Pilgrimage ~ Day 7

I have been doing some research about why Nikola Tesla opposed Einstein's relativity theory. In an article in the Galveston Daily News (March 13, 1932), Tesla said, "What is 'thought' in relativity, for example, is not science, but some kind of metaphysics based on abstract mathematical principles and conceptions which will be forever incomprehensible to beings like ourselves whose whole knowledge is derived from a three-dimensional world."

Irrespective of whether we are mystic or scientist, we cannot reasonably say that we have attained any understanding of what lies beyond the scope of how we predominantly perceive ourselves and reality from within a three dimensional world. Any data that we could collect would inevitably be biased by our viewpoint.

Something to ponder: “The Science of Delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in.” – Rupert Sheldrake

The conviction with which we cling to the validity of our viewpoint of reality is what limits us from being capable of perceiving reality as it is. Another way of looking at this is as if we are attempting to design or to fit the Universe or God into our preconceived image of it, even to the point of our bestowing familiar characteristics and attributes upon it.

In an interview between Nikola Tesla and John Smith in 1899, having been asked about his hostility to the theory of relativity, Tesla answered, “Remember, it is not curved space, but the human mind which cannot comprehend infinity and eternity!”

A reminder of this can be found in a scene from the movie ‘The Matrix’ (1999). Neo sees a boy bending a spoon. The boy teaches Neo as he says, “Do not try and bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth…there is no spoon. Then you will see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” 

The current science of how a black hole is created incorporates Einstein’s relativity theory, in that the presence of mass is said to distort the local space-time as if it were a rubber sheet. If enough mass is concentrated at a point, a singularity is formed. Special relativity suggests that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If we were able to observe an object as it is approaching a black hole, it would appear as if the object is moving slower and slower until it comes to a complete halt at an event horizon, without actually falling into the black hole.

"When you reach the singularity in general relativity, physics just stops, the equations break down” says Abhay Ashtekar of Pennsylvania State University. A similar problem crops up when trying to explain the big bang, which is thought to have started with a singularity.

In 1935, Einstein and Nathan Rosen used the theory of general relativity to propose the existence of ‘bridges’ through space-time. These Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes would connect two different points in space-time. In theory this would enable a being with a control of gravity, to travel through a wormhole and to cross space much faster than light, reducing travel time and distance. Wormholes remain a theory however and are not part of established physics.

Interestingly, in 2006 Ashtekar and colleagues applied loop quantum gravity to the birth of the universe. Loop quantum gravity combines general relativity with quantum mechanics and defines space-time as a web of indivisible chunks. The team found that as they rewound time in a loop quantum gravity universe, they reached the big bang but no singularity. Instead, they crossed a ‘quantum bridge’ into another older universe. This is now regarded as the basis for a ‘big bounce’ rather than a ‘big bang’ theory of the origins of the universe.

In his book ‘Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction’ (1996), Jonathan Potter spoke of how it can be possible for certain scientific laws or theories to be retained, even in the face of what some scientists would see as contradictory evidence, because of a perceived use in justifying social world views. Potter said that “Scientists will be literally rediscovering or describing the structure of their society in their test-tubes and cloud chambers.”

This would give credence to some of the controversy in Victorian Britain to do with ‘ether’ or ‘aether’ (an invisible medium that filled space and gave rise to various phenomena), as being drawn on by its proponents to stress ‘the organic unity of knowledge, metaphysical realism and the unseen world’ (Wynne, 1979). Potter said that “these social beliefs opposed the fast-growing secular ideology of scientific naturalism and individualism which, according to Wynne, was a by-product of industrialization and the increasing power of the bourgeois middle class”.

As Rupert Sheldrake (The Science Delusion, TEDx talk, January 2013) puts it: “There is a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence, hypothesis and collective investigation and science as a belief system or a world view. And unfortunately the world view aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavour.”

It would appear that science shapes society and also that society shapes science. The political context of a nation, being a reflection of how a group of people perceives its influence in the world, together with the dogma and conservatism of its academic elites, has a powerful influence on how well a scientific breakthrough is embraced and can progress.

It has frequently been said that Einstein was a genius and that Tesla was ahead of his time. History seems to reveal that there are pivot points in the course of evolution, almost as if humanity could be choosing between items in a grocery store. The controversy between relativity vs the aether seems to reveal one such turning point, together with the consequences it will have.

As Rupert Sheldrake puts it, “Since the late nineteenth century, science has been conducted under the aspect of a belief system or worldview which is essentially that of materialism, philosophical materialism and the sciences are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the materialist worldview.”

In his book ‘The Science Delusion’, Sheldrake offers 10 dogmas or assumptions of science in order to turn them into questions and to see how they would stand up if you looked at them scientifically. He concluded that none of the dogmas stood up very well. He lists them as being:  

1.      Nature is mechanical or machine like. The universe is like a machine. Animals and plants are like machines. We are like machines, in fact, we are machines with brains that are genetically programmed computers.

2.      All matter is unconscious. The whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There’s no consciousness in stars, galaxies, planets, animals, plants and there ought not to be in us either, if this theory is true.

3.      So if matter is unconscious, then the laws of nature are fixed. The laws of nature are the same now as they were at the time of the Big Bang and they’ll be the same forever. Not just the laws, but the constants of nature are fixed.

4.      The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. It never changes in total quantity, except at the moment of the Big Bang, when it all sprang into existence from nowhere in a single instant.

5.      Nature is purposeless. The evolutionary process has no purpose or direction.

6.      Biological heredity is material.

7.      Memories are stored inside your brain as material traces.

8.      Your mind is inside your head. All your consciousness is the activity of your brain and nothing more.

9.      Psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible. Your thoughts and intentions cannot have any effect at a distance because your mind is inside your head. Therefore, all the apparent evidence for telepathy and other psychic phenomena is illusory. People believe these things happen but they are deceived by statistics or else it is coincidences or wishful thinking.

10.  Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. Complementary and alternative therapies can’t possibly work because they are not mechanistic. They may appear to work because people would have got better anyway or because of the placebo effect. 

Sheldrake has said that this is the default worldview which is held by almost all educated people all over the world and is the basis of the educational system, the National Health Service, the Medical Research Council and governments.

It was subsequent to the airing of Rupert Sheldrake’s talk entitled ‘The Science Delusion’ at TEDx in 2013 and in which he discussed the 10 dogmas above, that the TED staff posted the following message on their website:

“After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel. We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump. All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.”