of free communication was wrong, it would merely be
necessary to expose the fact that editors of scientific publications work to
suppress scientific communication, rather than to sustain it; that university
faculties work to block new disciplines, rather than help them to develop,
and we would organize methods to prevent editors, professors and conference
organizers from suppressing new developments in the future. The Holt Dictum. However, across this vista, like a blaze of light, comes the
dictum of Dr A. W. Holt, 'Without barriers to communication there can be no
communication'. This is one of the great profound truths which often appear
facile at first sight. As an illustration of
Holt's thesis, when I publish something in a scientific journal, a large part
of what I am publishing has already been said before the first word of the
piece. The fact that I am publishing in that scientific journal means that I
accept virtually the whole of what Galbraith calls the 'conventional wisdom'
which is accepted by subscribers to that journal and its editors. This
rigidly limits the scope of my communication. I want to publish in that
journal because I accept the frame of reference established by that journal
and the group of scientists who support it. If something were published in
that journal by someone who did not accept virtually all the precepts
enshrined in previous issues of the journal, it would carry little meaning,
or communication, because having broken with the traditional agreed premises
of the journal, no reader would any more know what was still agreed; no one
would even be sure what the words in the revolutionary article meant. After all,
the meaning of a word is a creature of the frame of reference within which it
has traditionally been used. (M. Polanyi in PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE says that
every time a word is used, it alters or reinforces its meaning as a result of
its being used in a different context (7).) As further illustration of the Holt dictum, we can take
something that the poet Stephen Spender once said. He argued for writing in
an already accepted style. He said that if one created a new style, one's own
style, one ran the risk of creating an 'historical object', and not
communicating. Similarly, one could say that if one wrote a revolutionary
article in a journal, one would create an historical object; what one said
would be unintelligible to the reader. The only meaningful communication is
one which only marginally alters the frame of reference. In the language of T.
S. Kuhn (8) it is permissible to write and speak within the limitations of a
shared paradigm, and even to marginally modify the shared paradigm. This is
an acceptable, meaningful exercise in what he calls 'normal science'. What is
not permissible is to write or say something which contradicts the shared
paradigm, and expect it to be tolerated by the accepted journals, conferences
and faculties. In so far as such institutions allowed the ingress of
revolutionary ideas, they would be inhibiting the proper flow of very useful
communication of the normal kind, of normal science, because the shared
paradigm, a necessary frame of reference in normal scientific communication,
would be undermined. Knowledge as Property. Basil Bernstein writes, apparently critically, that a body of
knowledge is property, with its own market value and trading arrangements, to
be protected by the social group which administers that body of knowledge.
However, one can look at such defensiveness in a favourable way. If no one
were to defend the integrity of a body of knowledge against assault from
laymen outside, the clarity and coherence of that body of knowledge, and in
particular the solidity and validity of the shared paradigm which is its
foundation, would be undermined. Any body of knowledge,
which embraces both information and understanding, needs its own body of
dedicated practitioners, who exercise their knowledge and keep it alive. Also,
they put up barriers around it to defend it against confusion. Without these
barriers to more or less random communication, giving precedence to
communication between the select few within the barriers, within their
journals and conferences (and churches), the body of knowledge that they are
protecting would lapse into confusion. That is why 'without barriers to
communication there can be no communication'. New Knowledge. From time to time, new knowledge tries to break through the
defensive barriers into the main body of knowledge, and an important role of
the priests within is to analyse these new ideas and decide whether to accept
or reject them. All the while they must defend what they already have. It is
therefore important that a limit be placed on the amount of new knowledge
attempting to break through to the inner sanctum. If too much were allowed in
for analysis at any one time the result would be confusion and damage to the
valuable body of knowledge already entrenched within. However, the new knowledge
which attempts to break in beyond the barriers and articulate on to the
already established knowledge plays an important role. The existence of such
conflicts attracts people of high calibre towards the centre of the knowledge
and towards its fringes. Even the rejection of a new piece of knowledge is a
useful exercise, because in the process the main body of knowledge is
exercised, and the practice of manipulating it will be kept alive among the
priests in the inner sanctum. As a body of knowledge
increases in size and complexity, the problem created by each quantum of new
knowledge which attempts to break through into the inner sanctum is greater.
For this reason, the defences surrounding a large body of knowledge are
rightly much higher, more difficult to surmount, than those surrounding one
that is smaller, less complex and less mature. However, new knowledge still
comes in, and the body of knowledge continues to grow, albeit at a slower and
slower rate. Unfortunately, however, when the body of knowledge is bigger and
the rate of inflow of new knowledge is smaller, more and more of the activity
within the knowledge becomes 'celebration', more and more ceremonial rather
than exercise in depth. As a result, a different calibre of person is attracted
to the large knowledge, lacking the ability to understand and defend a body
of knowledge with many levels of meaning. They are 'maintenance men' rather
than 'builders'. The central body of knowledge ossifies, becomes brittle and
disintegrates. This is how civilizations collapse, how religions and cities
collapse, and how a scientific community will collapse. Growth of Knowledge. We can expect bodies of knowledge to grow rapidly at first, grow
more slowly when they are large, and then steady to a more or less fixed
maximum. After some time at this maximum they will disintegrate. My recent
investigations indicate that our knowledge and understanding of
electromagnetic theory reached its zenith in about 1910, and we have since
lost most of what we knew about the subject. I cannot find anyone in the
world today who professes to be an expert on electromagnetic theory, or who
is researching into the subject. The computer art had
reached a large size and complexity as a body of knowledge in 1944, which
appears to have been its practical limit. Since there has been no advance in
the last thirty years (9), it must be well on its way to disintegration. In the language of
Professor Lehman's theory of growth dynamics (10) 'progressive' work has come
to a halt and all activity is 'anti-regressive' maintenance work. Lehman says
that at this point, further advance can only be made if the foundations of
the knowledge are re-examined and streamlined. However, it is at this
point that the Holt barriers to communication play an unfortunate role. By
the time fundamental change is needed, we have seen that there are good
reasons why the calibre of the 'guardians of the faith', the high priests,
will have sunk to an all-time low, becoming worried, inadequate functionaries
holding in reverence their predecessors who engineered the era of fast growth
and progress. As the need for fundamental change increases, their blocking of
communication of new ideas will become more complete and the established
institutions more closed and rigid. High technology will
grind to a halt and even regress unless we fundamentally alter its underlying
structure. The key problem is that as a body of knowledge matures, that is,
ossifies and becomes decadent, channels of communication are shut off by the
vested, mature groups, in a manner vividly described by Dr Charles McCutchen
(11). Need for a New System of Communication. Clearly, what is needed is a new system of communication between
peers which cannot be strangled in the normal way when the relevant body of
knowledge reaches maturity. The key to the design of an irrepressible
communication system, which we can call a 'Communication Net', is that it
should have no central control point, no single focus whose capture leads to
strangulation. This is how established institutions are easily emasculated.
For instance, control of the staff appointments to a college faculty makes it
easy to destroy the elan vital of that faculty. Control of the reviewing
process of a professional journal makes it easy to suppress further
constructive communication. Similarly the technical conference, with its
small cabal choosing the list of speakers, is easy prey to a decadent clique. I am not saying that the
forces of decadence know that they are strangling their social group's future
- indeed the essence of their decadence is their ignorance of what they are
doing. Generally, they believe they are maintaining standards. We must design a system which retains
the good intent of the established institutions - search after truth, free
communication, appraisal by peers - but does not have their unsound
structure, vulnerable to capture by a career- and prestige- oriented clique.
One might even go so far as to say that more rugged structures are a
prerequisite for the technological revolution, and that the reason for the
failure of high technology to generate vast profit is the strangulation of
its institutions. In principle, a
communication net contains equal individuals, each of whom keeps an up to
date list of articles that he recommends and copies of which he is willing to
supply on request at twice the direct cost involved; 25p would be the kind of
sum that another member of the net would send in advance when requesting one
article. The reason for charging double is that this gives anyone in the net
a surplus of funding which he uses to finance the voluntary sending of
unrequested articles - for instance an important new article, or articles to
someone who is being invited to join the net. A member includes, in
his bibliography of a certain subject, only those articles - by himself and
others - which he thinks make a contribution to the subject. Each subject
will have its own net, and on request a member will supply his bibliographies
to all nets of which he is a member. This will break down interdisciplinary
boundaries, which is one of the main problems in high technology. Since membership of a
professional institution costs about £15 p.a., it will be reasonable to
expect such members to spend about £5 p.a. on communication nets, that is
about twenty communications per year; quite enough in practice. Once the nets are in
operation, a prestige-oriented scientist will aim to belong both to a
professional institution and to a communication net. Wide distribution of
one's article on a net, particularly if it appeared in bibliographies
supplied by a number of eminent experts, would soon become more prestigious
than publication in a professional journal. In job applications it would be
useful to show that one's articles were recommended by top people in the
field - this is a facility unavailable at present. A member of a net will
include in his bibliography a statement of the hours during which he is available
on the telephone. It looks as though two hours per week would be reasonable,
and it might be necessary to restrain calls by only allowing trunk calls on
the net. Xerography and the
direct dial telephone appeared after the philosophical and organizational
structure of professional institutions ossified, and the institutions make no
concessions to such technological advances. Communication nets should be able
to adjust rapidly to new communication developments and opportunities. In a BBC programme it
was estimated that on average a published article was read 1.3 times - that
is, articles are read 30% more often than they are published. I asked the
editor of AFIPS, a leading computing journal, about this, and he said he
thought the figure was probably more like four. Whoever is right, it is clear
that even after suppression of important articles, the dissemination of what
is allowed through by the censors (reviewers) is ineffective and expensive.
It seems eminently economical by comparison to Xerox (say) ten copies of an
article and mail them to those likely to read them. I myself am setting up
at least three nets - one being on electromagnetic theory, a subject totally
suppressed by the journals. Another net that I shall start will be a net giving
advice on what nets exist. Net design can be expected to improve rapidly
during the first ten years or so after their inception, and it is important
that improvements in their structure are widely communicated as they are
received. If communication nets
are successful, it may be possible to use their structure as the basis for
the design of organizations dedicated to other activities than flow of
information. These other activities may develop spontaneously within
communication nets, or alternatively they may be consciously started at a
later date after some experience has been gained with communication nets. References. 1. Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, Martin Brian &
O'Keefe, London, 1972. 2. Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, Sphere, 1972. 3. De Gracia (Editor), The Velikovsky Affair, Sidgwick &
Jackson, 1966. 4. Velikovsky reconsidered, Pensees, May 1972. 5. George R. Couranz and D. F. Wann, Theoretical and
experimental behaviour of synchronizers operating in the metastable region,
IEEE Trans. Computers, C-24, June 1975, pp. 604-15. 6. Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, 1962. 7. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, London, 1962. 8. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
University of Chicago Press, 1962. 9. I. Catt, Computer Worship, Pitman, 1974, p. 125. 10. L. A. Belady and M. M. Lehman, Programming System Dynamics,
IBM Research Report RC 3546, 1971. 11. Charles McCutchen, An Evolved conspiracy, New Scientist, 29
April 1976, p. 225. [Reprinted in I. Catt, Electromagnetic
Theory vol. 1, pub. C.A.M. Publishing 1979, p. 117] Comments made in July 2000 by Ivor Catt. My website is www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ The last part of the article obviously describes the Internet of
today. However, there are differences. The Internet contains a shadowy
central control committee, which we need to obviate. Also, the Internet lacks
any system of validation by respected experts in the field. "Riposte", see my www Home Page, is a more recent
idea. A critical factor is the efficiency of the search engines such
as Yahoo. Ironically, The Kernel Machine (see my website), on which my world
patents have run out, would have enabled the signal to stay above the noise.
Just one such machine owned by Yahoo would increase that company's valuation
from $9 billion to $90 billion. (The whole Kernel development project only
costs £40 million.) However, it is likely that it will never be built.
Society's commitment to limiting each computer to only one processor is very
strong. (The Kernel Machine has one million processors.) Thus, Search will
evermore limit the power of the Internet. The scientific
reception system as a servomechanism - I. Catt. The Journal of Information
Science 2(1980) 307-308. In order to survive, a body of knowledge must attract funding.
'Funding' can mean, quite crudely, supplies of cash. It can also mean the
support of acolytes, or 'researchers', willing to 'work' for nothing and
therefore subsidize the body of knowledge. Instead of money, such people
accept as payment pieces of paper called 'degrees', institution membership,
etc. We shall call this activity 'zero purchase'. To attract funding, the
body of knowledge must stabilize and create an easily recognizable
destination for funding. This destination may be a university faculty or a
scientific institution. Credibility is gained by such an institution if it
owns known leading knowledge brokers, or 'experts'. An individual achieves
expert status by accumulating status symbols, from Nobel prizes down to A
level passes, and by becoming the editor of an obscure journal or by
publishing papers and obscure books. An important distinguishing feature of
virtually all of these status symbols is that they are not directly
profitable at point of purchase. Anticipated fringe benefits are all. For
example, the book with low sales and low royalty counts as a status symbol
for the author, but the profitable best seller does not. By indulging in unremunerative activity helpful to a body of
knowledge, a would-be knowledge broker gains 'credit points' for
'selflessness' and 'scientific honesty'. If he gains enough such credit
points, he may become one of the leading members of the knowledge
establishment and recoup his investment of unpaid toil during the previous
decades. However, most people who run in the 'academic selflessness'
sweepstakes never recoup in cash terms, but have to be satisfied with the periodical
reception of further pieces of paper - M. Sc., Fellow of the Institute, CBE,
etc. When a scientist has attained guru status within an organization
and helps it to attract funding, it is important for him and for the
organization that his guru status should be made secure. He can ensure this
either (1) by continuing to maintain mastery of the evolving body of
knowledge, or more simply (2) through his refereeing and editorial power, by
stabilizing that knowledge and preventing it from developing, or (3) by some
combination of the previous two techniques. In practice, he opts for
stability but garnished with gradual growth at a pace well within his
(possibly by now failing) capabilities. As well as by ownership of gurus, an organization uses its
official journals to establish itself as a proper destination for funding
(and zero purchase). However, in the same way as a salesman tries not to
disturb or confuse the customer when making a sale by throwing doubt on the
merit of his product, journals can only serve their purpose if they contain
no hint that the fount of knowledge may not reside within the organization.
On the other hand, totally bland discourses in its journals (and totally
bland lectures by its resident gurus) pose another threat to an organization's
money supply; the charge that they have gone to sleep, or are old, decadent
and rusty. Discussion and dispute must be seen to occur, and this needs to be
reasonably orchestrated so as to give both the indication of internal
division (or life) in the organization, but not at such a level as to
threaten fragmentation leading to the need for the money source (perhaps a
government committee or charitable foundation) to take sides by deciding
which fragment to finance in the future. Organizations which fail to 'fine
tune' this orchestration have disappeared, so those that survive have
succeeded. A money source (and even more so a 'zero purchase' Ph. D.
student) also has to achieve status by pointing to the status of the
organization or organizations it supports. In engineering terms, any 'life',
or 'dispute', represents positive feedback, a destabilizing factor with
dangerous possibilities, contrasting with the stabilizing effect of the
reiteration of antique ideas. Once, many years ago, I designed a triple Darlington amplifier,
and was surprised to find that in addition to the heavy D.C. current, it
could oscillate at low amplitude and very high frequency, the frequency of
the first, small, drive transistor, with the following two high power, low
speed, transistors acting passively as forward biased conducting Vbe diodes.
This is a good model for the compromise invariably reached by the
organizations milking a body of knowledge in order to secure their continued
funding. The high frequency, superficial, harmless oscillation, or argument,
shows the signs of life needed to reassure the funding sources, while
paradoxically at the same time the large, steady, bland communication lower
down serves to reassure. This is why
[owners of] a body of knowledge will tolerate, and even encourage, argument
and violent disagreement about trivial detail while at the same time blocking
all questioning of fundamentals. To change the metaphor, a body of knowledge
is like a large raft on which all kinds of violent games can and must be
played, but no one must attack the raft on which they stand, because then
everyone would drown in new ideas. Reference. I Catt, The rise and fall of bodies of knowledge (see above). @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 16kanbk7 p41 Appendix 2 Battery drives load via long
transmission line. Mathematical analysis. http://www.ivorcatt.com/1_1.htm [From http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm ] p44 Appendix 3 Letter to the Editor, Electronics World
+ Wireless World, published in May95 What Conspiracy? In a letter to WW in nov81, JL Linsley Hood writes that "censorship
has been effective throughout my own professional career....". He lists
nine authors who could not have been published anywhere but in Wireless
World. As Pete Davis (EW+WWDec94) asserts, there is usually no
conspiracy to suppress heretical views. There is no need of one, except in
some specific instances, because as Charles McCutcheon wrote in the New
Scientist (itself a notorious
suppressor, but not as bad as Nature) on 29 April 1976, p225, "An evolved
conspiracy" suffices. For example, I ran into a discussion in the
interval at the Royal Institution seminar to celebrate the centenary of the
Michelson-Morley experiment. An
American who was setting up an international conference on relativity
discussed with one of the lecturers whether ether buffs should be suppressed
at that conference. He also asked the lecturer how Harold Aspden should be
dealt with. They concluded that if ether believers kept to Establishment
mathematics, they should be allowed to put their case. The American told me he regarded heresy in science much as he
regarded heresy in religion. However, more generally, suppression in science
results from fear that a new idea will disrupt the normal, calm progression
of academic career progress and research funding. Suppression is the norm rather than the exception. Even Maddox,
Editor of Nature, now says he is worried1. With his track record, that is
mind-blowing. Scientists have successfully resorted to false authorship and
false addresses to get into Nature. The most interesting, and most
destructive, is the pandemic suppression of advances relating to the AIDS
epidemic. Other experts, whose names I can supply, specialise in the allied
subject of fraud in science. Stewart and Feder lead this field. My first publication on suppression in science was "The
Rise and Fall of Bodies of Knowledge", published in The Information
Scientist No 12 (4) dec78, pp137-144, where I discuss some of the cases of
suppression which litter science. My article was re-published in my book
"Electromagnetic Theory vol 1", 1979, p117. All of the content of
that book is suppressed, including the point that I raised at the
Michelson-Morley centenary seminar, asking about the apparent paradox in
their experiment that although Michelson-Morley pre-date wave/particle dualism,
both wave and particle have to be assumed at different stages in the
experiment to suppress anomalies. It appears to me that for the experiment to have any value, the
light must act as particles during its travel, because parallel waves would
interfere with each other and ruin the experiment; but it has to act as waves
on arrival in order to determine transit time difference by interference
fringes. In the Michelson-Morley centenary seminar, speaker Professor
Kilmister said, "That has never been mentioned before". It has
never been mentioned since - being suppressed for good reason. To raise such questions, and there are many, is cheating, like
making your pawn move as a combination of knight and bishop in a chess match.
Science today is the manipulation of pre-agreed axioms and old knowledge,
nothing more. Further, the request for more detailed statements of the
axioms, as in my case with Michelson-Morley, is resisted to the death.
Today's science resembles the religious service, which should not be interrupted
by the raising of theological questions. My work on Wafer Scale Integration, described in Wireless World
July 1981, was always rejected for publication by all learned journals, even
though it attracted £16m of funding - including government funding - and
became a widely praised product in the field. Of course, its suppression
reduced the threat that it would upset the research funding being received in
their universities by journal referees for their own approaches to WSI. In
spite of my track record, my new WSI invention, see EW+WW March 1989, for
which I have worldwide patents, cannot be published in any learned journal. In a letter in Wireless World, January 1983, I wrote that during
25 years of work, I have never succeeded in publishing any of my work on e-m
theory in any British learned journal. This ban now extends to 35 years.
However, Davis should particularly think about the refusal of the
Establishment, when approached, to clarify the classical theory they are
defending. Professor M. Pepper FRS and his boss Professor A. Howie FRS, head
of the Cavendish, disagree with each other2 as to where the negative charge
comes from in the Catt Anomaly, EW+WW sep87 They refuse to discuss it with us
or with each other, or to say that the matter is of no importance. Not only
are new theories ignored and suppressed. We also find that the Establishment
is nonchalant about its contradictory versions of old theory. See also the
co-existing, hopelessly contradictory, versions of a TEM wave pointed out in
'The Heaviside Signal', WW july79, which has been totally ignored. Ivor Catt 1 He says that suppression is increasing. "The epoch-making
paper by Francis Crick and James Watson outlining the structure of DNA, which
appeared in nature in 1953, would 'probably not be publishable today', Mr
Maddox laments ...." - Daily Telegraph, 1may89, p18. 2 Howie says it comes from the west. Pepper says that (since
electrons would have to travel at the speed of light,) it cannot come from
the west, and must come from the south. Until this is resolved, we do not
have a classical theory. Before it can exist, a theory has to be stated. p46 Appendix 4 Book Review published in the IEE Journal
"Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal October 1995, p218. Electromagnetism 1 by
Ivor Catt Westfields Press 1994 http://www.ivorcatt.com/em.htm The main body of the text is devoted to transmssion
lines .... There are numerous examples of sloppy argument in the
text. .... The flaws in these arguments are easy to see. .... The author sees an anomaly in the conventional view of
the transmission line. This he calls the 'Catt anomaly' and it is the
starting point of his proposals for an improved theory. The 'Catt anomaly': When a TEM wave travels along a
transmission line, there must, according to conventional theory, be charge
distributions on the surfaces of the conductors behind the wavefront. For a
vacuum dielectric the speed of the wavefront is the speed of light so that,
according to Catt, the charges on the conductors must travel at the speed of
light, which is impossible. This is the 'Catt anomaly'. Since the wavefront
does travel at the speed of light, so do the charges, which then have
infinite mass. It follows that there cannot be charges on the conductor
surfaces and conventional theory must be wrong. The flaw here is the assumption that the charges move
with the wave. whereas in reality they simply come to the surface as the wave
passes, and when it has gone they recede into the conductor. No individual
charge moves with the velocity of the wave. The charges come to the surface
to help the wave go by and then pass the task to other charges further along
the line which are already there and waiting. This is the mechanism of guidance
and containement. There is no anomaly. But Catt goes on. Having removed charges from the
surfaces of his conductors, he can no longer apply Gauss's law and the
displacement current in the wave has to go somewhere. Catt's solution is
typically ingenious: the current must continue as displacement current in
conductors, which are actually dielectrics with a very high permittivity;
there is no conduction current in conductors - ever! Catt's Ockham's Razor
has been wielded to remove conduction current as well as electric charge from
electromagnetic theory. There is of course the small problem of a value for
the permittivity of copper. Catt is equal to the challenge .... the
permittivity of copper must be extremely large. .... .... It is significant that, having introduced his new
theory and abolished charge and current ...., he then proceeds to use these
concepts quite unashamedly in the rest of the book. .... There are many other items in this book which give
cause for concern, for example the false statement that 'The TEM wave has
virtually disappeared from today's electromagnetic theory'. Catt's belief in his own work is clearly sincere, but
this reviewer, after lengthy and careful consideration, can find virtually
nothing of value in this book. B.
LAGO The penultimate paragraph echoes Lago's July79 letter in
Wireless World attacking my article "Displacement Current" in
Wireless World, Dec78 and March79; .... the articles are wrong in
almost every detail and it is vital that this should be clearly demonstrated
before undue damage is done. .... May I suggest that your
readers will be well advised to approach the "further reading" with
caution. Lago has surfaced just twice with his large spanner. I know
nothing of him except that he is at Keele University. p48 Appendix 5 The Betrayal of science
by 'modern physics'. We can classify disciplines as ranging from hard to soft; from
physics, engineering, chemistry, biology; through sociology, psychology; to geography,
history, literature, religion. The hard disciplines are described as
'science'. In a soft discipline, a model, theory or fact is still of value
even if it is imperfect, flawed. The definition of a hard science could be
that it is capable of sustaining a perfect, true, model, theory or fact. For prestige reasons, the soft sciences - sociology and
psychology - try to take on the mantle of the hard sciences by using
'scientific method'; a method of arriving at rigid, 'true', facts, models and
theories. They do this in order to gain access to the prestige and funding
(NASA-type) that the hard sciences command. So we see subjects trying to move
to the left, from soft to hard. Unknown to the soft science careerists, struggling towards the
left, the position of their colleagues at the hard, physics end is
uncomfortable. This is because if a theory can be exactly true, it is also
brittle; more vulnerable to complete overturn by new developments than is the
softer, imperfect theory. Now career advancement is, if anything, a soft
subject, not a hard one. So for career reasons, a traitor group in physics
has developed a soft discipline called 'modern physics'. These careerists
betray science by softening their discipline and so stabilizing the
theoretical status quo and with it their career status quo. An individual's career in hard science is brittle, because it is
based on more absolute, therefore more brittle, theories and models. He then
makes his position more pliable, and his status and career more secure, by
softening the brittleness of his discipline. In doing this he betrays his
discipline in order to protect and further his career. 'Modern physics', a
bastard pseudo-science, is a soft discipline which has been developed by
career physicists unwilling to risk a brittle career in hard science. Meanwhile, the soft sciences (sociology and psychology) trying
to obtain the prestige and funding of the hard sciences are not fearful of
this brittleness. In any case 'modern physicists' are telling them that physics
is soft. The signposts on the road from physics to modern physics - from
hard science to soft - are: uncertainty; (wave-particle) dualism; confusion
of the observer with the observed; relativity; and the use of statistics and
probability. Paradoxically, one of these, statistics, also signposts the
opposite march of the soft sciences towards the hard. - Ivor Catt. First published as a letter in Electronics and
Wireless World, July 1987, p683 178anbk8 p49 Appendix 6 The Conquest of Science We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. - T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. The rise of digital electronics has
highlighted weaknesses in our approach to the fundamentals of electromagnetic
theory. My twenty years of research into digital electronics led me to put
forward a revolutionary theory of electromagnetism, "Theory C", in
Wireless World, December 1980. I concluded as follows; The direct transition from [classical electromagnetism] to
Theory C is similar to the change in combustion theory from phlogiston to
oxidation, but is more difficult. Phlogiston is very similar to electricity,
being a strange 'fluid' which permeates solids. But whereas the oxygen which
'replaced' phlogiston was still within the same body, the energy current
which replaces electricity is not where the electricity was; it is where it
was not. This is a very difficult transition. If the idea of replacing
phlogiston caused mirth at High Table, we have to expect Theory C to generate
widespread hilarity. In the event, Theory C took off like a
lead balloon. It has during the subsequent ten years been totally ignored by
all accredited members of Academia, and I have had no success in my attempts
to publish it in any learned journals. Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning. The scurrilous reason for suppressing
advances in science is easy to outline. Entrenched professors and the like
need a stable knowledge base which will form a sound launching pad to project
them into higher career orbits - FRS, Nobel Prize etc. This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. However, this easy rationalisation for suppression
should not blind us to the other, less immoral justification for suppression,
which results from the present fashion in the Philosophy of Science. Both K. Popper and T. S. Kuhn regret the
majority view in the Philosophy of Science, which Popper calls
"Instrumentalism". What
they now care about, as physicists, is (a) mastery of the mathematical
formalism, i.e. of the instrument, and (b) its applications; and they care
for nothing else. - K.
Popper, Conjectures and Refutations,
R.K.P. 1969, p100. According to the instrumentalist view,
the validity or falsity of a theory has no importance. All that matters is
its usefulness as an instrument for predicting practical results. Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For
Thine is the Kingdom An entrenched academic will value past
practical results, attributing them to traditional theory, and be suspicious
of promises for the future from the new theory. Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life
is very long Given this situation, it is unfortunate
that the "Catt Anomaly" (Electronics and Wireless World Sept.87)
should have been discovered after the discovery of Theory C (WWdec80), because
the instrumentalist justification for
ignoring Theory C does not apply to the Catt Anomaly. Quite the reverse. The
Catt Anomaly discusses matters which an instrumentalist regards as central to
scientific activity - the prediction of practical results by an established
theory. The Catt Anomaly is a question, not a theory; and it is a question
about the operation of the established theory of electromagnetism. To an
instrumentalist, it is of the utmost importance that Classical
Electromagnetism (i.e. Theory N, EWW Oct84) make some statement as to where
the extra electric charge comes from in the lower conductor. If the current
fashion in the Philosophy of Science enables accredited academics to evade
what I regard as some part of their duties, it provides no defence at all for
ignoring the Catt Anomaly. Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For
Thine is the Kingdom If a Reader in Electromagnetism makes no
written comment on the Catt Anomaly, then he is in dereliction of his duty. Now that it has been clearly pointed out
that I rest my case on the Catt Anomaly, we have a clear test of the good
faith of those who are receiving salaries from electromagnetic theory. If there
is no response, then we will have proved that there is no competence in
electromagnetism within academia. The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men. -T.
S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. Basil Bernstein was the first to point
out that knowledge is property with its own market value and trading
relationships, to be defended by the group who administer that body of
knowledge. Today, each group of knowledge Barons defends his demesne, his
body of archaic knowledge, by the cynical use of spurious pseudo-philosophical double-talk and double-think;
wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle and the rest. This is the way Science ends. This is
the way the Renaissance ends. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang
but a whimper. Ivor Catt, January 1993. Additional notes follow,
also written in 1993. ".... I am probably the best known
name in this field, but nobody with accreditation in the subject will admit
to having heard or read my theories, or comment favourably or unfavourably on
my theories or competence. In particular, nobody with accreditation in
electromagnetic theory will admit to having heard of, or comment on, the Catt
Anomaly (EW+WW September 1987), on which I rest my case [Note 1]. As a result, the question of whether
text books and college courses should be modified cannot be addressed" -
Electronics World and
Wireless World June 1993, p469. ".... All those with accreditation
in electromagnetic theory, that is who earn salary or royalty or Nobel Prize
on the back of it, keep their heads down, as usual. Could their students have
a go at them [to] put something in writing? I will give £50 to the first student who
gets a Reader in Electromagnetism or equivalent to comment in writing on the
Catt Anomaly. The editor of this magazine will judge (Not if I can help it - Ed.) the matter
of whether the comment is a serious contribution. - Ivor Catt, EW+WW Aug93,
p677" There was no response to any of this.
It's frozen out. -IC Note 1.
Aspects of my theories were discussed in almost every monthly issue of
Wireless World from 1978 to 1988. However, even those accredited experts who
published responses to my theories; Professor Bell (ex-Reader in Electromangetism
at Birmingham University) and Ken Smith/Joules Watt (University of Kent),
claimed that they had not read them and were not rebutting them. However, the
then editor Tom Ivall confirms that they were commenting on my theories. See
Electronics and Wireless World dec87 p1251; "The solution to the
conundrum, that Bell claims that he was not replying in August 1979 to the
Catt article of December 1978, is that the way the Establishment replies to a
new theory is to restate the old theory, and so his claim arises out of
semantic ambiguity". The Master, Trinity College, 10sep96 Cambridge. Dear Sir Michael Atiyah, I enclose a copy of "The Catt Anomaly", pub.
Westfields Press, 1996. Please instruct Professor M. Pepper FRS to advise as to whether he
finds contradiction between his explanation of the Catt Anomaly, p4, and that
of The Reader in Electromagnetics, University of Bradford, p6. I promise that
his response, and any further comments by him, will appear in future issues
of the book, along with this letter. Yours sincerely, Ivor
Catt. [Second copy sent recorded delivery to
Atiyah on 1oct96, requesting acknowledgement] [Third copy sent to Atiyah 1nov96,
enclosing copy of Gardiner's 1oct96 letter (below)] [Fourth copy sent 2dec96; fifth on 23dec96;
sixth on 20jan97] p54 The Dean of Engineering, 10sep96 Bradford University BD7 1DP (01274 733466 Dear Professor John Gardiner, I enclose a copy of "The Catt
Anomaly", pub. Westfields Press, 1996. Please instruct Neil McEwan, HoD
Electronic and Electrical Engineering, your Reader in Electromagnetics, to
advise as to whether he finds contradiction between his explanation of the
Catt Anomaly, p6, and that of Professor M. Pepper FRS, Trinity College and
The Cavendish, p4. I promise that his response, and any further comments by
him, will appear in future issues of the book, along with this letter. Yours sincerely, Ivor Catt. [Second copy sent recorded delivery to
Gardiner on 1oct96, requesting acknowledgement] From Prof. Gardiner 1oct96 Dear Mr. Catt, Thank you for your letter,
received today by recorded delivery, regarding the copy of 'The Catt
Anomaly', which you sent to me in September. I can confirm that this has now
been forwarded to Dr. Neil McEwan for his comments. I will get in touch with
Dr. McEwan and request that he contacts you direct regarding his response. Yours sincerely, Professor J.G. Gardiner To Professor Gardiner From Ivor Catt 1nov96. [repeated
16nov96, 23dec96, 20jan97] I have not heard from McEwan. Yours, Ivor
Catt p55 The log-jam identified. To the Chief Executive, IEE 5/11/95
Second copy sent 29/4/04 (see p71) Dear Dr Williams, The Catt
Anomaly The enclosed letters, all written by IEE officers,
show disarray in the IEE. You may recall that matters started with Catt's
letter to you highlighting the discrepancy between Bradford (McEwan) and
Cambridge (Pepper). Secker and the IEE backed Cambridge, until suddenly on 25
Oct. 95 they switched to backing Bradford. On 26 Oct. 1995 your representative Secker
disqualified himself from the matter. I am certain that Catt only wants the IEE to fulfil
its role as outlined by Secker on 4 Sep. 95 and "promote the general
advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and
to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects".
This performance of its stated duties is also requested by Miller OBE,
Simmonds FIEE, Turin (subject of BBC Horizon Program on 27 Nov. 95), Ivall
(former Editor of Wireless World) - an IEE Journal announces forthcoming discussion;
discussion occurs; agreed summary of discussion is reported in an IEE
Journal. Please advise if financial considerations are
restraining the IEE from doing its duty. Yours faithfully
[signed] Eugen Hockenjos, B.Sc., DipHE. encl.
Hamlin/Miller 9nov95; Secker/Ivall 25oct95; Secker/Catt 4sep95; Secker/Metzer
19sep95; Secker/Simmonds 26oct95; Wilson/Simmonds 9nov95; Turin/Williams
15nov95 The
silence is deafening. p56 Ivor Catt, 121
Westfields, St. Albans
AL3 4JR, England. 01727
864257 +44 1727 864257 email ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk website www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ 31dec99 Dear Sirs, The Catt Anomaly by I. Catt, pub. Westfields Press, 1996, ISBN 0 906340 13 6 (To exclude the possibility of personality problems, I have not
until now communicated with the main parties direct.) The book with the above title was published in 1996. It is
available on my website, and there is a copy in Trinity College Library,
Cambridge. Since then, the Lynch-Catt paper on the problem was given at the
IEE Group S7 Conference on 10 July 1998. This paper was later published in
the Conference Proceedings, and is available on my website, (the key diagram,
p3 of the book The Catt Anomaly, being enclosed herewith). Your responsibility in this matter is discussed in the book,
which is about to be re-issued. You are invited to send me your comments for inclusion,
unedited, in the new edition of the book. Your comments will also go onto my
website. You may also want to avail yourself of "Riposte",
which is explained on my website Home Page. This enables you to have a
hyperlink from anywhere on my website, to a website of your choosing, to
rebut any assertion made on my website. You may or may not wish to respond to these specific questions; 1. Is the Westerner view (Howie, McEwan) incompatible with the
Southerner view (Pepper)? 2. Are you a Westerner or a Southerner? 3. Should a conference be convened to discuss The Catt Anomaly?
(See p55 of my book.) If so, who should organise it, who finance it, and who
should be guest speakers? (I note that G De Santillana, in The Crime of
Galileo, pub. 1955, writes that the main mistake in handling Galileo [the
earth moves] was to approach it administratively, which is your mistake over
The Catt Anomaly. ".... if a decision had to be taken, a council was in
order. To deal with the question on an administrative level [Note 1] was not
only an arbitrary procedure; it was an inexcusable mistake, which is the
necessary premise to the graver mistake of the trial sixteen years later...."
- De Santillana, p137) [Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter, pub. Fourth Estate
1999, is very good. - Ivor Catt, july01.] 4. Should Ivor Catt have approached the matter differently, and
if so, how? How should he approach the matter now? Best wishes, Ivor Catt cc; Professor JG Gardiner, Dean of Engineering, University of
Bradford, BD7 1DP, UK Dr. N.J. McEwan, Reader in Electromagnetics, University of
Bradford, BD7 1DP, UK Professor M Pepper FRS, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE Professor A. Howie FRS, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE Professor Broers, Vice Chancellor, Cambridge University. Professor Atiyah, Emeritus Master, Trinity College, Cambridge Professor A Sen, Master, Trinity College, Cambridge The Secretary, IEE, Savoy Place, Londo, WC2R 0BL Professor Secker, IEE, Savoy Place, London WC2R 0BL James W Mink, IEEE, Chairman MTT-15, North Carolina State
University,Box 7911, Raleigh, NC 27695-7911 Robert T Wangemann, Managing Director,
Technical Activities, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, PO Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ
08855-1331 Note 1. ".... Dr. Mink generously took his personal time to
provide you with a reply. With respect to the views of Professor Pepper and
Dr. McEwan, he stated that "I am in general agreement with their assessment
of the 'Catt Anomaly'." We do not
believe it to be appropriate to again search out a volunteer to review
another volunteer's reply." - RT Wangemann.... 5feb97. Dr. P T Warren, The Executive Secretary,
The Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG "Two Fellows of the Royal Society,
Professor A Howie and Professor M Pepper, give diametrically opposed versions
of a rudimentary aspect of electromagnetic theory, the subject central to
their expertise which led to their appointment as Fellows of the Royal
Society ...." - IC to Dr PT Warren, Royal Soc, 24sep95 p58 Further Reading Political-sociological References on p37. Caton, Hiram, Truth Management in the Sciences Truth management in the Sciences. Search
(Australia) vol. 19 no. 5/6, sep/nov88, 242-244. On my website ibid., Product Control in the Truth
Industry. Search vol. 20, jan/feb89, pp24-26 ibid., letter to Catt, 15mar96,
available from Catt. Catt, I., The deeper hidden message in
Maxwell's equations, Electronics & Wireless World, dec85. Also A
mathematical rake's progress, jan86. ibid., The conquest of thought, EWW,
dec87. ibid., The conquest of truth, EWW,
jan88. Hoyle, Fred, et al., Our Place in the
Cosmos, pub. Dent 1993. See ch.1 in the 1996 Phoenix issue, p7; "On the
tendency of human societies to depart indefinitely from the objective
truth." Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, pub. Univ. of Chicago Press 1970, pp109, 132, 148;
"....talk through each other...." repeated three times MacRoberts and MacRoberts, The
Scientific Referee System, Speculations in Science and Technology, vol. 3,
no. 5, 1980, pp573-578. Polanyi, M, Personal Knowledge, pub. RKP
1969, pp146/8. Popper, K.R, Conjectures and
Refutations, pub. RKP 1963, p97. The Science of Galileo and its new betrayal.
cf this book, p48. Theocharis et al., Where science has
gone wrong, Nature, vol. 329, pp595-598, 15oct87. Technical Catt, I. Maxwell's equations revisited,
Wireless World, mar80. ibid., The hidden message in Maxwell's
equations, Electronics & Wireless World, nov85. Also see dec85, jan86. ibid., Electromagnetism 1, pub.
Westfields, 1994. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ To The Editor, IEE Electronics &
Communication Engineering Journal. 5oct96 [Second copy sent 11nov96, asking for acknowledgement of letter. Receipt was duly acknowledged by a card on 12nov96] Dear Sir, I enclose a review copy of The Catt
Anomaly. Your journal reviewed my previous book
in oct95, see enclosed copy of that review. In its second column it referred
to the Catt Anomaly. Yours
sincerely, Ivor Catt [31dec99.
No review appeared.] [3oct02. Still no review. IC] @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 1caanbk9 p59 IEE
Science, Education and Technology IEE The history of electrical
engineering 26th Weekend Meeting 10-12 July 1998 University of East Anglia DIGEST OF PAPERS
PRESENTED Organised by Professional
Group D7 (History of technology) HEE/26 LIST OF CONTENTS Introduction (Dr Colin
Hempstead and Mr Johannes Hock) 1 Inventiveness and the thought processes of the engineer: Mr Jack Bridge 2 A difficulty in electromagnetic theory Dr Arnold Lynch and Mr Ivor
Catt 3 4 …. 12 …. …. P2/1 A
DIFFICULTY IN ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY by Arnold Lynch and Ivor Catt We seem to have two different systems of electrical theory
almost but not quite independent of each other. The difficulty has existed
for more than a hundred years but appeared unimportant until the last twenty
years or so. …. …. …. P2/2 Now we describe a problem which combines the two
types of theory and shows the difficulty mentioned in the title of this
paper. It arose about twenty years ago when fast-operating silicon chips were
connected to one another. We idealise the problem slightly. Imagine a coaxial
transmission line terminated by a matched load at the far end; and for
simplicity let it be evacuated, and of very low resistance. Apply a step
voltage to its input; a wave travels along it with the velocity of waves in
free space. So after a time a current begins to flow in the terminating load;
that is, electrons start to move through it. The problem is - where did they
come from? Not from the input, because electrons have finite mass and so they
cannot travel at the velocity of waves in free space. (Remember that we are
considering a step voltage, not an alternating one.) One of us sent the problem to various people who
might have been expected to provide an answer, and the responses were mainly
of two kinds (ref. 1): (1) that the wave causes radial movements in the line
as it passes over them, and that electrons displaced in this way at the far
end make up the current; or (2) that electrons move along the line, with
velocity less than the wave, but push other electrons on in front of them,
keeping pace with the wave. This problem was mentioned in the Institution's
Wheatstone Lecture last December. The lecturer said that electrons in a metal
travel only slowly but that they can transmit a fast electromagnetic wave by
"nudging" their neighbours ("nudging" was his word for
it). Our comments on this are: each atom in a metal contributes a few free
electrons, so there are rather more electrons than atoms and therefore they
are spaced from each other by a little less than the spacing of the atoms -
say about a tenth of a nanometre. The size of an electron is not known, but
it is presumably much smaller than an atomic nucleus, which is about a
millionth is a nanometre. That is, the electrons are spaced apart by more
than 100,000 times their diameter. So they cannot deliver a nudge without
moving, and they cannot move instantaneously because of their mass. …. …. REFERENCES 1. I.
Catt, "The Catt Anomaly" (Westfields Press, St. Albans), 1996 2. A. C.
Lynch, "Half the electron", Engineering Science and Education
Journal, 6, pp 215-220 (1997) Dr. Arnold Lynch is an Honorary Research Fellow in
the Dept. of Electronic Engineering, University College, London;
correspondence can be addressed to him at 8 Heath Drive, Potters Bar, Herts,
EN6 1EH p61 At the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), London, Dr.
Arnold Lynch gave the evening centenary lecture on J J Thomson's discovery of
the electron. When I asked him why, he replied that JJ had told him about it.
Arnold is now in his eighties. The attendance for his evening lecture was
around 200 or 300. The other four lectures that day drew audiences of around
20. Various sources tell me that Arnold's reputation in the IEE is
very high. The IEE always refused to publish anything on Catt Spiral, a
computer invention which was developed by Sinclair and led to product in the field
in 1989. After it had attracted investment totalling £16 millions, the IEE
did publish commentaries on the project by their own staff. All the same, the
IEE continued its 30 year embargo on any publication by Catt, or any
discussion in its journals of Catt's theories of electromagnetism. Catt
continued to not exist in the field of electromagnetism (e-m). Recently, Lynch said that the Catt e-m had not been treated
properly. His interest centred on the Catt Anomaly. This is an anomaly in
classical e-m which I tried to publish during the past ten years after my own
theories had been suppressed for thirty years by the IEE. He proposed a joint
Lynch-Catt paper, and I agreed. As the pressure increased on IEE officials,
they told him that they were desperate for the paper to pass their referee
system. They promised him that it would be very thoroughly reviewed, and that
if rejected, reasons for rejection would be given. In the event, it was
rejected and reasons for rejection refused. Lynch then suggested to his friend Dr. Colin Hempstead, Chairman
of IEE Professional Group S7 (History of technology), that a joint Lynch-Catt
paper be given at their annual conference; "The history of electrical
engineering", on 10july98. This was done, and the paper was then published
in the Digest of Papers Presented (HEE/26) Now see IEE paper.. The paper
outlines the Catt Anomaly, and its first reference is the book (available on
this website) of the same name which lambasts the IEE for its obstructive
behaviour during the last third of a century. (Note that this is the least
appropriate section of the IEE in which to announce state of the art advances
in e-m theory. When I pointed this out to my friend Robert Whiston, he
replied; "Of course. It's all in Machiavelli." Lynch tells me that he will continue to try to get a paper
published in an IEE journal. [july00. No success yet.] july00. Quote from p12 of this book; Also we note Secker
25oct95; "'The reason that the Catt Anomaly has been around so long is
that the 'experts' have not thought it of sufficient standing to take the
trouble to demolish it!" When Dr. J. C. Williams blew away, Secker
became Acting Top Dog in the IEE. Does he think the Catt Anomaly has gained
sufficient standing yet to be worth demolishing? What is demolishing whom? p62 McEwan's Snow Job 18jan00. McEwan, after four years
incommunicando (he only ever wrote once, in 1996, under instruction from is
boss, and then ignored all further communications from third parties and
instructions from his boss to write again), now does a snow job, garnished
with the 'confidential' card, and salted with grovels to Pepper FRS, a
Southerner. [McEwan should have grovelled to Pepper FRS's boss Howie FRS,
who, like McEwan, is a Westerner. I.C.1feb00] Dear Mr Catt, I am offering a reply to your recent correspondence. I
do hope you will accept that this is entirely friendly and disinterested, and
that I have honestly tried to explain the problem. I'd just like to first make a few personal comments
about myself. [About 600 'confidential' words erased by I Catt.] ......... I hope you will understand therefore that I simply
can't afford to get involved in a lot more correspondence on this issue, but
I offer below some thoughts which I hope will help. .......... I must say that I don't think you are doing anything
useful by stirring up issues of north versus south, east etc. I will trust to your integrity to treat my above
comments, especially about my own circumstances, as totally confidential. [See p55 of the book "The Catt Anomaly", on
this website, quoting Catt's 10sep96 letter to McEwan's boss; "I promise
that his [McEwan's] response, and my further comments on him, will appear in
future issues of this book." Should I now break my promise? These
'scientists' always play the 'confidential' card.] Now let me make a few comments for public consumption: ********************************************************* "I previously offered to Mr Catt a simple
explanation of how the charge is conveyed along the transmission line. I used
an uniform array of N electrons and N positive ions spaced out along a
section of line of length L. I then pointed out that if we push in one extra
electron at the left of this section, and redistribute the N + 1 electrons
uniformly over that section, there appears a net unbalanced charge of one
unit which is distributed nearly uniformly over that section, but none of the
charges involved had to move a distance greater than L/N within the time it
took to redistribute the charges. The large values of N actually involved
explains why the particle velocity really is so small. This is the gist of my
explanation which I won't repeat in detail as I assume Mr Catt has already
included it and will recap it as necessary. I still stand by this as a basic explanation of how
the charge is carried along the line. As I explained before, I think the
anomaly only appears to exist because there is a confusion about the identity
of the charges involved. The charge which actually supports the line voltage
is actually a very slight unbalance between very large densities of positive
and negative charges which are already in any given section of line before
the propagaing wave reaches them. (Note the italics!) My description shows that a pattern of unbalanced charge
can move far more rapidly than the individual charges involved. (I could make
the obvious analogy with sound waves; after 1 second I hear the sound from a
lightning stroke 340 metres away but it is perfectly obvious that none of the
atmospheric molecules that were around the original discharge have arrived at
my ears. Putting it a bit facetiously, I don't smell any ozone at the same
time as the sound arrives and there certainly aren't any 340 m/sec winds
blowing round my head. But surely the idea of particles transmitting stress
to other particles is already clear enough.) I would like to emphasise that my description using N
charges in a line was a deliberately simplified one intended to get over the
key concept without a lot of detail. This leads me to my next point. I am prepared to take slight issue with Prof Pepper -
again in a completely friendly way I hope - about the main component of the
velocity of the charges. My recollection is that he agreed with me that the
required charges are already in the section of line to start with, but I
think he implied that the charges move laterally outward to generate the
surface charge as the wave moves over them. I would assert that the main
component of particle velocity is longitudinal. In fact it is easy to show that the current flow must
have both lateral and longitudinal components, so I agree with Prof Pepper
that there are lateral charge movements but I do assert that the longitudinal
velocity components are the larger ones. We can go into this in a little more
detail: The surface charges on the metallic conductors exist
only in a very thin surface layer. Classical theory doesn't give any
indication of the thickness of this layer. To do it properly means solving
the wave mechanical equations for the states of the electrons near the
surface. This I am not competent to do. However, this distance scale is
obviously an atomic one. Within the conductor deeper than the surface charge
layer, we will find there is no unbalanced charge density. We now have to
introduce the concept of skin depth. The current flow along the conductor
occurs within a layer near the surface whose thickness is the skin depth.
Because the skin depth varies inversely as the square root of frequency, we
are obliged to consider individual frequency components in the propagating
pulse. However the skin depth is very much greater than the surface charge
layer thickness up to very high frequencies, as (for copper) it is about 9 mm
at 50 Hz and about 2 microns at 1 GHz. The implication of this is that the moving electrons
must have both transverse and longitudinal components of velocity. They have
to arrive at the surface of the metal, yet flow within a much thicker region.
To arrive at the surface, they must, as Prof Pepper says, move sideways. However,
if they only moved sideways, there would still not be any net charge
imbalance in any small section of line. So here I am saying that Prof
Pepper's description is incomplete, there have to be longitudinal motions as
well. You can imagine the lines of the current flow field (at a single
frequency) as like semi-loops in which one end of the loop starts on a patch
of positive surface charge, bends round very sharply within the skin depth,
then goes longitudinally along and terminates on a negative surface charge
patch. I emphasise again, however, that no individual charge originally at
one end of the loop has to arrive at the other end; only small individual
velocities are involved. (This can be put a bit more formally using some
mathematics. Because there can be no unbalanced charge density within the
conductor, the current flow field must have zero divergence, i.e. if we use
an x - axis along the cable axis and a y - axis normal to the conductor
surface, then we must have dUsubx)/dx + dUsuby/dy = 0. Here Usubx and Usuby
are the x and y components of the current density flow vector. Now the first
term is certainly non - zero because the velocity does exist on the left of
the wave front and not on the right of it. This implies that Usuby can't be
zero. I include this only as shorthand for the benefit of those who are
familiar with this kind of maths, but it isn't essential.) For the high frequency components within the
propagating pulse, the ratio of the longitudinal velocity components to the
transverse ones will be the approximate ratio of the wavelength of the guided
wave to the skin depth. For components at sufficiently low frequencies where
the skin depth becomes larger than the conductor transverse dimensions , the
corresponding ratio will be of the order of the ratio of the wavelength of
the wave to the transverse dimension of the appropriate conductor. I believe
that in all virtually all practical cases this ratio is very much greater
than unity. I am sure Prof Pepper will not be in the least offended
by my raising this contention, and anyway I am quite prepared to be shot down
about it if I myself am wrong. Within the approximations of the classical equations,
the problem of the step wave propagating along a line made of conductors of
finite conductivity can in principle be solved numerically using the
finite-difference time domain method. I am not certain that the software that
is actually around can cope well with the different length scales of the skin
depth and the inter-conductor spacings. I don't have time to look into this,
but if anyone else would like to have a go (or maybe even has done it already
and I am not aware of it) I believe they will be able to demonstrate a
current flow field similar to what I described: I think it will show almost
purely longitudinal velocity components, uniformly distributed across the
conductors, a long way behind the wave front, and transverse components that
increase as you approach the propagating wave front. I have noted Mr Catt's comments where he says that one
explanation of he wave transmission
(and I believe it is correct) is that the electrons transmit the wave by each
one "nudging" the next. [Nothing to do with Catt. Catt's co- author
Dr. Lynch said this idea was presented by the lecturer at the IEE 1997
Wheatstone Lecture.] The point he [Lynch] raises here is that the spacing
between the electrons is very much greater than the radii of the particles. I
hope I am correct in interpreting his problem as: "how do they nudge
each other if they are a long way from touching?" I have to say that I
believe this is a total red herring. The particles don't have to touch each
other to transmit the force; if you push one electron closer to another, the
second one gets a nudge because the electrostatic repulsion acting on it
increases. The increase, however, is not felt instantaneously by the second,
but only after the time taken for light to travel from one to the other. (At this point we could now get into several very
interesting further questions, but they are really sidelines as far as the
resolution of the Catt anomaly is concerned. One is the question of what is
meant by the radius of the electron. One possible definition is the radius at
which the electrostatic field ceases to obey the inverse square law. There is
also a classical definition based on the electromagnetic scattering cross
section, and a quantum radius which I don't understand. I don't believe these
quantities are connected, but I would be most interested in the comments of
expert physicists. Another fundamental problem is what keeps particles
together under their internal repulsion. This certainly isn't dealt with by
Maxwell's equations, as they stand, but neither is it a problem for
explaining the wave transmission problem. Again I simply don't know what the
present state of knowledge is about these points, and would be interested to
hear about recent developments from experts who are up to date. At extremely
high frequencies, there are indeed effects due to the finite rate of
acceleration of electrons in conductors under applied force. I believe the
characteristic frequency at which this becomes important is the plasma
frequency of the metal, normally somewhere in the X-ray region, I think.
Finally a still higher level of description is to treat the electron movement
using quantum mechanics.) To show there is a problem with an existing physical
theory, you either have to show that is logically self-inconsistent or that
is fails to agree with experimental observations. My conclusion is that,
although Mr Catt's problem does provide many interesting exercises in
applying the available theories, it still doesn't manage to meet my criteria
for showing that there is a problem with them." **************************************************** (end of "public" material) To conclude, I hope you will think carefully about my
comments and accept them as my best and most honest attempt to explain the
issue, within the limits of my knowledge. [Approx. 200 more 'confidential' words erased by
Ivor Catt] Very best wishes, Neil McEwan [18jan00] p66 Co-author Dr. A. Lynch to
Ivor Catt, 30jan00 Dear Ivor, My physics dates back to
the 1940's, since when I have usually called myself an electrical engineer.
But I think the spacing of atoms in a solid or liquid is about 0.3nm, and the
size of an atomic nucleus is less by a factor of thousands, so that energetic
particles are able to pass through a thin film of solid with few collisions.
The size and shape of an electron are, I believe, unknown. McEwan discusses
the "nudging" sensibly, but he appears to assume that the electron
is spherical - otherwise why "the" radius? .... .... .... .... There are, however,
no doubts about J.J.'s discovery [which J.J. described to young Arnold Lynch,
now aged 83, - I.C.]: electric charge is associated with inertia, and this is
what matters for your Anomaly. Yours sincerely, Arnold
Lynch Comment by Ivor Catt,
1feb00. Lynch first pointed out in our joint IEE
paper that electrons are too far apart to nudge each other. Here, he points
out that they must be far apart, not only in diameter, but also in their
power to influence events, with large unaffected spaces between, "so
that energetic particles are able to pass through a thin film of solid with few
collisions." He is moving towards the suggestion that if electrons
nudged each other, then X-ray photography would not work. - I.C. 1feb00. "Encyclopaedia
Britannica 1910, vol 9, p237 "Electron .... The
size of the electron is to that of an atom roughly in the ratio of a pin's
head to the dome of St. Paul's cathedral. .... it has been suggested that its
inertia is wholly electrical ...." The electron has long arms, and nudges,
not with its shoulders, but with its finger tips. – I Catt 2002 p67 From Sir Andrew Huxley, OM,
FRS [Nobel prizewinner, ex
Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.] 14may00 Dear Mr. Catt, I much enjoyed our
conversation at dessert in Trinity a week ago. Thank you for your letter.
Before I received it, I got your book [The Catt Anomaly] out of the library
at Trinity. My reactions to the main point, as stated on your p. 3, are as
follows. It seems to me that an anomaly
such as you describe might arise if the two-conductor waveguide were capable
of transmitting a step function some orders of magnitude sharper than the one
with a rise time of 1 ns as you discuss [I do not. IC].
For a given amplitude of step, the peak current will be inversely
proportional to the rise time. [It
is independent of the rise time. IC.]
I am not familiar with quantitative aspects of conduction in metals but
electrons might have to travel with the speed of propagation of the wavefront
if the risetime were perhaps (10) -15 sec, involving Fourier components at
frequencies comparable to those of visible light. However, such a wavefront
cannot be conducted along a metallic waveguide for the reasons explained by
Neil McEwan in the part of his letter that you quote on p. 8, middle, i.e.
the wavefront becomes smoothed out because the high-frequency components are
attenuated, and your original proposition is based on a situation that cannot
exist. As I said, I am not familiar with the quantitative aspects of the
relevant theory but I suppose that the immediate reason why the waveguide
cannot transmit these very high frequencies is the finite resistance of the
wires, but if this were negligible then transmission would fail precisely
because it would require electrons to travel at speeds approaching the
velocity of light and, as you point out, this is impossible because their energy
would approach infinity. With a risetime of the order
of 1 ns such as you discuss [I do not. IC], the currents are several orders
of magnitude smaller than what would be carried if all the electrons moved at
the speed of light, and the situation is correctly described both by Prof.
Pepper in the second paragraph of p. 5 of your book and by Neil McEwan on p.
8 of your book., i.e. the huge number of free electrons present in the metal
need only to move at a small fraction of the speed of light to carry the
current. I confess that I find it
unsatisfactory that you dismiss Pepper's discussion as "drivel" (p.
5, bottom) and make no attempt to explain what you think is wrong with it. An analagous situation exists
in nerve conduction, the field in which I worked for many years with Alan
Hodgkin. The best-understood nerve fibre ..... .... .... .... .... Yours sincerely, Andrew Huxley. p68 Ivor Catt,
121 Westfields, St. Albans
AL3 4JR, etc 27may00 second copy sent 2july00 Sir Adrian Huxley, OM, FRS, Manor Field, 1 Vicarage Drive, Grantchester, Cambridge, CB3 9NG Dear Sir Andrew Huxley, The Catt Anomaly Thank you for your letter dated 14may00. I quote from your letter; "I
confess that I find it unsatisfactory that you dismiss Pepper's discussion as
'drivel' (p. 5, bottom) and make no attempt to explain what you think is
wrong with it." I would refer you to page 11, bottom, of
the same book The Catt Anomaly; ".... Pepper, (defying Gauss's Law by)
producing charge from the south from inside the conductor like a rabbit from
a hat.... The Westerner view could have been brazened out, .... but ....
Pepper's ingenious but mad Southerner view could not." According to Gauss's Law [see below],
rearrangement of charge already in the relevant section of the conductor
could not enable it to terminate more electric flux than heretofore. Movement
of charge ".... at right angles to the direction of propagation of the
wave .... " (Pepper, p5,) can have no bearing on the Catt Anomaly. The growing scandal which is The Catt
Anomaly has nothing to do with me. McEwan pontificated on it once only in
apr1995, and then went incommunicado for five years. Pepper pontificated on
it once only in 1993, and then went permanently incommuncado. I never
communicated with either of them. I first commented on their behaviour in
dec1996, in my book The Catt Anomaly. Since, initially, Secker of the IEE
backed Pepper the Southerner, the disagreement between these two men, who
continue to earn salary for teaching this material, needs to be addressed.
Nobody, including the IEE, has deigned to comment on the request written by
Hockenjos on 25.11.95. (p55, The Catt Anomaly.) Why not? How does science
advance? Best wishes, Ivor Please regard material to follow on Gauss's Law, as Appendices to
this letter. ".... Gauss' theorem, which states
that the outward flux of D from any closed surface is equal to the enclosed
charge." - G W Carter, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Leeds Univ.,
The Electric Field in its Engineering Aspects, pub. Longmans 1954/59, p311. "Gauss' law says that the net
number of lines emerging through a closed surface depends only on the total
charge surrounded by that surface ...." - A F Kip, Professor of Physics,
Berkeley, Calif., Fundamentals of Electricity and Magnetism, pub. McGraw-Hill
1962, p32. Appendix. 2june00 S Ramo, J R Whinnery, J van Duzer,
Fields and Waves in Communication Electronics, 3rd Edn., pub. Wiley 1994. p6 ".... electric flux out of a
closed surface = charge enclosed (3) This is Gauss's law .......... It is
thus a most general and important law." p129 "Maxwell's Equations in
Large-Scale Form [circular integral] D.ds = [volume
integral] [rho] dV (1) .... .... "Equation (1) is .... Gauss's law
.... the electric flux out of a closed surface at a given instant is equal to
the charge enclosed by the surface at that instant." S R H Hoole and P R P Hoole, A Modern
Short Course in Engineering Electromagnetics, pub. OUP 1996 p80 "The Divergence Theorem or
Gauss's Theorem [triple integral] V.AdR = [double integral]
A.dS .... The divergence theorem is intuitively
obvious." p118 "Gauss's Theorem Gauss's Theorem for electric fields is
one of the most fundamental in the study of electricity .... [p119] The
advantages of working with such a theorem are readily apparent
...." I Catt, Electromagnetism 1, pub.
Westfields Press 1994, p1 Battery and resistor. Steady state. We start with a conventional view of a
battery with voltage V connected via two uniform perfect conductors to a resistor
R (Fig.1). A steady current flows round the circuit, through battery,
conductors and resistors. Ohm's Law tells us that the voltage equals the
current multiplied by the resistance. Therefore the current is I = V/R. Every
point on the surface of the upper conductor is at potential V, and every
point on the surface of the lower conductor is at a zero potential. The space
between the two conductors, shown in cross section (Fig. 2), is filled by
tubes of electric displacement D. Each tube of electric displacement
terminates on unit positive charge on the upper conductor and unit negative
charge on the lower conductor. This is Gauss's Law, which later became one of
Maxwell's Equations. A Einstein writing in a book by Schilpp,
P. A.; Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, pub. Library of Living
Philosophers, 1949, p62. "The special theory of relativity
owes its origin to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field." p70 Footnote So the disgraceful saga continues. There
seems to be no limit to the damage that institutions are willing to sustain,
and the damage they are willing to inflict on society, before doing anything
about the Catt Anomaly. Again, I would emphasise that technical incompetence
in the I.E.E., Cambridge Unversity, the I.E.E.E. and elsewhere does not
prevent these institutions from administering a conference to sort the matter
out. However technically incompetent, it is obvious that any one of these
institutions could administer the conference. That is obviously what is
needed. Ivor Catt 6th July, 2000 ivorcatt@electromagnetism.demon.co.uk www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ [For reasons of priority, the following two items, intended for
future edns. of my books Electromagnetism 1 and Electromagnetics 1, were
added to the 2001 edition of this book] Irrelevant notes. re my 1994 book Electromagnetism 1. Electron. p6 We get rid of the outer sphere, and the capacitance does not
fall to zero. (If r=1cm, C=1pF) We then reduce the radius of the inner sphere towards zero. The
energy, or voltage, increases towards infinity. However, to avoid infinity,
we scale down the energy current field as we do so, so that when r reaches
zero, the total energy (i.e. total charge) remains finite. Gravity. p8 Bring two crystals (Fig. 20) up towards each other. "When a
pulse attempts to exit from a transmission line it reflects without
inversion." (col.2, p8) While outside, finding it is hedged between two
crystals, it travels a short distance sideways in the space between the
crystals. It then reflects without inversion. This superposition of two
pulses of the same polarity results in a positive force. This is gravity,
which is always positive. [notes end.] p71 From: Hayden Taylor
<htaylor@iee.org> Cambridge University
Engineering Society, Monday, August 13, 2001
11:17 PM Subject: Offer to speak Dear Mr Catt, I understand
from Maral Shamloo that you have very kindly offered to lecture to our
Society about electromagnetic theory. [You
could say that. http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/07091.htm Ivor Catt 14aug01.]
The research associated with the Catt Anomaly certainly sounds extremely
absorbing, and I think that many of the people studying in the Department of
Engineering would be interested to learn more about it. I would suggest 15
November, but if you would rather come on another date then please do suggest
one that would be convenient for you. I think that a weekday other than a Friday would be best. I would
anticipate that your talk would begin between 6 and 7pm. Most Engineering
Society talks last for about 40 minutes, and tend to be followed by 10 to 15
minutes of questions. Afterwards, there would be a buffet dinner when those
who had attended the talk would be able to meet you informally. The talk
would be held in a lecture theatre equipped to project from a laptop
computer, 35mm slides, a video cassette, or acetate foils. The Society would
of course be willing to reimburse your travel expenses. I do hope that we can
arrange this talk. With best wishes; Hayden Taylor, Trinity College Cambridge CB2 1TQ T 07879 637 052 E
htaylor@iee.org Hayden Taylor, I am happy to accept that
date and time. Please point potential attenders to the book "The Catt
Anomaly", which is at
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm and in Trinity Library.
I have today mailed to you two copies of my 1994 book "Electromagnetism
1". I would sell further copies through you before 15nov01 at half price
(+p&p) in an attempt to get some of it read before 15nov01. It would be
helpful if you managed to get attenders to pre-study the two books. Further,
it will be very helpful if some attenders had read about the disappearance of
the TEM wave, see http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/17136.htm . You
need to give academics every possible opportunity to be able to fault my
talk. Also, please make great effort to get them to attend I would like to
invite you as my guest to the 15sep01 conference that I chair; http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/2001.htm
(The above email could be circulated by you by email and in paper form.) Ivor Catt Dear Mr Catt, Thank you
for your email and telephone message: I am very pleased that you are able to
speak to the Engineering Society and I look forward to your talk with
enthusiasm. Thank you also for sending the copies of "Electromagnetism
1", and the "Sunday Times" article. I am sure that we can
arrange for your talk to be successfully publicised in the ways you have
suggested. I shall be out of the country for the next week, but after I
return I shall be in touch again to discuss details, in particular connecting
the Acorn Master to the Internet while you are lecturing. With best wishes, Hayden Taylor. 19aug01 |
|
To the Chief Executive,
IEE 25/11/95 Savoy Place, London WC2R
0BL This second copy sent 29april 2004. Dear Sir, The Catt
Anomaly For an outline of the
problem here discussed, the disarray in the IEE, please go to p61 of the book
The Catt Anomaly in your IEE library, shelf no. 537.8. It is also at www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm . This letter is at pp55 and 71. You may recall that
matters started with Catt's letter to the IEE Chief Executive highlighting
the discrepancy between Bradford ( McEwan ) and Cambridge ( Pepper ). Secker
and the IEE backed Cambridge, until suddenly on 25 Oct. 95 they switched to
backing Bradford. On 26 Oct. 1995 your
representative Secker disqualified himself from the matter. I am certain that Catt
only wants the IEE to fulfil its role as outlined by Secker on 4 Sep. 95 and
"promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering
and their applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and
ideas on these subjects". This performance of its stated duties is also
requested by Miller OBE, Simmonds FIEE, Turin (subject of BBC Horizon Program
on 27 Nov. 95), Ivall (former Editor of Wireless World) - an IEE Journal
announces forthcoming discussion; discussion occurs; agreed summary of
discussion is reported in an IEE Journal. Please advise if financial
considerations are restraining the IEE from doing its duty. Yours faithfully [signed] Eugen Hockenjos, B.Sc., DipHE. encl.
Hamlin/Miller 9nov95; Secker/Ivall 25oct95; Secker/Catt 4sep95; Secker/Metzer
19sep95; Secker/Simmonds 26oct95; Wilson/Simmonds 9nov95; Turin/Williams
15nov95 |
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