Whig
Science and its fellow travellers.
Peer
Review outlaws even the suggestion of paradigm change
No one with reputation and career fully or partly based
on electromagnetic theory can comment on my article read "THE END OF THE ROAD?" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf
. This is because it hints at paradigm change. It reports on the Wakefield
Experiment, 2012, which purports to prove that a charged capacitor does not
have a static electric field.
Any hint of a move from one model to the other for a
charged capacitor crosses the Rubicon. See The Two Models for a Charged
Capacitor http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x2ab.pdf
.
Anyone with career and reputation to defend knows he
must not get involved with such heresy. He will almost certainly not read "THE END OF THE ROAD?" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf ,
but only its title. The title tells him that the article is quackery,
lunatic pseudo-science.
At this point the plot thickens. We move from Whig
Science to Whig journalism on science, Whig Sociology of Science, Whig
Philosophy of Science, Whig History of Science.
No journalist will touch the problem that no accredited
scientist will write comment on the article. All experts in the Sociology of
Science will refuse to investigate this aspect of its sociology. Those who work
in Philosophy of Science will ignore the non-response of accredited experts to
this article. This is in spite of the fact that they are familiar with the
syndrome, because they know T S Kuhn’s book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions
and even perhaps Polanyi .
As to Whig History of Science, again we see that in
spite of Kuhn, historians of science will join forces to ignore the suggestion
of paradigm change.
In general, those few who are expert in the new
paradigm walk away from the subject. They give up “hitting their heads against
a brick wall”.
This “evolved conspiracy” is complex and
sophisticated. Such was needed in order for the onward march of science, so
beneficial to society, to be brought to a halt. Many, many branches of our
society had to join forces to bring scientific advance to a halt. Major scientific
advance became an ever greater threat to all careers and reputations based on
the current scientific dogma.
The Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the
self-styled most scientific college in Cambridge, Newton’s College,
selected Sir Michael Pepper, knighted for
services to physics, as his top expert, and instructed him to write to me about
The Catt Question http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/cattq.htm
. This was his reply http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2812.htm
. That is, in 1993, we had the ex cathedra Party Line on The Catt Question, an
elementary question about the fundamentals of electromagnetic theory. However,
Nobel Prize Winner Professor Brian Josephson told me a decade or two later that
Pepper had changed his mind. However, Pepper has not communicated with me since
his first ex cathedra statement in 1993.
You, my reader, will immediately think that Pepper
is fully entitled to fail to tell me that his 1993 statement is wrong. However,
if you are willing to reflect a little on the matter, you will reverse your
view. This is because you will come to realise that if false information about
the fundamentals of the subject continue to be attributed to an accredited
expert with impunity , that is the end, not only of scientific advance, but even
of the science we already have.
The addition of new features to Establishment
Science, for instance the Higgs Boson, does not threaten scientific careers. It
is the removal of existing material, for instance phlogiston or caloric, which
cannot be allowed in a profession, which science now is. This is the threat
hinted at in the article "THE
END OF THE ROAD?" . Not only scientists, but
also sociologists, philosophers, historians, journalists will ignore the teachings
of Kuhn
when they support its suppression.
Ivor
Catt 23 March
2013
Professional
Science is incompatible with paradigm change.
There is a big difference between addition to the
Body Scientific, and removal of part of it. Whereas the arrival of another
particle can be absorbed, and text books and careers and reputations remain
intact, the removal of something like Phlogiston or Caloric, in the sense of
Occam or Kuhn, cannot be tolerated in a profession, because it would undermine
careers, reputations and text books.
Ivor
Catt
Whiggism gone Wild. The author makes the mistake of thinking
that reform will come from youth. Students
are conservative. 2
Whig
History of Science It has been argued that the historiography of science is
"riddled with Whiggish history".[