1. The Need of New Approaches - Kritische Stimmen zur ...

Chapter 9: The Thought Experiment
351 / 2003-11-19 - SOCIAL TEXT, Editorial Office. Centre for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture,
Rutgers State University. New Brunswick, NJ.
STR Research Report, Nov. 03
Extract:
“The situation is rather bizarre: while in all other fields of science there is permanent criticism and discussion of
theories, only in theoretical physics there has been organized the silence of a cemetary to protect relativity theory
from critical arguments, and still more bizarre is that nobody in the sciences and the history of sciences seems to
have noticed this cultural disaster.
Since the special theory of relativity in the public opinion has survived until today as one of the greatest
achievements of science, in reality it has been disproved since at least 1914 (experiment of Sagnac), and the few
features of the theory which have a basis in reality (as example: e=mc²) are no relativistic effects and the famous
formula is not the idea of Einstein: the relativists simply have usurped the achievement of Thomson 1881, Wien
1900, Poincaré 1900 and 1904, Kaufmann 1901-05, Hasenöhrl 1904 (see our documentation pages 131-132). -
The ruins of the theory are covered by social constructions as the cult of genius and the powerful suppression of
any criticism and even the critics as persons, and relativity theory thus has become a theory of simple sociophysics.
The proofs and details of this diagnosis - physical and historical - you will find in our documentation. (...)
We are aware of your dispute with certain representatives of the sciences (Alan Sokal). We know the German
edition of the book
A. Sokal, J. Bricmont: Fashionable nonsense. 1998
under the title „Eleganter Unsinn“, München: Beck 1999.
In the German edition there is a chapter (no 12) which was part of the French edition, but not in the original
English edition, and therefore has been translated from the French.
This is a very interesting fact because this chapter is dedicated to Henri Bergson, who was one of the best and
sharpest critics of relativity theory since 1922 (Durée et simultanéité). In our German edition this chapter fills the
pages 206-228: these are 25 pages exclusively about the criticism against the special relativity theory, and are a
condemnation of any criticism as stupid and outdated.
The addition of this Bergson chapter is interesting because Bergson was no post-modernist and no structuralist
and no contemporary of the criticized sociologists.
Let‘s summarize the themes of this book of Sokal/Bricmont:
- with Lacan they criticize his mathematics,
- with Kristeva they criticize her logic and mathematics,
- with Feyerabend they criticize his methodological relativism of „anything goes“,
- with Bloor, Latour they criticize the „strong programme“,
- with Irigaray her hydro-mechanics,
- Chapter 6 (page 145-154): Latour they criticize for his misunderstanding of relativity theory and use of
relativity theory for non-physical objects;
- Chapter 7 deals with chaos theory; Chapter 8: Baudrillard; Chapter 9: Deleuze and Guattaris book „What is
philosophy?“;
- Chapter 10: Virilio they criticize for his misunderstanding of relativity theory;
- Chapter 11: Gödel and mathematics.
What does this overview of the book‘s content until chapter 11 show? Only chapter 6 and 10 treat among other
subjects the relativity theory, and the cited authors (Latour, Virilio) with no word criticize the relativity theory,
only misunderstand and make wrong use of the theory. This is the result for the reader of the English version of the
book.
Only in the French version for a French public with knowledge of Bergson‘s work which carries a strong
criticism of the relativity theory the authors think it useful to strengthen relativity theory by reducing Bergson to a
blockhead in physics. To the first purpose of the book - criticism of sociological and epistemological relativism -
there is added a completely new second purpose: calumny of criticism of the relativity theory. This new second
purpose remains in the German edition.
This is the second reason that we think our documentation may be of interest to your Journal. You probably will
find out quickly why the American reader has not been confronted with Bergson‘s criticism of relativity theory.
We are convinced that a journal like SOCIAL TEXT has the influence to start a discussion in America about
the suppression and slander against criticism in theoretical physics: this suppression and slander we judge to be a
cultural disaster. A discussion in America will spread to the European countries where the situation of theoretical
physics is similar.
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G. O. Mueller: STR 2012