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    The God Blunder
    The God Blunder
    The God Blunder
    Ebook288 pages11 hours

    The God Blunder

    By Mike Hockney

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    About this ebook

    What is the most ingenious error in the history of science, so difficult to detect that only a genius could manage it?

    “In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.” -- Finagle’s Third Law (Arthur Bloch)

    One of the foundation stones of modern physics - the most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking and devised by one of the greatest geniuses of all - is the catastrophic blunder that is preventing scientists from unifying quantum theory and general relativity.

    Join us on the strangest detective case of all - finding the weapon that has murdered science. This is the ultimate whodunnit.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMike Hockney
    Release dateMay 1, 2016
    ISBN9781311641113
    The God Blunder
    Author

    Mike Hockney

    Mike Hockney invites you to play the God Game. Are you ready to transform yourself? Are you ready to be one of the Special Ones, the Illuminated Ones? Are you ready to play the Ultimate Game? Only the strongest, the smartest, the boldest, can play. This is not a drill. This is your life. Stop being what you have been. Become what you were meant to be. See the Light. Join the Hyperboreans. Become a HyperHuman, an UltraHuman. Only the highest, only the noblest, only the most courageous are called. A new dawn is coming... the birth of Hyperreason. It's time for HyperHumanity to enter HyperReality.

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      Book preview

      The God Blunder - Mike Hockney

      The God Blunder

      by

      Mike Hockney

      Published by Hyperreality Books

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © Mike Hockney 2012

      The right of Mike Hockney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

      Quotations

      Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold. – W. B. Yeats

      An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. – Weinberg’s Corollary (Arthur Bloch)

      In any calculation, any error which can creep in will do so. – First Law for Naïve Engineers (Arthur Bloch)

      Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it. – Seventh Law of Computer Programming (Arthur Bloch)

      Given any problem containing n equations, there will always be (n+1) unknowns. – First Snafu Equation (Arthur Bloch)

      If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it. – Troutman’s Fifth Programming Postulate (Arthur Bloch)

      Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows. – Farber’s Fourth Law (Arthur Bloch)

      What, ultimately, are man’s truths? Merely his irrefutable errors. – Nietzsche

      The Illuminati

      THIS IS ONE OF A SERIES OF BOOKS outlining the cosmology, philosophy, politics and religion of the ancient and controversial secret society known as the Illuminati, of which the Greek polymath Pythagoras was the first official Grand Master. The society exists to this day and the author is a senior member, working under the pseudonym of Mike Hockney.

      Introduction

      Is it possible for an error to be divine – to be so beautiful, ingenious, beguiling, compelling and apparently irrefutable that everyone who encounters it, no matter how intelligent, is deceived by it? Does the final throw of the dice of an entirely false view of the world throw up a solution that represents the perfect last stand of that ideology – the glorious Alamo defence? If so, this solution becomes the biggest possible obstacle to progress because it’s not just a question of showing that it’s false but of overthrowing a ferociously well-entrenched paradigm.

      People will cling desperately to the prevailing paradigm because it’s how they make sense of the world, and without it they’re lost. Also, many people’s careers are predicated on that paradigm, so they have a vested interest in maintaining it at any cost. Tellingly, Max Planck wrote, A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. What that means is that scientists – supposedly highly rational people – are not convinced by facts and evidence at all (no matter how much they might claim otherwise), and fanatically adhere to indefensible positions, even to their dying breath.

      If a scientific head of department in a prestigious university has built his whole power base, reputation and lucrative job on a certain paradigm – in which he is an acknowledged expert – do you imagine he’s in any hurry to encourage research into a counter paradigm in which he has no status at all? This is the reality of science. Like everything else, it is based on status, salary, career prospects, professional reputation, office politics and so on. Those in power in science do not intend to abandon their power, so they create science in their own image, reflecting their own ideas, no matter how wrong they might be.

      Thomas Kuhn, in the breathtaking The Structure of Scientific Revolutions dealt a fatal blow to the illusions of scientists that they are some band of noble questers impartially following the truth wherever it leads. On the contrary, they are highly partisan and partial, and the WHOLE of professional science revolves around an accepted but unproved paradigm.

      Kuhn wrote, In science … novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially only the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed.

      In other words, scientists have a habit of seeing what they want to see, believing what they want to believe and resisting anything that challenges the ruling paradigm. The parallels between science and the Catholic Church are horrific. Science is an institution that reviles heretics, apostates, freethinkers and infidels. It gives them no sustenance and excommunicates them. Science has only one saving grace: eventually, it comes to its senses and realises that a paradigm is no longer tenable. This is when what Kuhn labelled revolutionary science takes place – when the old paradigm is killed and a new one is born. It is both the most exciting and unsettling phase of science. The Catholic Church, Islam and Judaism cannot accept a new paradigm: science, fortunately, can.

      Miguel de Unamuno declared, Science is a cemetery of dead ideas. Yet wrong ideas do not die nearly quickly enough in science. Any ideas that become the key scaffolding of the prevailing paradigm can take centuries to perish. A paradigm falls only when they fall. They are the last things to fall. They are precisely those ideas in which people have most confidence, in which their faith is most invested.

      Keith J. Pendred wrote, Successful research impedes further successful research. This, sadly, is all too true. The more successful a paradigm becomes, the less anyone challenges it or is capable of seeing beyond it. Anyone who speaks out against a paradigm is mocked and banished. Their career is over.

      Enough research will tend to support your theory. – Murphy’s Law of Research (Arthur Bloch)

      Putting this another way, science supports the prevailing paradigm of science, and designs research programmes specifically to support it. (How many scientific funding bodies give grants to projects challenging the scientific wisdom? – NONE!)

      Yet science sees itself as objective, neutral, dispassionate and unbiased. Scientists are apparently unaware of the endless unwritten laws of their profession that encourage groupthink – or, if they are aware, they go along with them anyway. Science as a career is much more important than science as a vehicle for understanding reality. Scientists enjoy excluding those who don’t agree with their paradigm. Yet, as the history of science shows, paradigm after paradigm has fallen. So, why not accept that all scientific paradigms are provisional and actively set up scientific groups to undermine and attack the prevailing paradigm so that its demise can come about all the sooner? Why wait until the paradigm is a cruel, old, dying man that has ruthlessly killed all rivals (and all their great ideas and potential) for decades and even centuries, before overthrowing him?

      The answer is career, mortgage, salary and status. Just as no religion wants a rival, so no scientific paradigm wants a rival, and just as the pope brooks no opposition, so none of the priesthood of the paradigm want their authority – and lucrative and prestigious careers – to be challenged. Science, despite some of its rhetoric, sees itself as quintessentially involved with the search for the TRUTH. But if science countenanced a rival paradigm with as much credibility then it would no longer enjoy its unchallenged and imperious status.

      Science OUGHT to be dialectical, but it isn’t. The dialectic is all about finding the opposition and creating a system that drives forward on the basis of resolving thesis and antithesis in a higher synthesis, which then becomes a new thesis, and so on. The scientific method itself is a perfect example of a dialectical process, but the scientific method is, ironically, not applied to the institutions of science, and to the careers of scientists.

      The scientific method calls for the most stringent tests to be applied to all hypotheses, experiments, facts, evidence and theories. The scientific method is supposed to invoke something akin to the Devil’s Advocate mechanism of the Catholic Church where any candidate for sainthood is to be attacked as strenuously as possible – as if the Devil himself were mounting the prosecution case and doing everything in his power to block the would-be saint from earning his rightful reward of canonisation.

      Yet what does science do in practice? It hires only those people who accept the prevailing paradigm. Anyone who attacks the paradigm is called a crank and excluded. Scientific funding bodies give assistance only to projects advancing the paradigm, and everything else is ignored. You can rise high in science only by being a recognised priest of the paradigm. No true mavericks ever reach the top in mainstream, careerist science. The alleged mavericks – such as Richard Feynman – are not mavericks at all when you examine their record. They turn out to be fanatical advocates of the prevailing paradigm, and refuse to challenge it even when it is woefully incapable of making any sense at all.

      Consider these remarks by Feynman concerning quantum mechanics:

      "But the difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, ‘But how can it be like that?’ which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar; I will simply describe it. There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve.

      On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

      It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

      Why didn’t Feynman call for radical new thinking to unlock the apparent mysteries of quantum mechanics? Why did he simply surrender? – because he knew that a new paradigm was required, but he had no interest in any new paradigm. He preferred to remain ignorant within the existing paradigm.

      Charles Caleb Cotton wrote, Professors in every branch of science prefer their own theories to the truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but the truth is common stock. The conclusion isn’t valid, but it’s certainly true that professors prefer their paradigm to the truth, and even persuade themselves that it IS the truth.

      John Kenneth Galbraith provided the true but rather grim image of science, The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate action, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialised but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.

      This can be linked to Max Gluckmann’s observation, A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.

      In others words, science is about the relentless progress of rather ordinary people. It certainly isn’t going out of its way to identify and support geniuses. If such people nevertheless succeed, it’s often despite the scientific establishment rather than because of it.

      In the world of writing, Zamyatin said, There can be a real literature only when it is produced by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics and not by patient and well-meaning functionaries.

      Science is completely dominated by functionaries: apparatchiks, bureaucrats, conformist careerists, mortgage men. Why not have advanced institutes for scientific madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics whose precise job is to continually attack the prevailing paradigm and call it into question? Let them be the Devil’s Advocates. Let them test the ideas of the establishment to destruction. You cannot oppose the establishment form INSIDE the establishment.

      The scientific method has been subverted by science as a professional career since all of those who would be best at subjecting scientific ideas to proper scrutiny have been more or less deliberately excluded. Only those who accept the paradigm are allowed to pursue the scientific method, meaning that the method now possesses an inherent bias contrary to the raison d’être of the method. Supporters of the paradigm are not looking to undermine the paradigm. They are putting in no effort to do so. If they do so, it’s by accident, not design.

      In order for the scientific method to be consistent with its own professed aims, philosophy and purpose, it MUST challenge itself in the most radical way, and that means by establishing a shadow science involving those who are not scientific careerists and conformists.

      Science must be made dialectical. It must be purged of its excessive establishment bias where only orthodox opinions are heard and all heretics are purged. Science has taken on the mantle of a dogmatic faith in the prevailing scientific paradigm. Only during a scientific revolution is the faith challenged and overturned. Why shouldn’t that be happening ALL of the time? Why wait for a revolution? Using Kuhn’s term, science should never be normal (i.e. careerist and conformist, involving group think and slavish adherence to the prevailing paradigm): it should always be revolutionary i.e. seeking to overthrow the prevailing paradigm at all times. That way, it will be maximally productive.

      An American Air Force saying asserts, It takes a great enemy to make a great airplane. This encapsulates the dialectic perfectly. The better the opposition to something, the better the something has to be to win. Science – full of conformist careerists – needs to be challenged by nonconformist geniuses. The scientific establishment must be opposed by the scientific anti-establishment. Both sides will benefit from the dialectical struggle, and the whole world will be the ultimate beneficiary.

      *****

      If a scientist uncovers a publishable fact, it will become central to his theory. – Mann’s Law (Arthur Bloch)

      This sums up careerist science. Science, as actually practised, is all about writing papers, attending conferences, making the most of publishable facts, and so on. Thomas Kuhn exposed the great myth of science, but science has subsequently reformed itself no more than Catholicism did in the face of Protestantism. It’s about time Kuhn’s ideas were placed at the very heart of science as it exists as an institution.

      Never forget that science and institutionalized science are not one and the same, just as political philosophy (about political ideas and their coherence) has almost nothing in common with politics as an institution (revolving around populist, incoherent political parties). The same goes for religion. It has often been said that the institutionalized Catholic Church would have persecuted early Christians – and even Jesus Christ himself – as heretics.

      Institutions are where power and hierarchies become entrenched, and all of the purity of a subject is destroyed. We need entirely new institutions – reflecting the dialectic – so that every institution is automatically opposed by its antithesis, and so that it cannot turn itself into a smug, careerist, conformist, blinkered tower of power.

      For a healthy society, we should always have an establishment view up against an anti-establishment view, and a third group (representing the Synthesis phase of the dialectic) that seeks to take the best of both views. Instead, all we get is the unchallenged establishment view thrust down our throats.

      The Meta Paradigm

      Science doesn’t just operate according to a particular scientific paradigm. There is also an unwritten and tacit overarching Meta Paradigm.

      In ancient Greece, the Meta Paradigm of science was Pythagorean-Platonic rationalism and mathematics. Later, Aristotelian observation and classification took over. Later still, the Meta Paradigm of science became religious and all scientific theories had to be consistent with the Bible and Aristotelian/Ptolemaic cosmology, which fitted neatly with the idea of a Creator God. Even today, Islamic science is subject to a religious Meta Paradigm (it is not permitted to contradict the Koran, hence is wholly worthless – which is why it’s almost unheard of for any Muslim to win a Nobel Prize in science).

      Only with Copernicus and Galileo did Western science escape the religious Meta Paradigm of Christianity. In that time, Illuminatus Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for railing against the Meta Paradigm of Catholicism, and Galileo was fortunate not to join him.

      The Enlightenment allowed the religious Meta Paradigm of science to be demolished and replaced with a new, more rationalistic Meta Paradigm. A brief battle took place between two Meta Paradigms: rationalist idealism (championed by Descartes, Spinoza and, especially Leibniz), and empiricist materialism (championed by Hobbes, Locke and Hume, and enshrined in the work of Isaac Newton).

      Bishop Berkeley held an intermediate position of empiricist idealism. His philosophy was summed up by: to be is to be perceived i.e. his position was all about perception. There has never been a school of rationalist materialism because rationalism always makes an appeal to an immaterial and eternal Platonic domain of perfect knowledge and reason, and such a conception fundamentally contradicts materialist thinking.

      In the rationalist idealist approach, mind is held to be primary and reason is the means to explore the ultimate rational basis of mind and of existence. (If mind is fundamentally rational and existence is fundamentally mental then existence is fundamentally rational, as Hegel asserted). Experiments are useful in this view, but not essential. This view is highly metaphysical because it involves elements that are beyond observation and have no material form. Rationalist idealism, by making mind primary, can account for free will (since free will is a property of mind, but not of matter). This approach, by being based on the idea that existence is fundamentally mental, is asserting that existence is inherently ALIVE.

      In the empiricist materialist approach, matter is held to be primary (mind, such as it exists, is a product of matter and wholly dependent on matter; it can have no conceivable existence without matter – so when a body dies, any associated mind automatically dies too). Observation and experiments are critical to this approach. It is held that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, that what cannot be observed does not exist, that if something that cannot, at least in principle, be made the subject of an experiment then it does not exist. Hence, the mind (as an independent entity), the soul, God and the afterlife are all denied. Free will is inexplicable within this Meta Paradigm, and has no possible source (only a free, independent, autonomous mind – dependent on nothing else – can be a source of free will and self-generated agency). This approach asserts that existence is inherently machinelike. There are no rational means for accounting for life and consciousness since these are not part of the empiricist materialist framework. (Bishop Berkeley’s empiricist idealism, on the other hand, IS all about life and consciousness – and rejects materialism entirely.)

      Since the death of Leibniz, the Meta Paradigm of rationalist idealism has been removed from science. It is now wholly about empiricist materialism. This Meta Paradigm has made no progress at all in accounting for life, consciousness, and free will, and most practising scientists have no interest in these subjects. It has been highly successful in analyzing the universe as a kind of machine.

      While rationalist idealism is compatible with religious views such as pantheism, deism and evolutionary divinity, the empiricist materialism Meta Paradigm is more or less explicitly atheist. Frankly, no scientists can have any credibility if they believe in any kind of God; God is simply not a feature of the Meta Paradigm. There is no scope for God, just as there is none for free will. Richard Dawkins perfectly expresses the atheistic views consistent with this Meta Paradigm. All religious scientists are either dishonest, or don’t understand the scientific Meta Paradigm to which they subscribe.

      Atheism is therefore a tacit feature of the empiricist materialist Meta Paradigm. Ironically, Newton – essentially the founder of the modern scientific view – was deeply religious. Others purged his system of all traces of God, with the process being completed by Darwin’s theory of evolution.

      From approximately 1700 to 1900, science was governed by the Newtonian scientific paradigm operating within the empiricist materialist atheistic Meta Paradigm.

      The Problem of Mathematics

      Science reveres two things: mathematics and experiments. This poses a serious problem for science in terms of its Meta Paradigm. While experimentation goes hand in hand with empiricist materialism, mathematics is the quintessence of the rival Meta Paradigm of rationalist idealism. Mathematics is Platonic, immaterial, analytic, a priori, eternal, deductive and involves necessary truths. It does not require experiments in any way.

      Therefore, the prevailing Meta Paradigm of science is incoherent. Empiricist materialism is synthetic, ad hoc, provisional, contingent, inductive and a posteriori – the opposite of mathematics! Sadly, no practising scientist ever gives any thought to

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