Re: Tom Van Flandern and Newtonian Gravity

From: Mike (eleatis_at_yahoo.gr)
Date: 08/11/04 

Date: 11 Aug 2004 05:22:52 -0700

dubious@radioactivex.lebesque-al.net (Bilge) wrote in message news:<slrnchgsbf.dv7.dubious@radioactivex.lebesque-al.net>...

[snip]

>
> Then you need to first try to understand what the equations mean,
> physically. You give the distinct appearance of either not understanding
> what the equations mean or deliberately attempting to misconstrue them
> in order to facillitate your argument about forces.

Or maybe both... that could provide a better explanation of the
desperation.

How many times we need to repeat that Van Flandern does not understand
GR. He uses the silly rubber *** analogy in an attempt to convince
laymen that a force is required to initiate motion in GR. Thus, he
uses curved space to argue about curved spacetime. Obviously wrong.

This is an example of how disoriented Van Flandern is: In order to
support his causality argument he asks what would be the cause to make
a body follow a geodesic path. He assumes that the object magically
appears suddenly on his silly rubber *** and needs then a cause to
move. He forgets that this magical though experiment of his is against
his "no creation ex nihilo" other principle. The point is that every
body in spacetime already exists and has a trajectory already
uniquelly defined.

Another simple fact that Van Flandern does not understand is that
geodesic motion is inertial motion in 4-space where Newton's first law
holds, i.e. no forces are required for it. He argues what happens if
projections in 3-space are taken. The answer is that GR does not hold
any longer and he is left with Newtonian mechanics and the problem of
causality and ficticious forces needed to explain motion in local non
inertial frames of reference.

The same problems are of course present in his own material flux of
gravitons model. Unless the can prove to us that the epistemology that
requires all phenomena to have the same explanation in alll moving
reference frames is wrong.

Mike

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