Speed of Light

Dear Catholic Scientist
You say to me, 'Please excuse me skipping past all the philosophy, geometry and whatnot and just asking straight out: are you asserting that there isn't any photon?’ If so (you ask me), then this leaves an unpleasant gap in the chart of the Standard Model. It's rather as if someone pointed at my Periodic Table and said "there is no krypton". Please advise, in detail.'Now, then, Catholic Scientist, how can I possibly 'advise in detail' when all the details lie in the 'philosophy, geometry and whatnot' that you wanted to skip?As I said to you in my previous posting, the onus is on you to study my work as already published and disseminated, not on me to write it all out again for everyone who asks me a question. Those who cannot undertake that conscientious commitment are only dabbling. I could scarcely be blamed for refusing to answer such questions.However, for this once I shall try to answer your question as directly as I can, knowing full well that with your skipping past ‘all the philosophy, geometry and whatnot’ you will scarcely understand a word of it.So, yes, I am asserting that there is no such thing as the ‘photon’. But getting rid of the ‘photon’ is nothing like getting rid of Krypton. Krypton is a substance; the ‘photon’, eminently, is not.Besides to be free-minded and forward-looking on a science forum such as this, one should be prepared to lose some of one’s habitual assumptions as it was at one time, to abandon such habitual assumptions as that of a flat earth, geocentric cosmology, ‘caloric’, ‘phlogiston’ and so on and, nowadays, ‘photons’. As it is said, there’s no making omelettes without breaking eggs.Besides, it hardly needs to be said that what is regarded as the ‘Standard Model’ in one era may not be the ’Standard Model’ in any other era. If that weren’t so, then we would still be stuck with, say, the ‘Standard Model’ of the Greeks, which was that of the gods on Mount Olympus, or of the Hindus, whose ‘Standard Model’ was that of the world balanced on the backs of elephants standing on the back of a great turtle swimming in an infinite sea. The same goes for our present ‘Standard Model’ of cosmological physics, which has now, since the announcement of its intention to find ‘The God Particle’ and to ‘read the Mind of God’, has become a complete laughing stock.In short, Catholic Scientist, I am urging you to free your mind of the customary notion of ‘waves’ and ‘photons’ travelling in space and seriously consider the logical implications of adopting the alternative non-velocity interpretation of the constant c. Otherwise, if you ‘skip past’ all that, then what I’m saying will be of no more use to you than a chocolate screwdriver.Viv Pope

Dear Percy,
I sympathise with your difficulty. This is not easy stuff — at least, not until ‘the penny drops’, when it becomes as easy as it gets. Until then, there is no case of, as Omar Khayyam says: ‘The Secret; quick about it friend!’ Nor is there any slogan-like way of encapsulating it. It takes some dedicated mental effort to understand it, otherwise, believe me, it is best left alone.Anyway, you ask me: 'when we bounce, say, radio waves off the moon, are you saying that the electromagnetic waves don't travel to the moon and back?’ My answer is: yes, that’s what I am saying. Let me explain.Now I’m getting a sense of dj vu, here, in saying this, because I feel I’d already dealt with it in depth. But, okay, here goes again. There are no waves or anything else travelling in vacuo. In the vacuum there is, by definition, nothing. What there is, is an optical distance from the earth to the moon relative to an observer, as in the theory of relativity, and we know that for all observers, optical distances in metres divided by c are times in seconds. Of course, you can’t see your signal going from you to the moon but you know that if you were an observer on the moon, your distance from earth divided by c would be a time in seconds. So you would subtract that time-interval from the moment of your seeing that signal at that distance.In that same way, you would not see your return (reflected) signal travelling towards earth, but as an observer on earth you see that signal at the optical distance of the moon, hence for you, that distance divided by c is, again, a time in seconds. So, for you, the total time for the sending and return of the signal is twice the moon’s distance divided by c. (Note that in this explanation there is no need to talk about ’waves’, electromagnetic or whatever, travelling. The whole thing reduces sufficiently to talk purely about distance and time. As I’ve said, this gives us a New Physics in which all the historical rigmarole of electrostatics, magnetostatics — in a word, all ‘field’ theory - is redundant.Now, for the word ‘observer’, in the above passage, substitute the word ‘atom’ and for ‘signal’ substitute ‘quantum interaction’. Recall also that, relativistically speaking, for anything travelling at the ‘speed c’, as the ’photon’ is said to do, the time of its ‘travel’ (between the earth and moon in this case) is zero. This makes nonsense of the idea of the ‘photon’ as something ‘travelling’, while it makes profound sense of the Feynman-Wheeler and Gilbert Lewis concept of direct and instantaneous action/reaction (inter-resonance).Meanwhile, of course, according to the relative-time equations, when the proper-time of the quantum interaction is zero, by that same time-equation the relative, or observer time, is the optical distance divided by c. So, in observer-time (as opposed to the intrinsic or ‘proper’ time of the quantum) the time of the same interaction over the same distance s is s/c, as for the (unnecessarily assumed) ‘electromagnetic wave’.The upshot of this is that in the sort of interaction you are talking about, between a laser, say. and the moon, that interaction on the ordinary observational level is at the finite speed c, as for your (fictional) ‘electromagnetic wave’, while on the intrinsic quantum level that same interaction is instantaneous — for every quantum that makes up the signal. All this fits, perfectly, the requirement of relativistic physics that all in vacuo distant interactions take place at the finite speed c, and also with quantum physics which requires that quantum interaction is instantaneous. This solves the notorious ‘EPR paradox’ of instantaneous versus delayed distant action (Bohr versus Einstein). Get these things together in your head and it will either screw up your mind completely or else give you a whole new insight into the world of physical phenomena. This will be along the philosophy-of-physics lines first explored by Einstein’s relativist precursor, Mach and continued in the neo-Machian form of Normal Realism (POAMS). All this is available on the Internet. at the click of a button.Viv Pope.

Dear Devil’s Advocate (et al.),I’m sorry if I seem to have upset you guys. It was by no means intentional.. Thinking about it, it seems to be due to a mismatch of educational backgrounds. As I have already intimated, apart from my early years in Electronic Engineering, my main education has been on the Arts side of the Educational divide — Philosophy,, in point of fact. But Philosophers and Physicists have always been at odds. As I think I said, in the university I was at, members of the two departments, of Philosophy and Physics, respectively, actually came to blows over their two different approaches to nature. So in my dedicated efforts to unite the two disciplines (my life’s work) it is inevitable that I should upset someone or other. It goes with the territory. (Recall that Socrates was executed for it, and so were other philosophers such as Giordano Bruno.)Now you say that I should ‘dispense with the philosophical obfuscations’. That’s very sad, because those ‘philosophical obfuscations’ are by no means superficial, to be dispensed with ‘just like that’. For anyone who understands, they are absolutely central to my argument. Let me run that argument by you again and then you can tell me whether or not any of it is ‘obfuscation’.I have proved to you that there can be n such thing as light in vacuo — at least, no-one, so far, in this forum or anywhere else (Cavediver notwithstanding) has succeeded in refuting any, far less all of those ten proofs. Now I have known many people who have been upset by the very suggestion that light may not be what they have always thought it to be, that it need not be thought of as something travelling in space but that it can be interpreted as no more than an observational constant. But, like it or not, the fact that c can be interpreted in that alternative way without logical contradiction, is irrefutable. If ignored, it doesn’t simply ‘go away’.Worse still, for those people who are already upset by it, are the logical — and, dare I say it, the PHILOSOPHICAL — repercussions of that radical change in conception of c. Pointing out these repercussions, far from being ‘obfuscation’, is something that is logically inescapable. As for the pure PHYSICS side of it, the logical knock-on effect for relativistic and quantum physics and the unification of these two theoretical areas is profound, and I am deeply saddened that so many on this forum thread have failed to see it, just because, from their habitual Physics perspective, it seems just ‘philosophical obfuscation’. How very depressing!As for the ‘talking-down’ tone of my arguments, I apologise for that. Doubtless, it’s to my advanced age and world-weariness — a typical ‘Grumpy Old Man'. However, that has no bearing whatsoever on the argument itself. I can’t see anyone who is a genuine scientist storming-off in high dudgeon just because of someone’s ‘tone of voice’. Their concern ought to focus solely on the logic of the argument. I have had some very productive arguments with all sorts of socially difficult people. In academic circles I have sometimes rubbed shoulders with the very rudest people, without going off into a huff about it. In my line of research I am habituated to hostility and I give as good as I get.So, finally, may I say that we should stick to the argument that has developed here over the alternative interpretation of c and its philosophical ramifications. And if you think that is all ‘obfuscation’, then, to quote Oliver Cromwell: ‘In the bowels of Christ, think again!’Viv Pope.Postscript:
As for the rest, I’m sorry but I can’t imagine a serious university debate on a subject of which the debaters have no outside knowledge whatsoever, especially where the knowledge is available at the touch of a button, Indeed, I feel that in some cases those who make the criticisms have hardly read, far less studied, the relevant postings. This laziness really is reprehensible for any forum claiming to be about serious science. I respectfully suggest that the Moderators, here, should issue a caution regarding that, otherwise you leave the door open to that in-off-the-street yob-speak like those seen on some of the earlier postings on this thread. Besides being disgusting, these have no relevance to anything scientific. So I’m really surprised that I am censured for my seriously scientific input whereas those yob-speak inputs are passed without comment.Thanks for your forthright commentsViv Pope.

Fair enough, Percy, Yes it does take some understanding.The answer, as I have explained, is that the model for the paradigm I am talking about is an INFORMATIONAL one to replace the traditional MECHANICAL model. The examples I have given are a video scenario and a pointillist painting. In these examples, all the distance — and the action in the case of the video or movie — are projected by the observer from patterns and sequences of screen pixels (or spots of pigment in the painting). Other than relatively to the observer, there are no dimensions of distance or action to talk about. (The same goes, by the way, for these dimensions in standard orthodox Relativity.) In this Informational Model, the ‘pixels’ are the discrete quanta (integer multiples of Planck’s quantum h), and the patterns and sequences of those quantum pixels are what is presented in direct vision (pace Feynman and Wheeler).Now I don’t think I have to expand on that, since it has already been dealt with on this thread. Suffice it to say, that, just as in the video scenario the pixels have none of the velocity or action characteristics of the screen objects (such as galloping horses, speeding racecars and so on), neither do the quantum pixels in the light from which we project ordinary physical phenomena.So, enough of that. Now let’s deal with your question of how (in this paradigm) objects influence one another at a distance. The answer Normal Realism gives is that all mass objects are paired and balanced in overall conserved angular momentum relations. The moon, for instance, is paired and balanced with the earth around a common barycentre (centre of balance), and that earth-moon system is paired and balanced in an angular momentum orbit around the sun. The same goes for all the other planets and satellites of the solar system, so that any change in the motion of any one of those bodies immediately affects — i.e., perturbs — some one or all of the others, permutatively.That is how bodies affect one another at a distance. Now to your Question about spacecraft travelling the moon at various fractions of the speed limit c. Yes, they do travel. And, yes, everything at the lowest level of physical analysis, as per the ‘Video Model’, described above, and since those quanta that make up everything don’t travel, then, as you say, ‘nothing travels anywhere. Right?’ WRONG! If you apply that reasoning to the video Model you can say, without contradiction, that the screen pixels which make up everything in the scenario don’t travel while bodies in that scenario do travel. The same goes for the quantum pixels and the bodies in physical phenomena. The bodies travel, while their ultimate quantum parts don’t, they simply occur.Do the predictions of this alternative way of thinking differ from those of Standard Relativity? Yes, Percy, very much so, as I think I have already explained. But I will explain it all again, if you think it’s necessary.Viv Pope.

My dear Cavediver,
Yes that's more like it. I, too have been surprised that the seeming lack of knowledge, on this forum, of the long well-known fact that anything travelling at the (theoretical) speed c has no endurance, hence that the emission and 'absorption of the quantum are one and the same event. Another reductio ad absurdum of the 'photon' concept is that if it is a particle with any rest mass at all, no matter how tiny, then at that photon’s alleged ‘speed c’ its mass becomes infinite, which is ridiculous, whereas if it has no rest-mass at all, then, to call it a ‘particle’ is equally ridiculous. (Let that be my ‘eleventh’ proof that light doesn’t travel.)It amazes me that since all this is, as you say, historically cut-and-dried. people still go around talking glibly about ‘photons’ in university classes and seminars — and even in standard Physics textbooks — with as much gall as the medieval priests used to swan around teaching about angels and cherubim.The fact, however, that all this stuff is, as you say, already known’ doesn’t make my work redundant, as you will surely see in due course.

No, Cave-Diver, as I have already explained, the fact that a thesis A works satisfactorily — even excellently — doesn't logically imply that no other theses can work equally well or even better. Nor is it necessary that what may be called ‘electrons’, ‘protons’, ‘neutrons’ and so on in the one theory will mean the same in some other theory. This is rather obvious, surely.So I don’t have to answer this question of yours in the way you might require, which would be like me insisting that questions asked of an Englishman must be responded to in Welsh. (You may know that there are concepts in each one of these languages which have no direct parallel in the other.)Now what is so different about the paradigm I am talking about is that what is called an ‘electron’ in our standard traditional language has no meaning in mine. For instance, what takes the place of an ‘electron’ in the Normal Realist paradigm is simply a mass (of 9.1093897 10-31 kg) in which the traditional static ‘charge’ in coulombs is replaced by a spin angular momentum of half bar-h, or h/4pi. In other words, the spin of the mass ascribed by Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck replaces the traditional concept of ‘charge’.Nor is that the only difference, as those who read journals like Galilean Electrodynamics, Physics Essays, and so on — to say nothing of our commissioned books and papers — will already know.So, in short, to answer your question in your traditional physics-speak would be like trying to whistle with flour in my mouth. Best not to try it, eh?Thanks for your comment,Viv Pope.

Dear Son Goku,
Okay, let me try (again).The radical difference between my relativity and the standard Minkowski-Einstein one is that it makes no reference whatsoever to ‘light velocity’, as per Einstein’s Second Postulate of Relativity. This means that it dispenses with the whole historical rigmarole of ‘light-waves’, ‘light corpuscles’, ‘fields’ (electrostatic, magnetostatic or gravitational), nuclear (strong, weak, electroweak) or whatever. In other words, it solves what neither Einstein nor Minkowski, Abdus Salam, or whoever have failed to solve, that is, the ‘Unified Field’ problem. This, my uniquely different approach to relativity achieves by dispensing, at a stroke, with ‘fields’ altogether. There is much more, of course, but not in just a single paragraph. All this, by the way, I have already explained in this forum. Don’t you guys study these postings?Thanks,Vv Pope.

Dear Son Goku,
Okay, let me try (again).The radical difference between my relativity and the standard Minkowski-Einstein one is that it makes no reference whatsoever to ‘light velocity’, as per Einstein’s Second Postulate of Relativity. This means that it dispenses with the whole historical rigmarole of ‘light-waves’, ‘light corpuscles’, ‘fields’ (electrostatic, magnetostatic or gravitational), nuclear (strong, weak, electroweak) or whatever. In other words, it solves what neither Einstein nor Minkowski, Abdus Salam, or whoever have failed to solve, that is, the ‘Unified Field’ problem. This, my uniquely different approach to relativity achieves by dispensing, at a stroke, with ‘fields’ altogether. There is much more, of course, but not in just a single paragraph. All this, by the way, I have already explained in this forum. Don’t you guys study these postings?Thanks,Viv Pope. Edited by Viv Pope, : No reason given.Edited by Viv Pope, : Spelling.

Dear Son Goku,
Now why on earth would I do that? What a waste of fifty years study that would be!Your insistence on this, which is tantamount to a charge of plagiarism, is ridiculous. Are you in the habit of regarding anyone presenting something new as necessarily a shyster? Can't you credit someone with some new intelligence and honesty?Since this suspicion is inhibiting your understanding, you need to dig much deeper and wider into what is being honestly and conscientiously proposed here.Just for one thing, if, as you say, you read my website (which one?) you either did not read or else you studiously ignored the philosophical implications for a New Physics of this New Approach to relativity, which you will find neither in Minkowski nor Einstein — nor anywhere else, I'll be bound. Surely you read my posting to (the guy whose pseudonym escapes me), answering his charging me with 'philosophical obfuscation'. That answer to him would be my same answer to you.Thanks,Viv Pope

Dear Devil’s Advocate,Boy. these responses are coming thick and fast. I’m having difficulty keeping up with them whilst trying not to spread my efforts too thin!You remark on my drawing a parallel between myself and the scientists of the past who were executed. But how do you know my history? I obviously haven’t been executed — that’s not done, these days — but how do you know that I haven’t been got at in other, similar ways? I think you’d be surprised.As for the rest, no apologies needed, but they are appreciated all the same! I’m looking forward to your digging deeper. I only wish some others would do the same instead of just shooting off their purely superficial judgments.As for the rest, I can find little to say, except that I find it relaxing. Are you one of the more mature members? I am now approaching my eighties but am very much a junior in this forum. I started my adult life as an ‘an angry young man’ and now I am an almost incandescent old man, sick to the back teeth with what has happened to the integrity of the Science I once knew and loved. For me, the peak of absurdity has now been reached with the ‘Big Bang’ theory of Cosmological Creation and the search for the ‘God Particle’ with the aim of ‘reading the mind of God’. Luckily, I have a very good wife who, over the last sixty or so years has managed to curb my excesses with her headmistress’s red pen. Otherwise I would surely have ended up in jail.Perhaps, with these remarks, I haven’t wandered too far from the thread which is supposed to be about the ‘Big Bang’, anyway.Thanks for listening,Viv Pope.

Yes. Devil’s Advocate., that is certainly how 'Scientists and Educated lay readers' think of fundamental particles. No-one in that bracket thinks any more of these 'particles' as tiny ball-bearing-like bits of solid matter. But ‘wave-functions of space-time itself’’? No, surely! What on earth is ‘space-time itself’? And what sense is to be made of the ‘Higgs electroweak field’? What, indeed, is a ‘field’?Now this is not a confession of ignorance on my part. It’s just that in the philosophy-of-physics paradigm called Normal Realism, which is based on the Positivist philosophy of the physics philosopher, Ernst Mach and his followers, the Linguistic Commonsense Analysts, these particles, waves and so on don’t exist in the way that even the 'Scientists and Educated lay readers' at this period of time are disposed to imagine. The reason is that these concepts of ‘waves’, ‘fields’ and so on are unempirical — that is to say, completely abstract and invisible — in other words, items of pure conjecture, or ‘jargon’ in the estimation of the Linguistic Analysts. These philosophers believe — and with some justification — that the reason why Modern Physics is so abstruse, to the extent that even scientists are puzzled by it, is that over the history of the subject, this jargon has collected around our feet, like the swarf on a machine-shop floor, so that we can hardly move for the bulk of it.From that Normal Realist, Neo-Machian standpoint it is the duty of the philosopher — as soon as scientists begin to recognise it — to act as what John Locke described as an ‘under-laborer to science’, a sweeper-up of outworn conceptual rags and shavings that our scientific history has left lying around.You say you are ‘still trying to understand this stuff’. Dare I suggest that you/we will never understand it until this philosophical clean-up is properly carried out, which cannot happen until the Education-conditioned barrier between Physics and Philosophy is broken down. The extent to which that this Educational Apartheid still stands is evident from some of the postings on this thread which reveal that, for the most part, scientists know no more how to deal with a philosophical point about physics than a ‘cow with a musket’.If I have a fighting chance of subscribing anything to this forum it will be to break down this artificial barrier between Physics and Philosophy and let the understanding that the likes of you and I are seeking proceed.What I am saying, in short, is that progress in that direction cannot take place while our minds are clogged solid with thoughts about such things as ‘light-velocity’, ‘photons’, ‘waves, ‘fields’, etc., whether or not they are regarded as ‘stand-in hyperbole’.Thanks,Viv Pope.

Dear Cavediver,Now how can you possibly claim that my argument ‘looks dishonest’?I think I answered this already, but in case I didn't, here it is again, in some more detail.I visited CERN in 1975 as editor of a philosophy-of-science journal and had many discussions with the denizens of that institution, including the Director, Victor Weisskopf, John Bell (of Bell’s Inequalities) and T. D. Lee (discoverer of the ‘meson’). In the hydrogen tank I saw a whole series of particle collisions, with their scatter-products photographed once every second. But in none of these events did I see any ‘photons’ hitting and scattering one another and leaving contrails in the liquid. All the trails were those of the accelerated ‘protons’, ‘electrons’ ‘hadrons’, and ‘leptons’ of all description.I say all this, not for reasons of name-dropping but because of what you said about my ‘unnamed individuals’. Another name I didn’t mention was that of Professor James Lindesay, who was doing a stint at SLAC, the Super-Linear Accelerator Center, in California. In a conference at Cambridge, he reported that he and a colleague had set out to ‘prove Viv wrong’ (about the non-existence of ‘photons’) but had ended-up ‘proving Viv right’. (This was later corroborated by Professor Clive Kilmister and Dr. Ted Bastin, principals of ANPA.)So now, you have some names. (All this is recorded, of course.) Now the reason for my saying that your evidence (for photo-photon scattering) was ‘thin’ is precisely because, as you admit, it is still, after all these years, an unfulfilled prophecy, or prediction, all evidence for which is, as you say, ‘indirect’. This is why I described your claimed evidence as ‘thin’. And I feel I have already pointed out that in scientific logic, no theory can be PROVED, however much reverence one might have for it or however much ‘evidence’ might be claimed in favour for it. The nearest that we can ever get to ‘proof’’ of a theory, in science, is for ALL its competitors, actual or possible, to be refuted. Otherwise we commit the fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or affirming one of the alternative theories to ‘refute another’.So the upshot of all this — sorry, Cavediver — is that proof of photon-photon scattering is as ’thin’ now as it ever was.Nor are there any ‘photons’ accelerated by the magnets in the new LHC at CERN. What is accelerated are ‘protons’ in proton-proton head-on collisions. ‘Photons’ simply don’t make trails. As an irreducible quantum, a ‘photon’ could have no energy to spare in interacting with anything ‘en route’ from anywhere to anywhere else. The slightest interaction with its environment would instantly consume every scrap of energy it would have. Its very first interaction with a magnet, for instance, if that were possible, would stop it dead. So it cannot possibly be detected by any interaction with any instrument or leave any contrail. In other words, it cannot possibly exist in the vacuum between any source and sink. I claim, therefore, that this particular one of the ‘ten proofs’ which you have questioned is, just like the other nine, irrefutable.Thanks,Viv Pope.

Dear lyx2noNICE ONE!!!Thanks,Viv Pope,

To CaveDiver,You're nowhere near understanding my point about language and how it classifies phenomena into 'particles', 'fields', 'gluons', 'tachyons' or whatever. Things don't come labelled by nature. It is WE who label, classify, divide and name things and describe their charitarstics in language, and these arbitrary classifyings and namings may well go spectacularly wrong. If that weren't so, then we would still be calling whales 'fish' and virus particles 'animals'.To make my point, here is a little joke about language. A guy goes to a hospital demanding that he be castrated. 'Are you sure?' the surgeon asked him. 'Of course I'm sure,' said the guy,'I'm rich and can well afford it.'So the surgeon did the operation. When he awoke, the patient looked down and cried out 'What HAVE you done?'(in a falsetto voice). 'We castrated you, like you said,' replied the surgeon.The patient looked aross the ward and said 'What I wanted is what that guy had over there!''He's been circumcised,' said the surgeon.'THAT's the word,' squeaked the patient.'THAT's the word'.I rest my case.Please study the answer I gave to you earier.Thanks,Viv Pope

Dear Son Goku.In this glut of questions I'm losing sense oc the sequence of my replies. So forgive me if some of this turns out to be repetion.Your dogged attempts to trivialise my work are failing badly. You keep missing the point, here. If what you say about Minkowski were true, then by now we would have the whole ‘New Physics’ that John Anderson of NASA calls for to solve the mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly, Nor would we have any talk of ‘dark matter, ‘dark energy’, and so on. There would be billions of pounds and dollars saved from not having to build great machines like the abortive LHD at CERN and the Super-linear Accelerator at SLAC in California. The teaching of relativity and quantum theory would be vastly different. All talk of ‘light-velocity’ would long since have been dropped. So would all talk of ‘electromagnetic waves’ and ‘fields’. There would be no talk of ‘gravity’ as a ‘field force’, this having been replaced by talk, solely about angular momentum. The time-dilation formula would have been derived directly from Pythagoras, leaving all talk of ‘Einstein’ as an historical side-issue, There would be no mention of the alleged ‘Big Bang’, ‘black holes’ ‘wormholes’ or the like. All this would have been forestalled by an entirely new language of physics. The divided modern Physics and Philosophy would have merged into a single discipline, in the Grand Manner of Natural Philosophy, which would mean that the Educational gulf between Arts and Science would, by now, have disappeared completely.None this has happened, of course, which means that ‘Minkowski’, although he showed the connection between Einstein and Pythagoras, put the 'cart' of Einsteinian Relativity before the 'horse' of the geometrical relativity of Pythagoras, which is correct, historically, but not logically. Besides, although Minkowski was, as you say, the first to make that Pythagorean connection, he never followed it through to its logical conclusion in the way that the Neo-Machian relativism of Normal Realism has done. So if, as you say, you read my website, then how come you missed all that? Is it a case, perhaps, of ‘There’s none so blind as will not see?’As for what you say about Special and General Relativity not being separate, that may be trivially true, but what is more important is that both of these theories, whether combined or separate, are separate from quantum theory. If what you say about Minkowski were true, then that division would have long ago disappeared and both relativity and quantum theory would be taught as a single, integrated, philosophically founded package, based on the quantum relativity of Mach instead of on the separatist relativity of Einstein (witness the long-standing and still unresolved ‘EPR’ conflict between Bohr and Einstein).Thanks,Viv Pope.