The Betrayal of science by 'modern physics'

First published as a letter in Electronics and Wireless World, July 1987, p683

 

 

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

 

The Betrayal of science by 'modern physics'

DHJ – Davies, Howie, Josephson

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. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x231.pdf

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