RESPONDENT: Hi Peter & No 37, I am following the conversation with interest (not 100% attention as I give to other matters involving consciousness, but I am intending to give it a thorough thought/read soon). Some points I observed/request for comment/ clarification:

PETER: Normal human experiencing of the physical universe is that ‘I’, as a non-physical entity parasitically residing in a physical body, thinks and feels the physical universe to be an alien and fearful place (contrary to anthropocentric/ geocentric thinking, the physical universe is not limited to what is out there, it includes this planet and its oceans, clouds, earth, trees, animals, human beings, rivers, cities, buildings and so on). It is only because human beings think and feel themselves to be separate from the physical world of the senses that they have long imagined and felt that there is an underlying reality the physical world – an underlying reality that is metaphysical in nature.

When you take this on board it is clear that Einsteinian subjective relativity is but the latest in a long line of mathematical/ philosophical/ mystical theories that propose that there is a metaphysical underlying reality (a timeless, spaceless and formless reality) to the physical matter and space that is this infinite and eternal universe.

RESPONDENT: Moreover, everybody in these circles have tried to fit common sense with these models and seem to have failed and only ask us to abandon the common sense and use principles of logic and experimental evidence(?), not imagination based on common sense (that which we use to conduct our everyday life).

PETER: I take it from what you have written that you have had a pure consciousness experience whereby you have directly experienced the infinitude of the actual universe. If this is the case, you would know by your own direct experience that it is only ‘me’, the parasitical entity, who thinks and feels himself to be separate from, and alien to, the physical universe … and when ‘I’ am temporarily absent in a PCE all feelings of separation and alienation disappears.

Perhaps I can put it this way – a PCE is the direct sensate experience of the actuality of the physical universe because ‘he’ of ‘she’ who desperately seek a metaphysical underlying reality to the physical universe, is temporality in abeyance. This is the antithesis to an altered state of consciousness whereby the supposed underlying metaphysical reality of the universe is imaginatively and passionately revealed because ‘I’ think and feel myself to be a part of the illusionary underlying metaphysical reality (or in some cases even the creator of this Reality).

RESPONDENT: As a layman (outsider to the understanding of intrinsic nuts and bolts of how these works), one is concerned here how it translates to this everyday world... I am not particularly interested in how well the foundations are supported using logic and mathematics.

PETER: Nor am I. Whether people think this underlying reality is religious or mystical or mathematical in nature does not interest me at all. It’s their fantasy after all.

What is on offer on this mailing list is an actual freedom from the human condition including a freedom from all of the fantasies that propose that there is an underlying metaphysical reality to the physical universe. And the very first step in becoming actually free of the human condition is to abandon all of these religious or mystical or mathematical fantasies and start to come down-to-earth to the world of the senses where we humans actually live.

RESPONDENT: Back to me: If I have understood the line of thought somewhat correctly, I am also in favour of that currently as it relates to my quest for direct experience. I had realized long ago when I corresponded to Richard that I was defending science based on my strong belief in scientists (no other discipline relies on objectivity and explicitly stated goals and experiment as the final arbiter) and decided to step out of my defence till I understand them myself to a great detail (I have good mathematical and scientific training and I have the toolkit to expand my knowledge if I find it necessary).

PETER: A very sensible approach – and this is the approach I took. When I first came across Richard there were many things that jarred with ‘me’ but it soon became obvious that the only way I could find out if what he was saying was factual was to conduct my own investigation as to the nature of the human psyche (including its innate cunningness to do whatever it can to survive) – otherwise I was relying on either believing what others say or rejecting what others say, pathetically dependant upon ‘my’ own beliefs and predilections.

RESPONDENT: My intrigue though (loosely stated objections and not strongly felt):

PETER: Einsteinian relativity theory relies upon imagining that time is a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space, thereby allowing that time can be an abstract entity (t) having a hypothetical numerical value in abstract relativistic mathematics. A PCE experientially reveals that time is not an abstract dimension because a pure consciousness experience is the direct experience that this very moment is the only moment that is happening and that this very moment is perpetually happening. Whilst past moments did happen and future moments will happen, only this moment is actual – one is perpetually locked into this seamless moment of time as it were. It is always this moment of time, one cannot actually experience any other moment of time but this very moment.

This is not an esoteric or philosophical wisdom as one can also become aware of this fact in one’s normal daily life – in fact the actualism method is specifically designed to bring one’s attention to this fact as an on-going experience. As an example, if you care to remember back to the moment when you first opened this post and began to read it, it is obvious that when you did so you could experience that the opening of the post was happening in this moment and now that you are reading these words it is also this moment. As Richard puts it – this very moment is the arena in which actual events happen.

To keep with this practical observation, if you look at the computer monitor that you are reading these words on you will see that it has three spatial dimensions – width, length and depth – and that your observation of this is happening in this moment. The very spontaneity and instantaneity of this very moment gives vibrancy to the things and events that one sensately experiences in this moment of time. In short, in actuality, time is not a fourth dimension, space and time are not a continuum, space is not bent, nor is it expanding – all of these concepts and theories are nought but impassioned (subjective) fantasies.

To get back to your comment, I take it that you are aware that the theoretical subatomic particles described in quantum physics are mathematical suppositions that have no material existence. Quantum physics deals with abstracted models of hypothetical subatomic realms in exactly the same way that relativistic cosmology deals with abstracted models of hypothetical universes that have no material existence.

For me, once I understood that much of science masquerades theory as being fact and imaginary models as being things that actually exist, I also understood the absurdity of calling an internally-logical subjective theory an objective scientifically-verifiable fact. But then again, I have no emotional investment in supporting relativistic theory because I was not indoctrinated into believing that it is true, and nowadays I know by direct on-going experience that there is no underlying metaphysical reality to the universe. My ongoing objective attentiveness reveals that this is the only moment I can experience and this objective observation itself makes a nonsense of Einsteinian relativistic subjective observations and theoretical calculations.

The actuality of the infinitude of the physical universe compared to the fantasies of metaphysical beliefs is such a good subject to contemplate upon.

Who knows, it may even provoke the males of the species to get out of their heads and in touch with their feelings – after all taking such a step is an essential prerequisite to beginning to become free of the insidious grip of the instinctual passions.

PETER: Mr. Einstein was among the first to gain Guru status in the ‘modern’ world of meta-physical science, a position he was uncomfortable at first with, but as the numbers of believers swelled and popular acclaim spread, he quickly settled into the role with great aplomb. As an aside, it is curious that, some 80 years on, Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity still remains a theory and has yet to become the Law of Relativity. Basking in the glory of its very own mega-star Guru, science was then able to well and truly break free from the shackles of measurable observation, reasonable assumption and practical common sense, and the re-born metaphysical sciences have enjoyed a unprecedented level of popular acceptance, kudos – and funding – ever since.

It behoves an actualist in discerning what is belief and what is fact to make the distinction between physical science and metaphysical science. The mentioning of the word theory is always a good clue, for theory is to metaphysical science what belief is to mysticism – something they fervently wished to be true. Both the Guru-mystic and the Guru-scientist have vested interests in fostering and maintaining their beliefs – their fame, their position and livelihoods, and a very personal investment in a ‘somewhere-else’ other than here and a ‘sometime-else’ other than now. As Fred Hoyle, a contemporary of Einstein, said of science –

[Fred Hoyle]: ‘I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.’ Paul Davies, ‘The Mind of God’

RESPONDENT: In what way is, say, Einstein’s physics inconsistent with actual observation of the actual universe’s behaviour?

PETER: Einstein’s physics has no relevance at all to the actual objective observation of either the matter that is this actual universe or to the qualities of that matter and this glaring anomaly is explained away by Einsteinian physicists with the glib dismissal that Einstein’s physics do not apply to locally-observable phenomena’ …

RESPONDENT: So what’s the problem? The theory states that it does not apply to locally-observable phenomena, and you take this statement of the limits of its relevance to be a refutation?

PETER: Perhaps if I put it this way, the disclaimer to cosmological theories that they do not apply to locally-observable phenomena struck me as an indicator of how far-out-there their thinking is.

I don’t have a ‘problem’ at all, as you put it, I simply offered the observation because for me this was yet another reason to dismiss Einsteinian physics as being irrelevant to me as I live in a world were the empirical science of Newtonian physics explains and makes sense of the objective observation of the matter and explains and makes sense of the qualities of that matter that is this physical universe. To create a whole set of theories based on subjective mind-game scenarios, abstract thinking and conceptual mathematical theorems, all of which are based on an a priori principle that the universe was created out of nothing seemed to me at the time to be the antithesis of what I understood science to be. Nowadays it is simply an absurdity, and a widely accepted absurdity to boot.

*

PETER: ... or to any conditions that we can experience on earth let alone those that we can sensibly relate to our everyday lives.

RESPONDENT: Obviously.

PETER: Then perhaps you will begin to understand why it is impossible to have a sensible discussion about a theory that is so abstracted that it has nothing at all to do with any conditions, events or circumstances that we can experience on earth let alone that we can sensibly relate to in our everyday lives. As Paul Davies revealed, Einsteinian physics relates to ‘toy universes’, not the physical universe of galaxies, stars, planets, moons, rocks, mountains, rivers, oceans, trees, animals and human animals.

RESPONDENT: But how does that imply a flaw in the theory, as the theory itself says that this is the case?

PETER: Which only begs the question as to why such metaphysical theories are popularly taken as being valid theories about the actual universe?

Metaphysics – The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, and identity; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of being and knowing. Oxford Dictionary

Metaphysical – Based on abstract general reasoning or a priori principles. Oxford Dictionary

*

PETER: Local phenomena and objective observation are not the realm of Einstein’s physics – a sure sign that His physics have nothing to do with actuality.

RESPONDENT: So ‘actuality’ is limited to ‘local phenomena’ now?

PETER: Perhaps I can put it this way – actuality is not what one imagines it to be, nor is it what one passionately feels it to be. This type of thinking and feeling about matter and its associated phenomena is the realm of metaphysics.

*

PETER: Einstein apparently has such a Guru status within the scientific community that few dare to question his theories for to do so would be to dare to challenge the accepted current status quo of science itself.

RESPONDENT: I personally don’t care a fig whether he is right or wrong, but I do expect criticisms to be based on something better than his apparent ‘guru’ status.

PETER: For someone who claims ‘I personally don’t care a fig whether he is right or wrong’ as in ‘I do not argue that the time, space and matter had a beginning, or will have an end’ and ‘I have no emotional attachment (whatsoever) to any particular cosmogony and/or cosmological theory’ you not only go about the subject, but you can’t help yourself from doing so –

[Respondent]: ‘If I can just keep my nose out of these infinity debates (fat chance!)’ To Peter, Sticking around 28.1.2004

Given that you have told me what you don’t expect my criticism to be based on, perhaps you could tell me precisely what you expect criticism of Einsteinian physics to be based on. In other words, what principles do you expect me to abide by?

Should I have to accept the majority view? Should I have to remain ‘open-minded’ to the theory? Should I ‘accept’ Einstein’s thought experiments as being the ultimate authority on the nature of the universe? Or should I not even try to make sense of something that is ‘outside of my area of expertise’ … because I have had no formal schooling (as in indoctrination) into Einsteinian physics?

I don’t know whether you have noticed but by the far the majority of what passes for discussion about what should be matters of mutual interests are in fact discussions about the rules of discussion and the mode of discussion, and the discussions themselves are mostly about opinions, viewpoints, principles, doctrine, philosophy, ideology, values, morals or ethics. As such, sensible down-to-earth discussions so as to discern the facts of the matter are very rarely found within the human condition.

*

RESPONDENT: Better still, so as not to get too far off track, how is it (Einstein’s physics) inconsistent with what one experiences in a PCE?

RESPONDENT: I have just read this on your Website –

[Peter]: It is important to make a clear distinction as to what are physical laws – empirically measurable, clearly demonstrable and readily repeatable – and what is mere theory, postulation or assumption. I find it most telling that the clocks of the worldwide satellite navigation system were programmed according to Newtonian laws and not according to Mr. Einstein’s theory that suggests time somehow varies relative to the velocity of the clock itself.

Similarly, all of the space exploration uses Newtonian physical laws and not Einstein’s esoteric theory.

A scientific theory ain’t a physical law – a theory is speculation or conjecture. The Actual Freedom Trust Library, Spiritual Scientists, Einstein

PETER: I have read that Einstein’s theory has had many proofs over the last 80 years but, from what I can determine, the proofs offered relate to explaining phenomena that may relate to the original supposition, rather than providing empirical repeatable down-to-earth evidence that Einstein’s theory is a law that relates to the actual physical world. Whenever a scientist or engineer wants to do something practical, as opposed to theoretical, intellectual or mystical, they invariably revert to the laws, constraints and dictates that govern the physical universe and do not even consider the meta-physical theories. Whenever I had read anything of quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology, etc. in the past, I soon became bewildered and confused until I eventually realized that what they were saying had no relationship to common sense for they were not talking of the actual physical world.

Mr. Einstein himself is quoted as saying –

[A. Einstein]: ‘The skeptic will say: ‘It may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint. But this does not prove that it corresponds to nature’. You are right, dear sceptic. Experience alone can decide on truth. Yet we have achieved something if we have succeeded in formulating a meaningful and precise equation. The derivation, from the questions, of conclusions which can be confronted with experience will require painstaking efforts and probably new mathematical methods.’ – Albert Einstein April 1950. Quotation from Scientific American April 2000

I find it telling that, according to Mr. Einstein, a sceptic is one who questions why relativity and quantum theory does not correspond to nature, i.e. the behaviour and actions of things we can see, touch, feel, smell and taste.

No. 7, I have no interest in things metaphysical or theories about the extreme limits of measurability in the macro or micro ends of the physical world. Science has perennially pushed back the boundaries of our knowledge of both the small and the big, forever searching for a finite limit, an edge or a Complete Understanding. Lacking anything of substance to measure, for the theoretical scientists don’t work in real world laboratories, they rely purely on theories, imagination and mathematical equations and computer calculations. Their position is clearly analogous to the mystic or shaman, and indeed most of the theories of the last century borrow heavily from Eastern mysticism – theories of other worlds, uncertainty, non-determinism, the observers effect on material objects, solipsism, etc.

But, for what it is worth, here is my take on Mr. Einstein’s theory.

The central tenet of his theory is the unequivocal statement that the speed of light is constant, no matter what. As far as I can ascertain, this tenet is held to be the case no matter what medium it passes through and this constancy is held to be completely uninfluenced by the effects of any other objects or forces.

To quote from: Einstein A life in Science

[M White & J Gribbin]: It is this constancy of the speed of light that leads to all the non-commonsensical predictions of Einstein’s theory, that a moving ruler shrinks and gets heavier, while a moving clock runs slow.

Similarly, time in our world is a shadow of an extension in four-dimensional spacetime. But because of the minus sign in front of the ct in the equations, the faster a clock moves, the more spread out its ‘shadow’ becomes, so that time runs more slowly, and if the clock could move at the speed of light, then time, as measured by the clock, would stand still.

None of these effects show up in any significant way until an object is moving, relative to the observer, at a sizeable fraction of the speed of light. Since the speed of light is so large – 300 million metres a second – the effects never show up in everyday life, which is why they do not seem to be common sense. One second in the time dimension is equivalent to 300 million metres (actually, minus 300 million metres) in any of the three length dimensions, so space and time only have an exactly equal footing when you are moving at 300 million metres a second – at the speed of light – and their equivalence only begins to show up for things moving at a respectably large fraction of that speed. by Michael White and John Gribbin Simon and Schyuster 1993

I always find it amazing that humans revere a theory whose effects no human can directly experience because humans cannot move at the speed of light because it is held to be impossible to do so by the very same theory. Does this not mean that the theory has no relevance at all to human experience in the physical world in which we live? Does this not ring a bell? Is this not the same with all metaphysical/spiritual theories?

But, to address your comments about the experimental proof of the theory by observation of short-lived particles. Again a quote from the same source as above –

[M White & J Gribbin]: The simplest way to see this is in terms of the behaviour of particles called muons, which are created high in the atmosphere of the Earth by the impact of cosmic rays from space. Muons move at a speed very close to the speed of light. But they are also very short-lived particles, and soon (in a couple of microseconds) decay into other kinds of particle. By measuring the number of muons found at high altitudes, using instruments on an un-crewed balloon, and comparing this number with the number of muons arriving at the ground, physicists find (the experiment was first carried out in 1941) that although the lifetime of a muon is too short, according to clocks here on Earth, for them to get through to the ground, in fact most of them do penetrate the atmosphere. The explanation is that time runs slower for the muons, because they are travelling at nearly the speed of light, and therefore they do have time to reach the ground before they decay. This experiment really has been carried out. It confirms that moving clocks run slow, that moving objects contract, and that any observers moving at constant velocity are entitled to regard themselves as at rest. by Michael White and John Gribbin Simon and Schyuster 1993

And yet, I find it telling that when a clock orbiting the earth in a satellite used for precision navigation, the same calculated effects of this theory have been ignored. Does this not raise some serious doubts as to why these theories and explanatory proofs are not used in the empirical world of people, things and events?

[M White & J Gribbin]: There are many more experimental confirmations of the special theory, but we will mention just one. It turns out, from Einstein’s equations, that an object travelling at less than the speed of light can never be given enough energy to make it accelerate to the speed of light (let alone to go any faster). You never can run alongside a beam of light at the same speed, and so the puzzle of how the waves would look if you rode with them does not arise. Instead, the more energy you put into a moving object, the faster it will go, but the extra speed it picks up is always less than the amount needed to take it past the speed of light. As you put more and more energy into a moving object, such as the particles that physicists whiz around in accelerators like the ones at CERN, in Geneva, the less each extra bit of energy increases the speed of the object. You get less return (in the form of extra speed) for the same investment (in the form of extra energy). But the extra energy must go somewhere, and the equations tell us that it goes into the mass of the particle, which goes a little bit faster but gets a lot heavier as it continues to accelerate and gets near the speed of light. <Snip>

Again, this effect has been measured, directly, in countless experiments at particle accelerators around the world. by Michael White and John Gribbin Simon and Schyuster 1993

I watched a TV program about the work at Cern and was particularly unimpressed, or sceptical as Mr. Einstein would have it, as to the common sense of the gulf between what was actually observable and measurable and what was extrapolated as an explanation. I came to understand that the use of massive computing power was increasingly needed in the micro dimension as the mathematical equations become increasingly complex. In fact, it was obvious they weren’t trying to understand, or make sense, of what they were observing, they were trying to find justification for their theories from their observations, which is a completely different scenario. The theories derived from increasingly tortured mathematical formulas were primary, the actual observations were secondary. In fact, many of their suppositions were about speculative particles, energies, or whatever, that had never been observed and may never be observable. Does not all this postulating have a familiar ring about it?

To move on further into the realms of quantum supposition and theory, again from the same source –

[M White & J Gribbin]: Before we leave the special theory, though, we want to clear up one puzzle, which worries very many people when they first meet it. It is sometimes called the ‘twins paradox’, although it isn’t really a paradox at all.

It goes like this. Suppose you have a twin sister, exactly the same age as yourself. While you stay at home, here on Earth, your intrepid sister flies off in a spaceship, at a speed that is a sizeable fraction of the speed of light. After a while, she turns the spaceship around, and flies back. During the flight, her clocks must run slow, relative to your clocks here on Earth. She must, according to Einstein’s theory, age less than you have. But if she can say that she was at rest, and you were the one doing the moving, she will say that your clocks were running slow. You predict that your sister has aged less on her journey than if she stayed at home, while she says you must have aged less. Each twin predicts that the other one is younger!

The resolution of the ‘paradox’ lies in the fact that your twin had to turn her ship around in order to come home. She changed the direction she was moving in, not just through space but through spacetime. If she had kept on travelling in a straight line through space at a constant speed, she would have been travelling in a straight line through spacetime and both of you would indeed have been entitled to argue that the other twin was the younger one. But there would have been no paradox, since under those circumstances you could never again stand side by side and compare notes.

By coming back home, however, your twin has not kept to a straight-line journey through spacetime. Your own ‘journey’ is indeed a straight line, because you always travel at the same velocity, but in order to get back to you she has to travel around two sides of a triangle in four-dimensional spacetime.

In the familiar three-dimensional world, the distance from one point to another in a straight line is always less than the distance between the same two points along the other two sides of a triangle. The same is true of the distance part of your sister’s journey – she has indeed travelled more kilometres than you have. But this is not the whole story. Because of that minus sign in front of the ct in the equations of special relativity, the time difference between two points in space-time is always less if you go around the two sides of the triangle, instead of following the straightest possible line from one point to the other. The extra distance travelled by your sister is exactly balanced by the smaller time her journey takes, so that you and she both ‘use’ the same amount of spacetime and both start out and end up in the same place at the same time. So your twin sister who has been on the journey really is younger than you are when she comes home.

It may not be common sense, but at least you can see that there is a difference between the two journeys through spacetime, one in a straight line and the other round two sides of a triangle. And, again, this prediction of the special theory has actually been tested, using extremely accurate timepieces called atomic clocks, flown around the world on jet airliners and compared with identical stay-at-home clocks in their return to the laboratory (such tests were carried out for the first time in 1971). Even though the effect is tiny for journeys at such low speeds, compared with c , the clocks are accurate enough to measure the difference, which exactly matches the predictions of relativity theory. by Michael White and John Gribbin Simon and Schyuster 1993

Again I do find it curious that the clocks in satellites moving at several hundred times faster than an airline, for years not hours, are evidently not compensated to allow for this experimental difference attributed to Einstein’s theory. There are two unrelated fields of science – the pure theoreticians and the empiricist engineer scientists, exactly as in the field of ontology there are two unrelated approaches – the metaphysical, spiritualists and the down-to-earth actualists.

And just to round up the horses into the coral, I’ll end with another piece on quantum theory from the Encyclopedia Britannica –

[quote]: Although atomic energies can be sharply defined, the positions of the electrons within the atom cannot be, quantum mechanics giving only the probability for the electrons to have certain locations. This is a consequence of the feature that distinguishes quantum theory from all other approaches to physics, the indeterminacy (or uncertainty) principle of Werner Heisenberg. As was explained earlier in the article, this principle holds that measuring a particle’s position with increasing precision necessarily increases the uncertainty as to the particle’s momentum, and conversely. The ultimate degree of uncertainty is controlled by the magnitude of Planck’s constant, which is so small as to have no apparent effects except in the world of microstructures. In the latter case, however, because both a particle’s position and its velocity or momentum must be known precisely at some instant in order to predict its future history, quantum theory precludes such certain prediction and thus escapes determinism. Encyclopedia Britannica

Thus, quantum theory has an inbuilt ‘indeterminancy (or uncertainty) principle’ which means it forever ‘escapes determinism’, as in –

‘determine : conclude from reasoning or investigation, deduce; fix or decide causally, decide on, select, choose; definitely locate, identify, or establish the nature of; ascertain exactly’ Oxford Dictionary.

No wonder I have no interest in quantum theory. Trying to have a sensible down-to-earth discussion about Einstein’s theory is analogous to talking to someone who passionately believes in the existence of God, and then insists you should prove He/She/It doesn’t exist.

RESPONDENT: The mechanics of life within the planes of matter, energy time and space are bound by laws, many in the physical (physics) realm were discovered fairly recently. Many ‘discoverers’ added views such as Albert E, and more recently, Stephen Hawking, which can (relative to their field) appear to be ‘imaginary’, ‘metaphysical’ or mystical.

PETER: Neither Einstein nor Hawking work in practical empirical science but in the field of theoretical sciences, dealing with things that can neither be seen nor measured. Both men are self-proclaimed mystics, searching for the meaning of life in mathematical equations and unfathomable theories.

[quote]: One of the key elements in the wave of public attention that broke over Einstein at the end of 1919 was the alleged incomprehensibility of his new theory. <Snip>. But the world seemed to want their new hero to be incomprehensibly clever, and one popular story of the time (which Einstein encouraged) was that Einstein himself had once claimed that the general theory was understood by only twelve men (in 1919 it would have been taken for granted that no woman could possibly understand the theory).

But perhaps we can understand this public response to the new hero, since something very similar has happened to another cosmologist at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s. Stephen Hawking, hailed by many people as the greatest scientist since Einstein, wrote a book, ‘A Brief History of Time’, that became an international bestseller, in spite of (or, perhaps, because of the widespread story that nobody who lacked a PhD in physics could begin to understand it. Once again, the world had found itself a guru of incomprehensible genius, to admire and set on a pedestal. ‘Einstein, A life in Science’, Ch. 6, by Michael White and John Gribbin Simon and Schyuster 1993

It is important to make a clear distinction as to what are physical laws – empirically measurable, clearly demonstrable and readily repeatable – and what is mere theory, postulation or assumption. I find it most telling that the clocks of the worldwide satellite navigation system were programmed according to Newtonian laws and not according to Mr. Einstein’s theory that suggests time somehow varies relative to the velocity of the clock itself. Similarly, all of the space exploration uses Newtonian physical laws and not Einstein’s esoteric theory.

A scientific theory ain’t a physical law – a theory is speculation or conjecture.

RESPONDENT: The reason I mention this is because I have discovered, without the brilliant minds that these guys were born with, as many others have, laws that transcend the ‘cultural laws’.

PETER: Theoreticians such as Mr. Einstein and Mr. Hawking and their ilk are human beings, exactly like you and I. As such, it is inevitable that they had an upbringing steeped in religious/ spiritual belief. Their theories are about the creation and ending of this eternal universe and about ‘other-worlds’, other than this infinite universe. The physical, actual universe, being eternal, has no beginning and no end and, being infinite, has no edge or outside to it.

PETER: Just some comments on the quotes you posted (...) –

RESPONDENT:

[Albert Einstein]: ‘There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being.’ – Albert Einstein.

PETER: Good old Albert, hey. Many still regard him as a scientist who contributed to our understanding of the physical universe, rather than the Mystic he was.

He is famous mostly for theoretical postulations as to what could happen to matter, space and time if the speed of light is exceeded or if infinity is measured finitely. No wonder after some 80 years his theories still remain theories. I heard a scientist use the word ‘Guru’ the other day as he pondered on which current proposer of theories to follow.