Cleaning Up The Mess
Content
Chapter 6
CLEANING UP THE MESS
That scientific screwup 350 years ago has polluted the intellectual landscape ever since. For the first 200 years after the Copernican Revolution, from 1650 to 1850, the Western world's “best and brightest” fervently pursued the Holy Grail of "physics" (that dynamical terrestrial proof of Earth's rotation). All in vain, of course. (As any Thinker would have predicted). So by 1850 they were no doubt getting pretty darned desperate. Remember, they hadn't been looking for evidence one way or the other about Earth's
rotation—the way you'd enter into an experiment. No, they already KNEW the answer. The KNEW that such terrestrial dynamical evidence EXISTED. They were so invested in the outcome that they pre-believed it. (Sounds just like Biblical FAITH, doesn't it?) So what they were really seeking was not evidence, but vindication. Talk about moving the goalposts! The scientists of 1850 desperately needed positive reinforcement--affirmation-- of their own genius.
Gaspard Coriolis (1792-1843) has been linked to this bad science from the outset. But I now suspect that he was framed. Set up. He appears to have been sane. He coined the term “work” for the product of force and distance. He identified and analyzed kinetic energy as a form of work. He knew that kinetic energy was a temporary commodity—not perpetual motion. He identified and analyzed how the laws of motion would translate in rotational motion, and how motion across a rotating frame of reference would be deflected. I find no record that he thought of Earth's surface as providing such a rotating frame of reference. Which is very much to his credit. It looks like it was only after his death that desperate seekers of that Holy Grail hijacked his work on rotating frames of reference and “applied” it to Earth's surface.
The most notable of these hijackers was one Leon Foucault (1819-1868). He combined Coriolis' work on motion across rotating frames with the astronomical fact that Earth was a rotating sphere. So if you didn't know Earth's shape, a long range artillery shot would show you, by reacting to the change in eastward linear velocities of the rotating surface beneath its flight path. And while conducting the gunnery to demonstrate this pre-believed theory wasn't practical, Foucault opined that a big pendulum would make a perfect stand-in. Thus he was lauded as THE CHAMPION, the actual
finder, at long last, of the Holy Grail—the dynamical evidence of Earth's rotation.
Dr. William Tobin summed it up well in his definitive book The Life and Science of Leon Foucault :
The slow clockwise veering of the swing-plane of the bob demonstrated that the Earth was slowly turning anticlockwise below. ..this first dynamical proof....ended a quest that had begun....over two centuries earlier. It established Foucault's fame then and subsequently.
That was when a major mind-warp took place. I credit Foucault with taking the fool's errand for the Holy Grail from bad science into the realm of insanity. To confuse flight just above Earth's surface (e.g.: birds and artillery rounds) with flight through space (e.g.: planets) was bad (really bad) science. But to confuse the vibration of the bob of a stationary pendulum with flight—or any other type of geographic relocation—was insanity. A pendulum's location is its axle. The vibration of the bob is merely a temporary shift in its center of balance. The latitude of the bob is the latitude of its axle. It “flies” nowhere. To “launch” the bob is to disturb its balance. The energy invested by pulling it off balance is dissipated, oscillation by oscillation, until it returns to its state of rest (hanging on a line between its axle and the Earth's center of mass). Only madmen would deliberately confuse a slow-swinging fixed pendulum with a turtle, a gyroscope*, an ICBM, an orbiting space shuttle—or a planet.
*The gyroscope ( invented by Leon Foucault—what irony!) uses the rotational forces of a rapidly spinning wheel. Sufficient gyroscopic force can overpower the Gravitational force on the wheel. So when properly gimbaled, as in an airplane's artificial horizon indicator, the spinning wheel will ignore, Earth's rotation. Thereby the gyroscope can serve as an accurate clock in an airplane parked on the ground-- recording Earth's eastward angular displacement relative to her axis. Which is neat—but by definition does not amount to dynamical evidence of Earth's rotation. The gyroscope is real science—but isn't the Holy Grail. Sorry, Leon.
But Science was all ears. If they hadn't all been so desperate to see the grail—to touch it, to gaze in rapturous wonder at it—the way a teen-aged boy gazes at his first Playboy—some grownup surely would have pointed out that it was all nonsense. That those latitudinal velocities relative to points in space were irrelevant here in Earth. Earthly stillness was overwhelming evidence of that. If those latitude-based velocities had any physical relevance to life in Earth, a glass of water-- or a fanciest accelerometer in the latest submarine's Inertial Navigation System-- would tell us so. And water had spoken the truth from the first time the most primitive mind had made the most primitive observation. This is a case where intuitive observation and processing has stood all the tests of time and technological advance. The starting point, the benchmark, for all terrestrial motion is spherical equilibrium. Which we recognize as a state of rest, of terrestrial stillness (inertia).
And if the space velocity of your starting point is irrelevant, then per se the space velocity of your target point is equally irrelevant. 0 +/- 0 = 0, eh? Which, incidentally, also means,
by definition, that said Space Velocity is irrelevant to any discussion of terrestrial dynamics. No energy pulse: no dynamical implications. So if the Holy Grail of dynamical terrestrial evidence of eastward linear velocity was a fool's errand, then the theory about latitudinal velocities affecting the flight paths of really long range artillery were just travel plans for that fool's errand. (Go sit in your Thinking Chair. Think about why the Earth's surface rotates beneath the flight paths of typical space shuttle missions in low Earth orbit. Think about the differences between terrestrial flight and space flight.)
So the theory about deflection between flight paths of long range artillery and the Earth's surface was doomed from its outset. A little bit of Aristotelean (INTUITIVE) reflection on the non-dynamical nature of planetary (gravitational field) motion in space would have forced Seekers of the Holy Grail to abort / scrub / toss the whole idea of proving the nature of a gravitational field by the repositioning of surface particles of that same gravitational field. That was ignorance born of laziness.
But the next progression--Foucault's belief that a big lazy pendulum was the same as an artillery round was-- plain and simple-- insane.
S o
"physicists"....
“can't handle the truth”
….about the non-applicability of Coriolis' innocent formulas about rotating frames of reference to our rotating Earth. All attempts to do so,-- and all the corollary twists and contrivances-- are insanity—side-trips down the rabbit hole, for conversations with the Mad Hatter..
Here is a list of some of the most obvious bits of Foucault's true legacy which continue to pollute the body of knowledge called "physics":
Failure to appreciate the basic terrestrial nature of stillness.
Failure to appreciate that Earth's spherical form is important empirical evidence as to the final product of Gravity vs matter in a given gravitational field.
Failure to appreciate that part of the nature of any particular Gravitational Field is its systematic orbiting and revolving.
Failure to appreciate that the first nature of any particle belonging to a Gravitational Field, regardless of whether it sits, crawls or flies*, is that it has no separate identity from the whole field.
Failure to appreciate that even an ICBM is not separated from Earth's Gravitational Field, and so rotates constantly eastward at a rate of 360
degrees per day-- on the launch pad, at launch, and at all points along its suborbital trajectory--regardless of latitudinal position.
Belief that Earth's surface is not (quite actually) an inertial frame of reference.
Failure to delineate the fundamental differences between the laws of motion inside a gravitational field vs in space.
Misrepresentation of the human senses as being the definitive sensing mechanism (I:e: talking about “Why we don't feel Earth move” as opposed to “Why no sensors can detect dynamical evidence of Earth's motion”.)
Unfounded belief that impetus (torque) transmitted to a passenger diminishes to zero when a vehicle moving in a gravitational field settles at a cruising velocity.
Unfounded belief that passengers on an airplane don't feel any impetus while the plane is cruising at constant speed.
Failure to recognize the instantaneous partial loss of vehicle-derived forward velocity (due to Gravity) of flying objects upon launch in theoretical relative motion examples (e.g.: tossing a ball on a moving train).
Failure to appreciate the finite life cycle of terrestrial kinetic energy.
Failure to recognize the instantaneous partial loss of velocity (due to Gravity) upon launch in calculating the theoretical sideways (as a component of Coriolis Effect) as well as the forward velocity in theoretical artillery or rocketry ballistics.
Myth that rockets headed for Earth orbit will receive an eastward “launch boost” from the rotation- derived- linear- velocity of the terrestrial launch latitude.
Confusing the product of the interaction of coldness of space and the way Earth's cold surface rotates relative to the forces radiating from the Sun-- with
imaginary dynamical effects of an imaginary conflict between the atmosphere and the harder parts of Earth's surface.
IN CONCLUSION
My advice to all innocent civilians is to: ALWAYS TACKLE A THORNY PROBLEM BY REFLECTING ON IT &
NEVER TRUST A "physicist".
My advice to all card-carrying "physicists” is: BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO SOLVE ONE MORE PROBLEM, GO SOMEWHERE QUIET AND FORCE YOURSELF TO
REFLECT
GET A GRIP CLEAN UP YOUR ACT. APOLOGIZE TO THE WORLD. .
©2011 C N GIFFORD, SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI USA THE FINAL AUTHORITY ON FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM
CLEANING UP THE MESS
That scientific screwup 350 years ago has polluted the intellectual landscape ever since. For the first 200 years after the Copernican Revolution, from 1650 to 1850, the Western world's “best and brightest” fervently pursued the Holy Grail of "physics" (that dynamical terrestrial proof of Earth's rotation). All in vain, of course. (As any Thinker would have predicted). So by 1850 they were no doubt getting pretty darned desperate. Remember, they hadn't been looking for evidence one way or the other about Earth's
rotation—the way you'd enter into an experiment. No, they already KNEW the answer. The KNEW that such terrestrial dynamical evidence EXISTED. They were so invested in the outcome that they pre-believed it. (Sounds just like Biblical FAITH, doesn't it?) So what they were really seeking was not evidence, but vindication. Talk about moving the goalposts! The scientists of 1850 desperately needed positive reinforcement--affirmation-- of their own genius.
Gaspard Coriolis (1792-1843) has been linked to this bad science from the outset. But I now suspect that he was framed. Set up. He appears to have been sane. He coined the term “work” for the product of force and distance. He identified and analyzed kinetic energy as a form of work. He knew that kinetic energy was a temporary commodity—not perpetual motion. He identified and analyzed how the laws of motion would translate in rotational motion, and how motion across a rotating frame of reference would be deflected. I find no record that he thought of Earth's surface as providing such a rotating frame of reference. Which is very much to his credit. It looks like it was only after his death that desperate seekers of that Holy Grail hijacked his work on rotating frames of reference and “applied” it to Earth's surface.
The most notable of these hijackers was one Leon Foucault (1819-1868). He combined Coriolis' work on motion across rotating frames with the astronomical fact that Earth was a rotating sphere. So if you didn't know Earth's shape, a long range artillery shot would show you, by reacting to the change in eastward linear velocities of the rotating surface beneath its flight path. And while conducting the gunnery to demonstrate this pre-believed theory wasn't practical, Foucault opined that a big pendulum would make a perfect stand-in. Thus he was lauded as THE CHAMPION, the actual
finder, at long last, of the Holy Grail—the dynamical evidence of Earth's rotation.
Dr. William Tobin summed it up well in his definitive book The Life and Science of Leon Foucault :
The slow clockwise veering of the swing-plane of the bob demonstrated that the Earth was slowly turning anticlockwise below. ..this first dynamical proof....ended a quest that had begun....over two centuries earlier. It established Foucault's fame then and subsequently.
That was when a major mind-warp took place. I credit Foucault with taking the fool's errand for the Holy Grail from bad science into the realm of insanity. To confuse flight just above Earth's surface (e.g.: birds and artillery rounds) with flight through space (e.g.: planets) was bad (really bad) science. But to confuse the vibration of the bob of a stationary pendulum with flight—or any other type of geographic relocation—was insanity. A pendulum's location is its axle. The vibration of the bob is merely a temporary shift in its center of balance. The latitude of the bob is the latitude of its axle. It “flies” nowhere. To “launch” the bob is to disturb its balance. The energy invested by pulling it off balance is dissipated, oscillation by oscillation, until it returns to its state of rest (hanging on a line between its axle and the Earth's center of mass). Only madmen would deliberately confuse a slow-swinging fixed pendulum with a turtle, a gyroscope*, an ICBM, an orbiting space shuttle—or a planet.
*The gyroscope ( invented by Leon Foucault—what irony!) uses the rotational forces of a rapidly spinning wheel. Sufficient gyroscopic force can overpower the Gravitational force on the wheel. So when properly gimbaled, as in an airplane's artificial horizon indicator, the spinning wheel will ignore, Earth's rotation. Thereby the gyroscope can serve as an accurate clock in an airplane parked on the ground-- recording Earth's eastward angular displacement relative to her axis. Which is neat—but by definition does not amount to dynamical evidence of Earth's rotation. The gyroscope is real science—but isn't the Holy Grail. Sorry, Leon.
But Science was all ears. If they hadn't all been so desperate to see the grail—to touch it, to gaze in rapturous wonder at it—the way a teen-aged boy gazes at his first Playboy—some grownup surely would have pointed out that it was all nonsense. That those latitudinal velocities relative to points in space were irrelevant here in Earth. Earthly stillness was overwhelming evidence of that. If those latitude-based velocities had any physical relevance to life in Earth, a glass of water-- or a fanciest accelerometer in the latest submarine's Inertial Navigation System-- would tell us so. And water had spoken the truth from the first time the most primitive mind had made the most primitive observation. This is a case where intuitive observation and processing has stood all the tests of time and technological advance. The starting point, the benchmark, for all terrestrial motion is spherical equilibrium. Which we recognize as a state of rest, of terrestrial stillness (inertia).
And if the space velocity of your starting point is irrelevant, then per se the space velocity of your target point is equally irrelevant. 0 +/- 0 = 0, eh? Which, incidentally, also means,
by definition, that said Space Velocity is irrelevant to any discussion of terrestrial dynamics. No energy pulse: no dynamical implications. So if the Holy Grail of dynamical terrestrial evidence of eastward linear velocity was a fool's errand, then the theory about latitudinal velocities affecting the flight paths of really long range artillery were just travel plans for that fool's errand. (Go sit in your Thinking Chair. Think about why the Earth's surface rotates beneath the flight paths of typical space shuttle missions in low Earth orbit. Think about the differences between terrestrial flight and space flight.)
So the theory about deflection between flight paths of long range artillery and the Earth's surface was doomed from its outset. A little bit of Aristotelean (INTUITIVE) reflection on the non-dynamical nature of planetary (gravitational field) motion in space would have forced Seekers of the Holy Grail to abort / scrub / toss the whole idea of proving the nature of a gravitational field by the repositioning of surface particles of that same gravitational field. That was ignorance born of laziness.
But the next progression--Foucault's belief that a big lazy pendulum was the same as an artillery round was-- plain and simple-- insane.
S o
"physicists"....
“can't handle the truth”
….about the non-applicability of Coriolis' innocent formulas about rotating frames of reference to our rotating Earth. All attempts to do so,-- and all the corollary twists and contrivances-- are insanity—side-trips down the rabbit hole, for conversations with the Mad Hatter..
Here is a list of some of the most obvious bits of Foucault's true legacy which continue to pollute the body of knowledge called "physics":
Failure to appreciate the basic terrestrial nature of stillness.
Failure to appreciate that Earth's spherical form is important empirical evidence as to the final product of Gravity vs matter in a given gravitational field.
Failure to appreciate that part of the nature of any particular Gravitational Field is its systematic orbiting and revolving.
Failure to appreciate that the first nature of any particle belonging to a Gravitational Field, regardless of whether it sits, crawls or flies*, is that it has no separate identity from the whole field.
Failure to appreciate that even an ICBM is not separated from Earth's Gravitational Field, and so rotates constantly eastward at a rate of 360
degrees per day-- on the launch pad, at launch, and at all points along its suborbital trajectory--regardless of latitudinal position.
Belief that Earth's surface is not (quite actually) an inertial frame of reference.
Failure to delineate the fundamental differences between the laws of motion inside a gravitational field vs in space.
Misrepresentation of the human senses as being the definitive sensing mechanism (I:e: talking about “Why we don't feel Earth move” as opposed to “Why no sensors can detect dynamical evidence of Earth's motion”.)
Unfounded belief that impetus (torque) transmitted to a passenger diminishes to zero when a vehicle moving in a gravitational field settles at a cruising velocity.
Unfounded belief that passengers on an airplane don't feel any impetus while the plane is cruising at constant speed.
Failure to recognize the instantaneous partial loss of vehicle-derived forward velocity (due to Gravity) of flying objects upon launch in theoretical relative motion examples (e.g.: tossing a ball on a moving train).
Failure to appreciate the finite life cycle of terrestrial kinetic energy.
Failure to recognize the instantaneous partial loss of velocity (due to Gravity) upon launch in calculating the theoretical sideways (as a component of Coriolis Effect) as well as the forward velocity in theoretical artillery or rocketry ballistics.
Myth that rockets headed for Earth orbit will receive an eastward “launch boost” from the rotation- derived- linear- velocity of the terrestrial launch latitude.
Confusing the product of the interaction of coldness of space and the way Earth's cold surface rotates relative to the forces radiating from the Sun-- with
imaginary dynamical effects of an imaginary conflict between the atmosphere and the harder parts of Earth's surface.
IN CONCLUSION
My advice to all innocent civilians is to: ALWAYS TACKLE A THORNY PROBLEM BY REFLECTING ON IT &
NEVER TRUST A "physicist".
My advice to all card-carrying "physicists” is: BEFORE YOU ATTEMPT TO SOLVE ONE MORE PROBLEM, GO SOMEWHERE QUIET AND FORCE YOURSELF TO
REFLECT
GET A GRIP CLEAN UP YOUR ACT. APOLOGIZE TO THE WORLD. .
©2011 C N GIFFORD, SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI USA THE FINAL AUTHORITY ON FOUCAULT’S PENDULUM
