In fact, “forced choices” are very much the way of cognitive science these days. That is, the six-point likert-like scale is becoming more popular than the seven point scale (which includes the “don’t know” option in the middle.) The six-point scale has a “mild positive” or “mild negative” choice for points 3 and 4 – but no “don’t know option.” The underlying logic is that few people have no opinion, and those that really do would even out on the 3 and 4 choice. However, if there really is a “don’t know” option then many would select it without actually believing it …. all up for debate of course, but the point is that a no “don’t know” option is very scientific too.
Do you think that defending or criticising Freud’s theories is a matter of dialectics (i.e. to state and defend a point, and establish which position is correct in terms of being more convincing)? Is it finally all about truth or about winning an argument by means of strategic manoeuvering? Don’t we finally end up, either way (defending or criticizing Freud) by making use of rhetoric, the manipulative power of language?
I read your “Debunking Edward Said” article with the increasingly uneasy feeling that it had its own agenda that was more political than critical. Imagine my *surprise* when I clicked the link supposedly providing sources for the article, to find the website of an “Islamic” organization proclaiming with pride its links to such overtly right-wing media entities as the Washington Times, Glenn Beck, and some rag with David Horowitz on the masthead. This is the sort of thing that convinces me that your little website is just the conservative version of the very rhetoric it claims to find in the left academy. What a joke!
Why should not the author, Ibn Warraq, have a “political agenda”, i.e., a political point of view on the basis of which he writes critically of Said?
Warraq’s full article appeared on the website of “The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society”. Paul Grunden, rather oddly, calls this an “Islamic” organization, one that, he says, “proclaims with pride” its links to right wing media such as the Washington Times, Glenn Beck and Horowitz’s “Front Page Magazine”. An examination of the Home Page of the organization in question indicates that what Paul writes is a travesty of the facts.
The “links” he refers to are not links to the organisations or individuals he cites, but links to *articles* on a specific topic, a conference on the St Petersburg [Florida] Declaration (see below). Moreover, these links are listed among other links to articles on the same topic in the Washington Post, London Times, Toronto Sun, and Wall Street Journal. Note that the “proclaims with pride” bit is a figment of Paul’s imagination. Note also that the Glenn Beck link merely records that CNN’s Glenn Beck would be reporting directly from the conference in question!
What is the St Petersburg Declaration? It begins:
> We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
>We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
>We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
>We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
>We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
Why does the website in question link to articles on the Declaration in the media? Because it is “An international forum for secularists of Islamic societies”
The Marxist French scholar of Islam, Maxime Rodinson was given to review Ibn Warraq’s “Why I Am Not a Muslim by Le Monde”, which assumed that Rodinson, known for his sympathies, would savage the book. (Rodinson’s sympathies also probably explain why Edward Said gave an enthusiastic blurb to Rodinson’s quite critical book on Muhammad — but then Said was known to provide enthusastic blurbs for hundreds of books he never opened, but just guessed as to their general direction).
But Rodinson produced a favorable review, much to the chagrin of the editors at Le Monde — and they, acting true to Stalinist form, simply refused to print the review (it can be found in Rodinson’s other publications
Rodinson, who had been a great defender of the Arabs against French colonialism, a die-hard tiersmondiste, a Marxist, found that Ibn Warraq’s relentless assault on Islam (above all for its intellectual constraints and failures) deserved the highest praise — and he was willing to disappoint his editors at Le Monde in insisting that they either publish his enthusiastic review, or squash it altogether (of course, they squashed it).
A quote from the member of the “Useful Idiots Collective” cited by HuFiz:
>In one of the sessions on forging unity between the Left and Muslim organisations, members of Egypt’s old left reluctantly attended and raised many of the arguments we have heard from secularists in the UK. They all boil down to the question of how progressive atheists can work with Muslims. Aren’t they reactionary? Doesn’t Islam treat women as subordinates? Aren’t they anti-gay? How can we work together?
>This attitude assumes that Islam is a monolith and that all Muslims share the same outlook. It’s nothing but naked bigotry.<
No, of course the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbullah are not reactionary. That is just a libellous story put around by those nasty imperialists:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_simic/2007/04/cairo_conference_3.html
I’m just perusing your website for the first time and finding it very interesting. One thing I found a little disappointing is this: while you have chosen your name from a condescending remark about R. Dawkins, you opened your otherwise good article “Science Studies” with a nearly perfect symmetrical derision of the targets of “Higher Superstition” (…the pigeons have still not recovered from the shock of that particular cat). I’m guessing you’re “fighting fire with fire”, like when A. Coulter turns the left’s abuse back on itself. I saw Dawkins at the U of C field a question on UFOs with earnest aplomb, and no insultive droppings, pigeon or otherwise, were needed.
>Has the Left joined hands with militant Islam against the West ?<
AE : “Mustn’t over-generalise. Only the “Useful Idiots Collective”.
There seem to be a lot of them.
The Egyptian opposition daily Al-Masryoon reported that high-level diplomatic sources said that Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Mahdi ‘Akef, several members of his office, and Muslim Brotherhood MPs had been invited by U.S. Democrat congressmen to visit the U.S. next month and to speak to Congress.
Source: Al-Masryoon, Egypt, April 12, 2007
Like R. Joseph Hoffmann (“The New Humanism Yet Again”), I want nothing less than to see humanism bend over backwards to accomodate people with irrational beliefs rooted in supernaturalism. But I don’t know where he gets the idea that the “New Humanists” will take the humanist movement in such a direction. At one point he says, “…while I do not know at the time of this writing precisely what will be said by the wise and wizened who attend the conference, I can guess, and I can guess I’ll be right.” Does that mean that all of his pessimism is just that – a guess?
If so, I don’t see why all the hand-wringing is going on. If not, I’d like to know how he’s managed to discover the prevailing ideas of a conference that hasn’t happened yet.
To be sure, Hoffmann makes some good points about science and its (inverse?) relationship to “intellectual comfort”, about the way dissatisfaction with religious explanations helps us to lead the examined life. But I see no reason why the new humanism should tend towards muddled thinking and an overdose of tolerance.
At any rate, the conference is about a week and a half from today, and I plan to be there. I suppose the matter will be settled then.
What a stupid and spiteful article by Germaine Greer. It is typical of her that she would begin it with an ad hominem attack on John Lauritsen, whose views on the causation of AIDS have nothing whatever to do with nineteenth century English literature.
It’s particularly fatuous coming from someone who, despite her status as a supposed sexual guru, has never, to my knowledge, spoken out publicly about that issue, certainly not in contexts where it might have mattered or made a difference.
Regarding my piece of “The New Humanism, Yet Again,” Michelle Rose’s sentence, “Like R. Joseph Hoffmann …. I want nothing less than to see humanism bend over backwards to accommodate people with irrational beliefs rooted in supernaturalism. But I don’t know where he gets the idea that the ‘New Humanists’ will take the humanist movement in such a direction” puts words and motives in my essay that can’t be found there. What I suggest is that the voice of humanism toward religion is not one voice among many but a voice critical of the many. Humanism, especially secular humanism. has fulfilled this role admirably, perhaps especially in Europe, but also in America, by not envisioning the relationship between secularism and religions as a “dialogue.” Even in the US Constitution, it is defined as a separation, and I think that’s the way critique can best proceed. When advocates of a “new humanism” pin their hopes on a grand vision of spiritual inclusiveness–one that “brings” the humanist perspective to a table dominated by religious factionalists but grudgefully complains about atheist fundamentalists being there humanists need to respond–critically, I think that is what I have done. JH
I am in full support of Marie Therese O Loughlin. She is a courageous and strong woman who will fight like the scarab on the elephant. Good luck Marie Therese.
To Ellen Esterson: bravo, I only read your “oops…” now. Late but sure. Is courage,I guess, to admit a lapsus calami publicly. Not common. To Paul Power: “lacanians” is another name for those who, as Freud, tend to give the patient’s speech absolute right, over any cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is a name for this: “we know better than you what is better for you. Dont speak, just do as I say. This is real science.”
A CAMBRIDGE University student who sparked a huge row when he published anti- Islamic material has issued a grovelling apology.
The 19-year-old second-year Clare College student went into hiding after he printed a cartoon and material satirising religion in college magazine Clareification.
For his own safety and that of others, the student, who is British, has not been named. During the initial furore surrounding the publication he was taken out of his accommodation and put in a secure place.
>Graham Watson, MEP, leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament, said: “The EU has no business legislating on history. We should leave that to historians and individual member states.
>”Attempts to harmonise EU laws on hate crimes are both illiberal and nonsensical. [This] risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies… whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech.”<
Well said!
http://tinyurl.com/22w2qc
P Z, I just posted my final brief comment on Chris Mooney’s blog, The Intersection. I suggested that if Mooney persisted in milking at the non-problem of framing, he would possibly turn his blog into a literary salon devoid of scientific input. While there may be hope for Mooney, I have put Nisbet in the hopeless bin.
So says Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center :
“She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.
Hirsi Ali, an atheist, has been critical of many Muslim beliefs, particularly on subjects of sexual morality, the treatment of women and female genital mutilation
Whether psychoanalysis can be described as a science is very much open to debate…
Hans Eysenck dismissed it as totally unscientific; H. J. Home, himself an analyst, thinks it shouldn’t even try to be scientific; Charles Rycroft felt it created a bridge between the biological sciences and the humanities; but by the 1950s, Jacques Lacan was admitting that it wasn’t *yet* a science!
It depends what you think science is…
If it’s a classical Newtonian concept of science, it’s got to be measurable, conducted in controlled conditions, and capable of verification by repetition. Psychoanalysis falls far short of this!
A more generous understanding of science, as the accumulation of systematic knowledge based on empirical observation, makes its claim more plausible.
After all, Freud and his successors created a systematic yet flexible vocabulary for describing observable tendencies in human behavior.
It seems to have genuine descriptive power, which is why it is still practiced, and in its therapeutic aspect, perhaps results matter more than truth.
In fact, this debate might be subsumed under the broader debate about the scientific status of psychology (psychoanalysis is that branch of psychology which advocates the existence of an unconscious).
“knowledge is power” (says Bacon) but, 100 years after Freud, where is the power to effect change of psychoanalysis ?
where are the thousands of psychoanalyzed men (and women) walking around radically changed toward leading a better, more gratifying, life while praising their therapist for their new psychological makeup ?
Also, don’t forget the considerable role of Marcel Grossman, with whom Einstein PUBLISHED two preliminary papers on general relativity, who convinced Einstein of the necessity of
using Riemannian Geometry in GR, and–according to Einstein’s journal—with whom Einstein had formulated the CORRECT field equations for GR—later discarded for several years by Einstein.
Einstein had a “Fight” with Grossman, and they NEVER spoke again.
It is an Einstein Pattern. There were ten letters between Einstein and E. Cartan ( the most eminent geometer of the period) in which Cartan pointed out the importance of torsion connections and teleparallel transport in Unified Field theory. Einstein Poo-pooed it, and then –after Cartan was dead—he “invented’ it as his Unified Field Theory. No credit was given to Cartan. These letters have since been published as a book.
Special Relativity was published BEFORE Einstein by at least three people–one in a well known dutch journal a year earlier. What Einstein did uniquely was to modify the definition of mass so that Newton’s equations were at least
poetically still true with the new mass.
His “contribution” was to elevate this to a physical principle. Basically, a job of salesmanship.
On the other hand, Einstein’s work on Brownian motion was brilliant. His work on the photoelectric effect–though trivial–was original. He wrote a paper in the 1950’s on stimulated emission that makes him the first person to predict the Laser!
The problem with the comments by “Penny” [why the anonymity?] is that it is just too easy to throw around unreferenced contentions. For instance, on a minor point, her claim that Einstein had an unresolved “fight” with Grossman is new to me and is inconsistent with his writing in 1936 that they had remained friends throughout their lives. (Everyone, of course, knows of the important *scientific* role of his pure mathematician friend Marcel Grossman, whose Ph.D. was on non-Euclidean geometry and who assisted Einstein with the esoteric mathematics Einstein needed to develop general relativity when the latter turned to him for help in 1912.)
Penny’s comment that Einstein’s explanation of Lenard’s experimental results on the photoelectric effect that opened the way for the advance of quantum theory was “trivial” is, shall we say, an interesting point of view, as is her statement that Einstein redefined mass so that Newton’s equations were “poetically true” – presumably a new concept in science. (A vindication of Keats’ notion of truth?)
For those out to denigrate Einstein it is not difficult to select from the internet all sorts of contentions (some scientifically respectable, others less so) of the kind to which Penny alludes. I don’t pretend to the expertise necessary to assess, e.g., the contentions about priority in relation to special relativity, and I’m always surprised by the confidence with which some people without such expertise make definitive assertions.
Of course prior to 1905 several physicists were producing significant theories on relative motion and the ether. As far as I understand the situation, it was Einstein who cut through the complexities with his formulation of the two basic postulates that constitute special relativity, and provided a new understanding of space/time which eliminated any need for the concept of the ether. That was his unique achievement.
References:
Galison, P. (2003). *Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps*, pp. 241-262.
Miller, A. I. (1982). “The Special Relativity Theory.” In *Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives*, ed.G. Holton et al., pp. 3-26.
Pais, A. (1982). “The New Kinematics.” In *Subtle is the Lord… The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein*, pp. 138-174.
Rynasiewicz, R. (2000). “The Construction of the Special Theory.” In *Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909*, ed. D. Howard et al., pp. 159-201.
Stachel, J. (2002). *”What Song the Syrens Sang”: How Did Einstein Discover Special Relativity.* In *Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’*, pp. 157-169.
First, if Allen doesn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity ( aka high school physics) he should refrain from saying that I don’t.
As a matter of fact, I have a Phd in math, and have been a research member of the Institute for Advanced Study ( where I knew Helen Dukas–former head of the Einstein Project, and Albert Einstein’s personal Secretary).
Maxwell’s equations and the linear wave equation–the standard second order partial differential equation are
invariant under the Poincare Group ( which includes the Lorentz transformations) and this was published before Einstein’s paper. But, Newton’s equations are NOT invariant under this group–they are invariant under the Gal-Group. Einstein simply took this to mean that mass was redefined–extending the ideas to mechanics. All the formulas were pre-existing.
As to the photoelectric effect. The math that Einstein did was at the ninth grade level–this too is high school physics. He simply said, ” If we have Planck’s quanta, the E = E_{0} + h ( nu)
: This is the math for a simple linear plot that was already published.
As to the Grossman fight, there was an article in the German science press, and I will find the reference for Alan, if he reads German. He might also read the original research papers of Einstein and Grossman–as I have.
By the way, Alan, Riemannian Geometry and tensor analysis are not “esoteric math” but is taught to undergraduates.
I am a published mathematical physicist and differential geometer—are you?
Note that the two equations have the same form but are only metaphorically the same.
My point was that the Lorentz transformations of special relativity were known to apply to electodynamics, but the revision required for mass was considered “proof” that it didn’t apply to mechanics. Einstein said ” Why not?”.
This was a ( Necessary) job of salesmanship.
Penny
As to Alan’s comment about Keats–
Einstein himself said many times that the best test of the truth of a physical theory is elegance and beauty.
Mathematics and physics are very poetic, what is commonly called a mathematical model might well be called a mathematical metaphor–as in “The Newtonian Metaphor”.
Penny
If I can make one comment to Alan, a little less snideness please. Also, don’t assume that people that you don’t know are uneducated.
As to not signing my full name, ideas should stand or fall on their own merit, without appeal to authority. That is the essence of the scientific method.
I just listed an interesting english language summary of the Einstein-Grossman papers for Alan to read–
assuming he knows undergrad tensor analysis.
The point is that –up to a term that is a multiple of the metric tensor–required to attain div free status for the Left hand side, Einstein and Grossman already had the GR field equations.
In fact, an elementary tensor calculation shows ( not in the article but obvious and well known) that the equations actually agree in free space.
I should point out that adding a simple term to get div free was already used by Maxwell to make his “displacement current term” and create Maxwell’s equations. This would have been well known to Einstein, who was an expert on Maxwell’s equations.
Instead, he ( rather conveniently) got lost in the issue of “general covariance” as detailed in the article before returning the the Einstein-Grossman equation and then adding the required term–by himself.
By the way, general covariance is NOT a physical law–it is merely the mathematical DEFINITION of a tensor equation. Any equation in which all terms are tensors is generally covariant. That is the DEFINITION of a tensor.
Of course maxwell’s extra term also is required to give gauge invariance–a similar group theoretic concept to general covariance–but gen cov involves the diffeomorphism group.
Probably this discussion is now slightly too technical for the forum.
It was already published before Einstein’s paper that:
1) Maxwell’s equations and the wave equation are invariant under the Poincare Group–which includes the Lorentz transformations.
As to the “ether”. The ether or non–ether is made much of as an issue in elementary and popular books. It is true that Einstein got rid of it in SR, but he replaced it in GR with a vacuum that has a stress–energy tensor: just like any other material!!
If you like, we could call the Einsteinian vacuum a material–it has the same mathematical description. It is really all about the MATH.
and viceversa : poetry and music is fact very mathematic.
It follows beyond doubt that Einstein was a poet while Shakespeare and Beethoven were mathematicians and physicists.
Ah, you know..the poetry of Lie Groups, the algebric solutions provided by Hamlet, the lyricism of calculus, and the subtle allusions (erotic metaphors) embedded in the Z-function of Riemann.
>what is commonly called a mathematical model might well be called a mathematical metaphor..
absolutely…math, engineering and physics are metaphors, poetry is literal, Newton’s equations are sonnets, and the lyrics of Rolling Stones songs are in fact metaphorically disguised solutions to various differential equations.
He is a physicist, and cites a published paper in Europhysics letters.
But, of course, in my previous letter, I meant “When there is an electromagnetic field” the physical vacuum has a stress energy tensor. It is the field that makes it nonzero.
But, that can be thought of as if a material were affected by the field.
The math is the point.
Penny
In the Einstein GR setting energy is matter, so one could say that when a field is present it is not really a vacuum. But, giving a stress energy tensor for the field is poetically using the metaphor of a material in a field.
In fact, “forced choices” are very much the way of cognitive science these days. That is, the six-point likert-like scale is becoming more popular than the seven point scale (which includes the “don’t know” option in the middle.) The six-point scale has a “mild positive” or “mild negative” choice for points 3 and 4 – but no “don’t know option.” The underlying logic is that few people have no opinion, and those that really do would even out on the 3 and 4 choice. However, if there really is a “don’t know” option then many would select it without actually believing it …. all up for debate of course, but the point is that a no “don’t know” option is very scientific too.
In fact, there is group theory in the work of Bach–before math had group theory explicitly>
I am convinced there is.
Actually there were boats floating long before Archimedes came with the law of hydrostatics and people were throwing stones accurately long before Newton and the equations for ballistics.
In restrospect, i.e. once taught what to look for and what is the correct interpretation, one can ‘see’ a lot.
For instance, realizing that Hibert’s equations are the TRG-equations…. once Einstein clarified the issue.
In the PZ comments section, I mentioned two 19th century feminists who are rarely mentioned today, Victoria Woodhull and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Victoria was particularly radical, even to radical for many of the other feminists.
She and her sister Tennessee were the first two women stock brokers and published an influential economic newspaper.
In addition, Victoria was the first woman to run for president, was a free-love advocate, and a socialist. She was more lucid than Anthony. So the question is is why she has been ignored.
Ophelia has deleted some rogue letters, but in doing so she also accidentally deleted my response to Penny’s recent flood of letters, so I’m reposting:
Penny writes:
>First, if Allen doesn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity (aka high school physics) he should refrain from saying that I don’t.<
I did not say I didn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity (I have a degree in physics). What I wrote was the following: “I don’t pretend to the expertise necessary to assess… the contentions about *priority* in relation to special relativity” [new emphasis]. The expertise in question is that of historians of physics who are fully conversant with the complex historical situation within which Einstein was developing his ideas, and producing the 1905 paper.
Now anyone who has looked into this question will know that there are ongoing controversies among people far more knowledgeable than I about the theories being published prior to 1905. It is in this sense that I said I don’t have the expertise to make assessments on this issue. But I do know that there are numerous physicists with considerable knowledge of both the science and the history who would not for one moment go along with Penny’s contention that what Einstein produced in his 1905 special relativity paper was “a job of salesmanship”. [Sorry, Penny, that I underestimated your knowledge of the subject, but really that dismissive expression is not the kind of considered opinion I would expect from someone aware of the fact that highly knowledgeable historians of physicists have argued (with full documentation) in terms which refute such a view. (See, for instance, the several references I gave previously.)]
In response to my expressing surprise at Penny’s describing Einstein’s “work on the photoelectric effect” as “trivial”, she now writes that “The math that Einstein did was at the ninth grade level – this too is high school physics”, which is hardly saying the same thing. At any rate, the paper was regarded as sufficiently path-breaking for Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect to be specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize. That Penny chose to write that this work was trivial suggests to me that she goes out of her way to downgrade Einstein’s achievements.
Penny writes:
>By the way, Alan, Riemannian Geometry and tensor analysis are not “esoteric math” but is taught to undergraduates.<
Of course for a mathematician this is the case, but for the non-mathematician non-Euclidean geometry is somewhat esoteric. Certainly for Einstein in 1912, it was not the kind of mathematics he had studied in his diploma course at Zurich Polytechnic, and he had to seek the expertise of a pure mathematician, which is all I meant by calling it “esoteric”, though I accept in retrospect that it was not perhaps the most felicitous term to use.
>As to the Grossman fight, there was an article in the German science press, and I will find the reference for Alan, if he reads German. He might also read the original research papers of Einstein and Grossman—as I have.<
Penny wrote previously that “and they NEVER spoke again”. Against that is a 1936 letter by Einstein in which he wrote to Grossman’s widow that they remained friends throughout their lives. I’ve no idea, of course, what the newspaper article says, but as far as I can see Penny has only raised this issue as part of her propensity to seek negative aspects of Einstein. (That’s not to say, of course, that such doesn’t exist, only that this has been rather overdone recently.)
I really don’t know why Penny thinks it worth bringing up on this website the ideas in relation to general relativity on which she contends Einstein went wrong. As on other points she has made, there are plenty of physicists with knowledge of the subject matter in depth who would not go along with her downplaying of Einstein’s achievements, but that is a topic for specialised journals.
As for Penny’s responding to Cookiez’s calling for her to be more focused (in relation to the flood of letters including comments on covariance, etc, etc) with “I was answering the questions on Einstein-Grossman”, I don’t see any “questions” concerning this material.
I’ve only just seen that Penny won’t be reading the above response! Having been busy looking through the numerous messages she posted one after the other, I’ve only just spotted her last remark: “I am gone from the place, the tone is too nasty for me.” Now almost lost among the eleven letters Penny posted (not counting the repetitions) in response to mine there is one agreeing with her remarks on maths/physics and poetry, and the aforementioned short comment by Cookiez simply asking for more focus. I think it speaks volumes that on this flimsy basis she contends that the tone of B&W is “too nasty”.
Re: Truth Still Matters
In fact, “forced choices” are very much the way of cognitive science these days. That is, the six-point likert-like scale is becoming more popular than the seven point scale (which includes the “don’t know” option in the middle.) The six-point scale has a “mild positive” or “mild negative” choice for points 3 and 4 – but no “don’t know option.” The underlying logic is that few people have no opinion, and those that really do would even out on the 3 and 4 choice. However, if there really is a “don’t know” option then many would select it without actually believing it …. all up for debate of course, but the point is that a no “don’t know” option is very scientific too.
To Freud’s critics:
Do you think that defending or criticising Freud’s theories is a matter of dialectics (i.e. to state and defend a point, and establish which position is correct in terms of being more convincing)? Is it finally all about truth or about winning an argument by means of strategic manoeuvering? Don’t we finally end up, either way (defending or criticizing Freud) by making use of rhetoric, the manipulative power of language?
I read your “Debunking Edward Said” article with the increasingly uneasy feeling that it had its own agenda that was more political than critical. Imagine my *surprise* when I clicked the link supposedly providing sources for the article, to find the website of an “Islamic” organization proclaiming with pride its links to such overtly right-wing media entities as the Washington Times, Glenn Beck, and some rag with David Horowitz on the masthead. This is the sort of thing that convinces me that your little website is just the conservative version of the very rhetoric it claims to find in the left academy. What a joke!
Re the letter from Paul Grunden on the article “Debunking Edward Said”:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=23
Why should not the author, Ibn Warraq, have a “political agenda”, i.e., a political point of view on the basis of which he writes critically of Said?
Warraq’s full article appeared on the website of “The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society”. Paul Grunden, rather oddly, calls this an “Islamic” organization, one that, he says, “proclaims with pride” its links to right wing media such as the Washington Times, Glenn Beck and Horowitz’s “Front Page Magazine”. An examination of the Home Page of the organization in question indicates that what Paul writes is a travesty of the facts.
The “links” he refers to are not links to the organisations or individuals he cites, but links to *articles* on a specific topic, a conference on the St Petersburg [Florida] Declaration (see below). Moreover, these links are listed among other links to articles on the same topic in the Washington Post, London Times, Toronto Sun, and Wall Street Journal. Note that the “proclaims with pride” bit is a figment of Paul’s imagination. Note also that the Glenn Beck link merely records that CNN’s Glenn Beck would be reporting directly from the conference in question!
What is the St Petersburg Declaration? It begins:
> We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
>We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
>We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
>We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
>We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called “Islamaphobia” in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
http://secularislam.org/blog/post/SI_Blog/21/The-St-Petersburg-Declaration
Why does the website in question link to articles on the Declaration in the media? Because it is “An international forum for secularists of Islamic societies”
http://tinyurl.com/2klq2y
Ibn Warraq is listed among the speakers for the organisation:
http://www.secularislam.org/blog/post/summit/3/Speakers
Why any of this should indicate to Paul that Butterflies and Wheels is a conservative version of fashionable nonsense is a complete mystery.
Warraq and the Left
The Marxist French scholar of Islam, Maxime Rodinson was given to review Ibn Warraq’s “Why I Am Not a Muslim by Le Monde”, which assumed that Rodinson, known for his sympathies, would savage the book. (Rodinson’s sympathies also probably explain why Edward Said gave an enthusiastic blurb to Rodinson’s quite critical book on Muhammad — but then Said was known to provide enthusastic blurbs for hundreds of books he never opened, but just guessed as to their general direction).
But Rodinson produced a favorable review, much to the chagrin of the editors at Le Monde — and they, acting true to Stalinist form, simply refused to print the review (it can be found in Rodinson’s other publications
Rodinson, who had been a great defender of the Arabs against French colonialism, a die-hard tiersmondiste, a Marxist, found that Ibn Warraq’s relentless assault on Islam (above all for its intellectual constraints and failures) deserved the highest praise — and he was willing to disappoint his editors at Le Monde in insisting that they either publish his enthusiastic review, or squash it altogether (of course, they squashed it).
>Has the Left joined hands with militant Islam against the West ?< Mustn’t over-generalise. Only the “Useful Idiots Collective”.
A quote from the member of the “Useful Idiots Collective” cited by HuFiz:
>In one of the sessions on forging unity between the Left and Muslim organisations, members of Egypt’s old left reluctantly attended and raised many of the arguments we have heard from secularists in the UK. They all boil down to the question of how progressive atheists can work with Muslims. Aren’t they reactionary? Doesn’t Islam treat women as subordinates? Aren’t they anti-gay? How can we work together?
>This attitude assumes that Islam is a monolith and that all Muslims share the same outlook. It’s nothing but naked bigotry.< No, of course the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbullah are not reactionary. That is just a libellous story put around by those nasty imperialists: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_simic/2007/04/cairo_conference_3.html
Islamoleftism ?
Has the Left joined hands with militant Islam against the West ?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sasha_simic/2007/04/cairo_conference.html
“.. there were speakers from various political traditions, including Hammas and Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood and various Marxist organisations.”
well, well..the dictatorship of the working believers.
I’m just perusing your website for the first time and finding it very interesting. One thing I found a little disappointing is this: while you have chosen your name from a condescending remark about R. Dawkins, you opened your otherwise good article “Science Studies” with a nearly perfect symmetrical derision of the targets of “Higher Superstition” (…the pigeons have still not recovered from the shock of that particular cat). I’m guessing you’re “fighting fire with fire”, like when A. Coulter turns the left’s abuse back on itself. I saw Dawkins at the U of C field a question on UFOs with earnest aplomb, and no insultive droppings, pigeon or otherwise, were needed.
>Has the Left joined hands with militant Islam against the West ?< AE : “Mustn’t over-generalise. Only the “Useful Idiots Collective”. There seem to be a lot of them. The Egyptian opposition daily Al-Masryoon reported that high-level diplomatic sources said that Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Mahdi ‘Akef, several members of his office, and Muslim Brotherhood MPs had been invited by U.S. Democrat congressmen to visit the U.S. next month and to speak to Congress. Source: Al-Masryoon, Egypt, April 12, 2007
Like R. Joseph Hoffmann (“The New Humanism Yet Again”), I want nothing less than to see humanism bend over backwards to accomodate people with irrational beliefs rooted in supernaturalism. But I don’t know where he gets the idea that the “New Humanists” will take the humanist movement in such a direction. At one point he says, “…while I do not know at the time of this writing precisely what will be said by the wise and wizened who attend the conference, I can guess, and I can guess I’ll be right.” Does that mean that all of his pessimism is just that – a guess?
If so, I don’t see why all the hand-wringing is going on. If not, I’d like to know how he’s managed to discover the prevailing ideas of a conference that hasn’t happened yet.
To be sure, Hoffmann makes some good points about science and its (inverse?) relationship to “intellectual comfort”, about the way dissatisfaction with religious explanations helps us to lead the examined life. But I see no reason why the new humanism should tend towards muddled thinking and an overdose of tolerance.
At any rate, the conference is about a week and a half from today, and I plan to be there. I suppose the matter will be settled then.
What a stupid and spiteful article by Germaine Greer. It is typical of her that she would begin it with an ad hominem attack on John Lauritsen, whose views on the causation of AIDS have nothing whatever to do with nineteenth century English literature.
It’s particularly fatuous coming from someone who, despite her status as a supposed sexual guru, has never, to my knowledge, spoken out publicly about that issue, certainly not in contexts where it might have mattered or made a difference.
Regarding my piece of “The New Humanism, Yet Again,” Michelle Rose’s sentence, “Like R. Joseph Hoffmann …. I want nothing less than to see humanism bend over backwards to accommodate people with irrational beliefs rooted in supernaturalism. But I don’t know where he gets the idea that the ‘New Humanists’ will take the humanist movement in such a direction” puts words and motives in my essay that can’t be found there. What I suggest is that the voice of humanism toward religion is not one voice among many but a voice critical of the many. Humanism, especially secular humanism. has fulfilled this role admirably, perhaps especially in Europe, but also in America, by not envisioning the relationship between secularism and religions as a “dialogue.” Even in the US Constitution, it is defined as a separation, and I think that’s the way critique can best proceed. When advocates of a “new humanism” pin their hopes on a grand vision of spiritual inclusiveness–one that “brings” the humanist perspective to a table dominated by religious factionalists but grudgefully complains about atheist fundamentalists being there humanists need to respond–critically, I think that is what I have done. JH
I am in full support of Marie Therese O Loughlin. She is a courageous and strong woman who will fight like the scarab on the elephant. Good luck Marie Therese.
Anna;
Your ‘question’ is too rhetorical to be answered.
So I won’t.
To Ellen Esterson: bravo, I only read your “oops…” now. Late but sure. Is courage,I guess, to admit a lapsus calami publicly. Not common. To Paul Power: “lacanians” is another name for those who, as Freud, tend to give the patient’s speech absolute right, over any cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is a name for this: “we know better than you what is better for you. Dont speak, just do as I say. This is real science.”
Marco: Oops! That should be *Allen* Esterson. -:)
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/city/2007/04/16/a2294291-a391-423c-9483-716255f1410e.lpf
A CAMBRIDGE University student who sparked a huge row when he published anti- Islamic material has issued a grovelling apology.
The 19-year-old second-year Clare College student went into hiding after he printed a cartoon and material satirising religion in college magazine Clareification.
For his own safety and that of others, the student, who is British, has not been named. During the initial furore surrounding the publication he was taken out of his accommodation and put in a secure place.
From the Cambridge Evening News report of the apology by the Clare College student:
>The college is now arranging a meeting for next term to discuss the problem of maintaining free speech while avoiding offence.< Tough one, that!
>Graham Watson, MEP, leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament, said: “The EU has no business legislating on history. We should leave that to historians and individual member states.
>”Attempts to harmonise EU laws on hate crimes are both illiberal and nonsensical. [This] risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies… whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech.”< Well said! http://tinyurl.com/22w2qc
Sharia comes to EU
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=38945
P Z, I just posted my final brief comment on Chris Mooney’s blog, The Intersection. I suggested that if Mooney persisted in milking at the non-problem of framing, he would possibly turn his blog into a literary salon devoid of scientific input. While there may be hope for Mooney, I have put Nisbet in the hopeless bin.
What one imam thinks.
So says Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center :
“She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.
Hirsi Ali, an atheist, has been critical of many Muslim beliefs, particularly on subjects of sexual morality, the treatment of women and female genital mutilation
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/rss/print_503977.html
psychoanalysis as an attempted science
Whether psychoanalysis can be described as a science is very much open to debate…
Hans Eysenck dismissed it as totally unscientific; H. J. Home, himself an analyst, thinks it shouldn’t even try to be scientific; Charles Rycroft felt it created a bridge between the biological sciences and the humanities; but by the 1950s, Jacques Lacan was admitting that it wasn’t *yet* a science!
It depends what you think science is…
If it’s a classical Newtonian concept of science, it’s got to be measurable, conducted in controlled conditions, and capable of verification by repetition. Psychoanalysis falls far short of this!
A more generous understanding of science, as the accumulation of systematic knowledge based on empirical observation, makes its claim more plausible.
After all, Freud and his successors created a systematic yet flexible vocabulary for describing observable tendencies in human behavior.
It seems to have genuine descriptive power, which is why it is still practiced, and in its therapeutic aspect, perhaps results matter more than truth.
In fact, this debate might be subsumed under the broader debate about the scientific status of psychology (psychoanalysis is that branch of psychology which advocates the existence of an unconscious).
>psychoanalysis as an attempted science
“knowledge is power” (says Bacon) but, 100 years after Freud, where is the power to effect change of psychoanalysis ?
where are the thousands of psychoanalyzed men (and women) walking around radically changed toward leading a better, more gratifying, life while praising their therapist for their new psychological makeup ?
like a prayer
Also, don’t forget the considerable role of Marcel Grossman, with whom Einstein PUBLISHED two preliminary papers on general relativity, who convinced Einstein of the necessity of
using Riemannian Geometry in GR, and–according to Einstein’s journal—with whom Einstein had formulated the CORRECT field equations for GR—later discarded for several years by Einstein.
Einstein had a “Fight” with Grossman, and they NEVER spoke again.
It is an Einstein Pattern. There were ten letters between Einstein and E. Cartan ( the most eminent geometer of the period) in which Cartan pointed out the importance of torsion connections and teleparallel transport in Unified Field theory. Einstein Poo-pooed it, and then –after Cartan was dead—he “invented’ it as his Unified Field Theory. No credit was given to Cartan. These letters have since been published as a book.
Special Relativity was published BEFORE Einstein by at least three people–one in a well known dutch journal a year earlier. What Einstein did uniquely was to modify the definition of mass so that Newton’s equations were at least
poetically still true with the new mass.
His “contribution” was to elevate this to a physical principle. Basically, a job of salesmanship.
On the other hand, Einstein’s work on Brownian motion was brilliant. His work on the photoelectric effect–though trivial–was original. He wrote a paper in the 1950’s on stimulated emission that makes him the first person to predict the Laser!
Penny
The problem with the comments by “Penny” [why the anonymity?] is that it is just too easy to throw around unreferenced contentions. For instance, on a minor point, her claim that Einstein had an unresolved “fight” with Grossman is new to me and is inconsistent with his writing in 1936 that they had remained friends throughout their lives. (Everyone, of course, knows of the important *scientific* role of his pure mathematician friend Marcel Grossman, whose Ph.D. was on non-Euclidean geometry and who assisted Einstein with the esoteric mathematics Einstein needed to develop general relativity when the latter turned to him for help in 1912.)
Penny’s comment that Einstein’s explanation of Lenard’s experimental results on the photoelectric effect that opened the way for the advance of quantum theory was “trivial” is, shall we say, an interesting point of view, as is her statement that Einstein redefined mass so that Newton’s equations were “poetically true” – presumably a new concept in science. (A vindication of Keats’ notion of truth?)
For those out to denigrate Einstein it is not difficult to select from the internet all sorts of contentions (some scientifically respectable, others less so) of the kind to which Penny alludes. I don’t pretend to the expertise necessary to assess, e.g., the contentions about priority in relation to special relativity, and I’m always surprised by the confidence with which some people without such expertise make definitive assertions.
Of course prior to 1905 several physicists were producing significant theories on relative motion and the ether. As far as I understand the situation, it was Einstein who cut through the complexities with his formulation of the two basic postulates that constitute special relativity, and provided a new understanding of space/time which eliminated any need for the concept of the ether. That was his unique achievement.
References:
Galison, P. (2003). *Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps*, pp. 241-262.
Miller, A. I. (1982). “The Special Relativity Theory.” In *Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives*, ed.G. Holton et al., pp. 3-26.
Pais, A. (1982). “The New Kinematics.” In *Subtle is the Lord… The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein*, pp. 138-174.
Rynasiewicz, R. (2000). “The Construction of the Special Theory.” In *Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909*, ed. D. Howard et al., pp. 159-201.
Stachel, J. (2002). *”What Song the Syrens Sang”: How Did Einstein Discover Special Relativity.* In *Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’*, pp. 157-169.
http://tinyurl.com/yr9e3m
reply to HuFiz
Psychoanalysis works in some cases, and fails in some others.
Does getting revolted against the therapist and calling him/ her a charlatan count as change? Would such cases look like prayers to you?
In response to Allen,
First, if Allen doesn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity ( aka high school physics) he should refrain from saying that I don’t.
As a matter of fact, I have a Phd in math, and have been a research member of the Institute for Advanced Study ( where I knew Helen Dukas–former head of the Einstein Project, and Albert Einstein’s personal Secretary).
Maxwell’s equations and the linear wave equation–the standard second order partial differential equation are
invariant under the Poincare Group ( which includes the Lorentz transformations) and this was published before Einstein’s paper. But, Newton’s equations are NOT invariant under this group–they are invariant under the Gal-Group. Einstein simply took this to mean that mass was redefined–extending the ideas to mechanics. All the formulas were pre-existing.
As to the photoelectric effect. The math that Einstein did was at the ninth grade level–this too is high school physics. He simply said, ” If we have Planck’s quanta, the E = E_{0} + h ( nu)
: This is the math for a simple linear plot that was already published.
As to the Grossman fight, there was an article in the German science press, and I will find the reference for Alan, if he reads German. He might also read the original research papers of Einstein and Grossman–as I have.
By the way, Alan, Riemannian Geometry and tensor analysis are not “esoteric math” but is taught to undergraduates.
I am a published mathematical physicist and differential geometer—are you?
Penny Smith
Poetic truth of Newton’s eqs.
Newton: F= dmv/dt
Einstein: F= dmv/dt, where m= m(0)gamma.
Note that the two equations have the same form but are only metaphorically the same.
My point was that the Lorentz transformations of special relativity were known to apply to electodynamics, but the revision required for mass was considered “proof” that it didn’t apply to mechanics. Einstein said ” Why not?”.
This was a ( Necessary) job of salesmanship.
Penny
As to Alan’s comment about Keats–
Einstein himself said many times that the best test of the truth of a physical theory is elegance and beauty.
Mathematics and physics are very poetic, what is commonly called a mathematical model might well be called a mathematical metaphor–as in “The Newtonian Metaphor”.
Penny
If I can make one comment to Alan, a little less snideness please. Also, don’t assume that people that you don’t know are uneducated.
As to not signing my full name, ideas should stand or fall on their own merit, without appeal to authority. That is the essence of the scientific method.
Penny
http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/glymour/earmanglymour1978.pdf
I just listed an interesting english language summary of the Einstein-Grossman papers for Alan to read–
assuming he knows undergrad tensor analysis.
The point is that –up to a term that is a multiple of the metric tensor–required to attain div free status for the Left hand side, Einstein and Grossman already had the GR field equations.
In fact, an elementary tensor calculation shows ( not in the article but obvious and well known) that the equations actually agree in free space.
I should point out that adding a simple term to get div free was already used by Maxwell to make his “displacement current term” and create Maxwell’s equations. This would have been well known to Einstein, who was an expert on Maxwell’s equations.
Instead, he ( rather conveniently) got lost in the issue of “general covariance” as detailed in the article before returning the the Einstein-Grossman equation and then adding the required term–by himself.
By the way, general covariance is NOT a physical law–it is merely the mathematical DEFINITION of a tensor equation. Any equation in which all terms are tensors is generally covariant. That is the DEFINITION of a tensor.
Penny
Of course maxwell’s extra term also is required to give gauge invariance–a similar group theoretic concept to general covariance–but gen cov involves the diffeomorphism group.
Probably this discussion is now slightly too technical for the forum.
I just wanted to be complete.
Penny
In re: the two postulates that Allen mentions:
It was already published before Einstein’s paper that:
1) Maxwell’s equations and the wave equation are invariant under the Poincare Group–which includes the Lorentz transformations.
As to the “ether”. The ether or non–ether is made much of as an issue in elementary and popular books. It is true that Einstein got rid of it in SR, but he replaced it in GR with a vacuum that has a stress–energy tensor: just like any other material!!
If you like, we could call the Einsteinian vacuum a material–it has the same mathematical description. It is really all about the MATH.
Penny
Penny:
Could you please focus more and stop flooding this page?
>Mathematics and physics are very poetic
and viceversa : poetry and music is fact very mathematic.
It follows beyond doubt that Einstein was a poet while Shakespeare and Beethoven were mathematicians and physicists.
Ah, you know..the poetry of Lie Groups, the algebric solutions provided by Hamlet, the lyricism of calculus, and the subtle allusions (erotic metaphors) embedded in the Z-function of Riemann.
>what is commonly called a mathematical model might well be called a mathematical metaphor..
absolutely…math, engineering and physics are metaphors, poetry is literal, Newton’s equations are sonnets, and the lyrics of Rolling Stones songs are in fact metaphorically disguised solutions to various differential equations.
For a discussion of the equivalence between the Einstein Field Equations and a vacuum with stress energy tensor see:
http://home.online.no/~avannieu/darkmatter/energy-stress.pdf
He is a physicist, and cites a published paper in Europhysics letters.
But, of course, in my previous letter, I meant “When there is an electromagnetic field” the physical vacuum has a stress energy tensor. It is the field that makes it nonzero.
But, that can be thought of as if a material were affected by the field.
The math is the point.
Penny
In the Einstein GR setting energy is matter, so one could say that when a field is present it is not really a vacuum. But, giving a stress energy tensor for the field is poetically using the metaphor of a material in a field.
In fact, “forced choices” are very much the way of cognitive science these days. That is, the six-point likert-like scale is becoming more popular than the seven point scale (which includes the “don’t know” option in the middle.) The six-point scale has a “mild positive” or “mild negative” choice for points 3 and 4 – but no “don’t know option.” The underlying logic is that few people have no opinion, and those that really do would even out on the 3 and 4 choice. However, if there really is a “don’t know” option then many would select it without actually believing it …. all up for debate of course, but the point is that a no “don’t know” option is very scientific too.
Dear c,
I was totally focused. I was answering
the questions on Einstein-Grossman.
Dear Hu,
In fact, there is group theory in the work of Bach–before math had group theory explicitly. There are many articles on this.
I am gone from the place, the tone is too nasty for me.
Penny
>Dear Hu,
In fact, there is group theory in the work of Bach–before math had group theory explicitly>
I am convinced there is.
Actually there were boats floating long before Archimedes came with the law of hydrostatics and people were throwing stones accurately long before Newton and the equations for ballistics.
In restrospect, i.e. once taught what to look for and what is the correct interpretation, one can ‘see’ a lot.
For instance, realizing that Hibert’s equations are the TRG-equations…. once Einstein clarified the issue.
>Dear c,
>I was totally focused.
Penny, you are not focused. You are chaotic!
In the PZ comments section, I mentioned two 19th century feminists who are rarely mentioned today, Victoria Woodhull and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Victoria was particularly radical, even to radical for many of the other feminists.
She and her sister Tennessee were the first two women stock brokers and published an influential economic newspaper.
In addition, Victoria was the first woman to run for president, was a free-love advocate, and a socialist. She was more lucid than Anthony. So the question is is why she has been ignored.
“We don’t want a covered woman in Ataturk’s presidential palace.We want civilized, modern people there.”
Unfortunately Turkey is a lost cause. It’s just a matter of how much longer people like these demonstrators can hold out.
Ophelia has deleted some rogue letters, but in doing so she also accidentally deleted my response to Penny’s recent flood of letters, so I’m reposting:
Penny writes:
>First, if Allen doesn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity (aka high school physics) he should refrain from saying that I don’t.< I did not say I didn’t have the expertise to understand special relativity (I have a degree in physics). What I wrote was the following: “I don’t pretend to the expertise necessary to assess… the contentions about *priority* in relation to special relativity” [new emphasis]. The expertise in question is that of historians of physics who are fully conversant with the complex historical situation within which Einstein was developing his ideas, and producing the 1905 paper. Now anyone who has looked into this question will know that there are ongoing controversies among people far more knowledgeable than I about the theories being published prior to 1905. It is in this sense that I said I don’t have the expertise to make assessments on this issue. But I do know that there are numerous physicists with considerable knowledge of both the science and the history who would not for one moment go along with Penny’s contention that what Einstein produced in his 1905 special relativity paper was “a job of salesmanship”. [Sorry, Penny, that I underestimated your knowledge of the subject, but really that dismissive expression is not the kind of considered opinion I would expect from someone aware of the fact that highly knowledgeable historians of physicists have argued (with full documentation) in terms which refute such a view. (See, for instance, the several references I gave previously.)] In response to my expressing surprise at Penny’s describing Einstein’s “work on the photoelectric effect” as “trivial”, she now writes that “The math that Einstein did was at the ninth grade level – this too is high school physics”, which is hardly saying the same thing. At any rate, the paper was regarded as sufficiently path-breaking for Einstein’s discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect to be specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize. That Penny chose to write that this work was trivial suggests to me that she goes out of her way to downgrade Einstein’s achievements. Penny writes:
>By the way, Alan, Riemannian Geometry and tensor analysis are not “esoteric math” but is taught to undergraduates.<
Of course for a mathematician this is the case, but for the non-mathematician non-Euclidean geometry is somewhat esoteric. Certainly for Einstein in 1912, it was not the kind of mathematics he had studied in his diploma course at Zurich Polytechnic, and he had to seek the expertise of a pure mathematician, which is all I meant by calling it “esoteric”, though I accept in retrospect that it was not perhaps the most felicitous term to use.
>As to the Grossman fight, there was an article in the German science press, and I will find the reference for Alan, if he reads German. He might also read the original research papers of Einstein and Grossman—as I have.< Penny wrote previously that “and they NEVER spoke again”. Against that is a 1936 letter by Einstein in which he wrote to Grossman’s widow that they remained friends throughout their lives. I’ve no idea, of course, what the newspaper article says, but as far as I can see Penny has only raised this issue as part of her propensity to seek negative aspects of Einstein. (That’s not to say, of course, that such doesn’t exist, only that this has been rather overdone recently.) I really don’t know why Penny thinks it worth bringing up on this website the ideas in relation to general relativity on which she contends Einstein went wrong. As on other points she has made, there are plenty of physicists with knowledge of the subject matter in depth who would not go along with her downplaying of Einstein’s achievements, but that is a topic for specialised journals. As for Penny’s responding to Cookiez’s calling for her to be more focused (in relation to the flood of letters including comments on covariance, etc, etc) with “I was answering the questions on Einstein-Grossman”, I don’t see any “questions” concerning this material. I’ve only just seen that Penny won’t be reading the above response! Having been busy looking through the numerous messages she posted one after the other, I’ve only just spotted her last remark: “I am gone from the place, the tone is too nasty for me.” Now almost lost among the eleven letters Penny posted (not counting the repetitions) in response to mine there is one agreeing with her remarks on maths/physics and poetry, and the aforementioned short comment by Cookiez simply asking for more focus. I think it speaks volumes that on this flimsy basis she contends that the tone of B&W is “too nasty”.