Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic Paradigm

Essays by A.T. Williams

Part I:  Sneaking Up On Einstein

All matter is immersed in it and it penetrates everywhere. No doors are closed to ether.
- Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics 1

Chapter 3

Section 4:  An Apparent Universal Constant

From the very beginning of his effort to understand Maxwell's electrodynamic fields, Einstein viewed the theory of special relativity as a heuristic device (i.e., as a learning tool).

    The principle of relativity, or, more exactly, the principle of relativity together with the principle of the constancy of velocity of light, is not to be conceived as a 'complete system,' in fact, not as a system at all, but merely as a heuristic principle which, when considered by itself, contains only statements about rigid bodies, clocks, and light signals. It is only by requiring relations between otherwise seemingly unrelated laws that the theory of relativity provides additional statements.18

The theory has served that purpose quite well and the results of 20th century investigations into special relativity have been succinctly summarized by Einstein and others in a single statement:  All laws of physics are the same in every inertial frame.

Describing his personal understanding of the insights provided by special relativity in his Autobiographical Notes,19 which he jokingly called his obituary,20 Einstein wrote:

    We now shall inquire into the insights of definite nature which physics owes to the special theory of relativity.
    (1) There is no such thing as simultaneity of distant events; consequently there is also no such thing as immediate action at a distance in the sense of Newtonian mechanics. Although the introduction of actions at a distance, which [propagate] with the speed of light, remains thinkable, according to this theory, it appears unnatural; for in such a theory there could be no such thing as a reasonable statement of the principle of conservation of energy. It therefore appears unavoidable that physical reality must be described in terms of continous functions in space. The material point, therefore, can hardly be conceived any more as the basic concept of the theory.
    (2) The principles of the conservation of momentum and of the conservation of energy are fused into one single principle. The inert mass of a closed system is identical with its energy, thus eliminating mass as an independent concept.
    Remark. The speed of light c is one of the quantities which occurs as "universal constant" in physical equations. If, however, one introduces as unit of time instead of the second the time in which light travels in 1 cm, c no longer occurs in the equations. In this sense one could say that the constant c is only apparently [scheinbare] universal constant.21 (Einstein's emphasis)

Si non è vero, è ben trovato:

Author John Stachel's enlightening conclusions concerning the discovery of special relativity also contain a succinct summary:

    Here I shall end my conjectures on how Einstein arrived at [the 1905 theory of special relativity]. To briefly recapitulate, I believe that the first principle, the relativity principle, recapitulates his struggles with the mechanical ether concept which led finally to the first crucial liberation of his thought – the abandonment of the ether. The second principle, the principle of the constancy of the speed of light, recapitulates his struggle, once he had definitely opted for the relativity principle, first to evade the Maxwell-Lorentz theory by an emission theory; then to isolate what was still valid in the Maxwell-Lorentz theory after giving up the ether concept and abandoning absolute faith in the wave theory of light. The struggle to reconcile the two principles could only end successfully after the second great liberation of his thought: the relativisation of the concept of time. The resulting theory did not force him to choose between wave and emission theories of light, but rather led him to look forward to a synthesis of the two. This synthesis was finally achieved, over twenty years later, in the quantum theory of fields, to the satisfaction of most physicists, but ironically, never to that of Einstein.
    I cannot ask you to accept my conjectures after all of my warnings at the outset of this paper, but will be content if you say "Si non è vero, è ben trovato," "If it isn't true, it's well contrived."22

Stachel is referring to his own paper in the final paragraph above. Nonetheless, the maxim he quotes can be unambiguously applied to Einstein's work on special and general relativity as well.

Einstein's electromagnetic field theory:

Summarizing the general problems which remained after he completed his work on the special theory of relativity, Einstein wrote:

    The special theory of relativity owes its origin to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field. Inversely the latter can be grasped formally in satisfactory fashion only by way of the special theory of relativity. Maxwell's equations are the simplest Lorentz-invariant field equations which can be postulated for an anti-symmetric tensor derived from a vector field. This in itself would be satisfactory, if we did not know from quantum phenomena that Maxwell's theory does not do justice to the energetic properties of radiation. But how Maxwell's theory would have to be modified in a natural fashion, for this even the special theory of relativity offers no adequate foothold. Also to Mach's question: "how does it come about that inertial systems are physically distinguished above all other co-ordinate systems?" this theory offers no answer.
    That the special theory of relativity is only the first step of a necessary development became completely clear to me only in my efforts to represent gravitation in the framework of this theory.23

Another step forward:

Recognizing that the first step is a thorough knowledge of fundamental physics, the second step is understanding comprehensive, energetic physical reality just-as-it-is. Much more remains to be learned as we enter the 21st century CE. Not surprisingly, careful investigation of special relativity theory continues to produce novel results. For example:

1. The equation E = mc² leads directly to the fundamental, irreducible, universal principle of nonmaterial physical energy per se.
2. The fundamental, irreducible, universal principle of nonmaterial physical energy per se points directly to the qualitative difference between the nonmaterial nature of physical energy and the material nature of particulate matter.
3. The equation E = mc² is valid only in closed or isolated (conservative) material systems.
4. Comprehensive, total nonmaterial physical energy per se is conserved globally in compound ^{closed (conservative) nonmaterial}/_{open (nonconservative) material systems}.

Continued in Chapter 4:  Faraday, Maxwell, and Newtonian Physics

Reference Notes (Click on the Note number to return to the text):

18  Einstein, Albert. Comments on the Note of Mr. Paul Ehrenfest: "The translatory Motion of Deformable Electrons and the Area Law" (Bemerkungen zu der Notiz von Hrn. Paul Ehrenfest: "Die Translation deformierbarer Elektronen und der Flächensatz"); Annalen der Physik, 23 (1907):  206-208. Anna Beck, translator; The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein: English Edition, vol. 2, Doc. 44, pp. 236-237. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1989.  ISBN 0-691-08549-8.

19  Schilpp, Paul Arthur, editor. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, [1951] 1970, pp. 2-94. ISBN  0-87548-286-4

20  English (ref. 19, p. 3):  "Here I sit in order to write, at the age of 67, something like my own obituary."
Auf Deutsch (ref. 19, p. 2):  "Hier sitze ich, um mit 67 Jahren so etwas wie den eigenen Nekrolog zu schrieben."

21  Ref. 19, p. 61.

22  Stachel, John. Einstein from 'B' to 'Z', Birkhauser, Boston MA, 2002, p. 167.  ISBN 0-8176-4143-2

23  Ref. 19, p. 63.

Back to Chapter 3, Section 3:  New Scientific Challenges

Index:  Consciousness, Physics, and the Holographic Paradigm

Last Edit:  December 22, 2004.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

This paper is a work in progress.
Please check for the latest update before quoting in other venues the concepts and hypotheses presented here.
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Copyright © 2004 by Alan T. Williams. All rights reserved.