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What
follows is Appendix 5 in the book “The Catt Anomaly” http://www.ivorcatt.com/28anom.htm 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 |