Saturday, March 31, 2007

What’s With the Uniform Particle Assumption?

In order to prove that gravity was a property of matter, Newton had to prove it was proportional to matter. To prove it was proportional to matter, he assumed that matter was uniformly made up of a uniform particle.
Even the most ignorant among us knows that the Earth isn’t made up of a uniform particle uniformly disturbed among it. One of the first things we learn about is weight because as we go through our day, we find we can easily lift some things and we can’t lift other things at all.
Weight is at the basis of our learning experience, as pervasive as falling objects. We explain weight by saying that the atom has a nucleus and the heavier the nucleus, the more particles the nucleus contains.
So at the least, a uniform particle is not uniformly distributed, making Newton’s assumption absurd. As absurd as the assumption is, however, it was absolutely necessary to Newton’s proof because his proof required that he compute the amount of gravity in the planet. Even with today’s false use of the Cavendish experiment to produce what is called the gravitational constant, that constant cannot be used to compute the amount of gravity in the Earth.
Computing the gravity of the Earth with sole reference to the Earth (or, as we'll see, reference to anything else) is impossible, so to accomplish his proof, Newton had to accomplish the impossible. To accomplish the impossible, he made up an assumption that was clearly erroneous. Why doesn’t science simply admit Newton’s assumption was wrong, roll up its sleeves, and get on with the task of uncovering the nature of gravity?
After all, when something is wrong, when gravity is admitted to be a can of worms, ignoring it is not the proper course of action. Rather, looking back over its history to find out where it went wrong is the proper course of action.
Why doesn’t science take the proper course of action?
Simply because the explanation for gravity as a property of matter is unquestionable, and it’s unquestionable simply because Newton proved it to be mathematically true.
We’ll see how absurd this becomes a few entries on, but for now I want to highlight that Newton not only created the theory of gravity, he created the template for belief in a theory's conclusion. As far as science is concerned, there are two types of facts, real facts rooted in the physical world and scientific facts created by scientific theory.
Unfortunately, when it comes to a conflict between real facts and scientific fact, science puts credence in scientific facts over real facts. It does so because its entire edifice is built on the use of scientific fact in creating new theories. The assumption that gravity is a property of matter permeates all of the disciplines that make up the scientific world, whether its astronomy with its array of nonexistent matter, black holes and dark matter, or geology, with its absurd notion that the weight of the earth builds up the further down we go until the pressure compresses the earth into molten matter (if gravity were a property of matter, the center of the Earth would be subject to gravitational pull from all directions and thus be neutral, weightless, as Jules Verne so unscientifically pointed out).
Newton took over the moribund Royal Society in 1703 and used it to promulgate his views throughout what was then the community interested in searching into the nature of reality. Because he was desperate to have his views accepted unconditionally, his everything is made up of a single property, which he extended to light, formed the basis of scientific thought in the 18th century.
Most of the effort to counter Newton’s uniform particle conclusion was directed at his light is a particle dictum, the opposing forces claiming that light is a wave becoming too great toward the end of the century. It’s amusing that Newton’s light is a particle conclusion, the only proposition he made that is probably correct, was reversed by the scientific community, while his theory of gravity, having no competition, was accepted hook, line and sinker, which incorporated his uniform particle with his motion as a result of God, and all the rest.
The ultimate break with Newton, when his equations failed to come close to describing the motion of the planets, would turn out to be a hoax rather than a break, and wash away the need to justify a theory based on false assumptions in the rush to accept a theory based on an absolute failure in proof.
Thus, his assumption about a uniform particle became invisible, a minor factor that is just a footnote in the nonhistory of science.

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