June 14, 1999
I should like to introduce Henry Lindner by means a snippet from our email correspondence (May 29, 1999). I have edited it slightly, with his permission.
HHL:
I have found that Relativity and QT are part and parcel of our entire mental/cultural system. People are bamboozled by nonsensical dogma today no less than in medieval Europe. It's about the destruction of philosophy, or common sense as you call it. Teach the masses that they cannot possibly understand the fundamental nature of Cosmic reality, teach them that really smart theories involve contradictions, magic and mystery, and you have effectively destroyed their belief in the efficacy of their own minds and they will believe whatever the experts tell them. It's the latest way of supporting authoritarianisms of every type. Philosophy is the natural "religion" of mankind -- our attempt to understand the Cosmos and everything in it in a comprehensive way. Destroy philosophy and you leave the field open to delusional beliefs of every kind.
You are completely correct in believing that non-locality is a delusion. I'm with you and rooting for you 100%. When you expose their sloppy methods and errors, you will disgrace some folks; but will the disproof of non-locality disprove quantum theory and the flying photon or simply prompt them to add one more flying buttress to their Cathedral of Nonsense? It appears to me that once philosophy and common sense are maligned and considered passe, once contradictions are accepted as normal and good, no beliefs can be disproved by simple facts.
I can trace the destructive effects of Relativistic and QT nonsense through many fields of Science. And the effect is increasing.
CHT:
Is "common sense" philosophy? Should it be necessary to make a philosophy out of the search for comprehensible rules of cause and effect, the assumption that there always is a cause? I think I represent a rejection of the intrusion of philosophy into science! Yourself excluded, of course!
HHL:
You represent a rejection of ideology into science. Ideologies are patently false and inadequate theories of things. Philosophy is the only means of exposing and eliminating ideologies. Experiments can help, but are not sufficient.
This is a crucial issue, which I have attempted to deal with in the paper I sent to you. Philosophy has been defined as irrelevant by those whose interests were at stake. Philosophy is the only threat to ideologies.
Contrary to the propaganda, philosophy is not stupid, it is not nonsense: it is common sense made self-conscious and systematized. Philosophy is the search for comprehensible, non-contradictory theories of the causes of things. Everything else is anti-philosophy, anti-mind, anti-reality.
What I have discovered is that authorities, theists, mystics, etc. have tried to paint philosophy as just another ideology -- pure whim or fantasy. That's what's taught to schoolchildren in universities, by the older schoolchildren called "professors". Without its full justification and set of mental tools, "common sense" is an undefined, indefensible weakling. No match for the delusional systems that control people's minds.
I am trying to reconstruct Philosophy, to restore it as mankind's natural and best instrument for the understanding of the Cosmos. To do so I must point out the complete mental inadequacy of Science, of which Relativity and QT are fine examples.
If you want to discover philosophy, I advise you to read the Milesian pre-Socratics, the Atomists and Epicureans, Aristotle, and Francis Bacon. Little else is worthy of the name. Mankind has never regained these intellectual heights, in spite of our greatly increased knowledge of many phenomena.
CHT:
I am convinced that humanity is faced with a simple choice:
(a) accept the "indivisible photon" and acausality
or (b) accept a continuous wave picture and rationality.
If you accept (a), then the rational explanations for many experiments are barred, so there is no limit to the fantastic "explanations" you are unable to reject. If these happen to imply nonlocality, so be it.
HHL:
You are perfectly correct, and you will see the same message in my analysis of relativity and quantum theory. The photon (like absolute c) results in contradictions ad nauseum. Wave theory is perfectly able to explain quantum events, as I have shown in my paper.
But one must do more than point out the contradictions and inadequacy of Relativity and QT. As Aristotle said, one mustn't remove the foundations of a science without replacing it with something better. I have created a simple theory of space, matter, and motion that's consistent with all the facts and promises to explain much more.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/8041/