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Thomas Kuhn's 1962 essay “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” explored the
nature of changes in scientific theories. A plethora of commentary since then
have made it out to be a big deal, and to also be somewhat mysterious. Revolution,
incommensurability of paradigms, New World, etc. It seems to me the essence of it is
simply different viewpoints. Just as the landscape looks different, when viewed
from different locations, the facts and theories of the sciences appear
different when understood from different conceptual locations in the intellectual landscape.
Ptolemy drew a picture of what the universe looked like from the earth with
the concepts that were accepted at his time. Copernicus depicted how it looked from
the Sun with the concepts of his time. Newton described it from the new viewpoint of gravity.
Notice that the terms Earth, Sun and gravity are not something out there beyond our thinking processes,
but are concepts that make sense of, or create meaning from, a selection of observations.
Gravity for example, made sense of falling apples and revolving planets. The other viewpoints saw no connection
between apples and planets. Definitions changed. The observations once considered important in the term
’planet’, for example its zodiacal sign, were replaced with the planet's distance
and angle from the Sun. New mathematical techniques were developed which would have seemed nonsensical to people
occupying the old viewpoints. The resulting view of the Gravity Universe
was that of isolated billiard balls orbiting each other. This replaced the old views of a system of nested spheres
or an assembly of epicycles. Just as there are no tangible spheres or epicycles out there, there are no orbits
either. We see the same movements of the planets that Ptolemy and Copernicus saw,
but thinking about them makes the difference. Now, the Electric Universe is a different
viewpoint. Notice for example that its definition of plasma is not the conventional one of ionized gas.
That latter definition jumps to the conclusion that you can understand something about plasma by falling back
on what you know about ideal gases and thermal ionization. The ideal gas law is an important
insight in the conventional view, but it becomes a blindfold in the electric view,
preventing you from seeing what's before your eyes. Rather, plasma is an emergent that is
higher-level or statistical-level orderliness of complex electrical forces that can appear in liquids and solids as
well as in gases. Such properties as filamentation, long-range attraction and
short-range repulsion, braiding, double layers, and identity of properties at
different scales and in different states. The mathematical shorthand that was
developed for articulating the gravity view, and for using the technologies based on it, doesn't work for the plasma
view. A new mathematics and new technologies need to be embedded.
The view of the universe from a plasma vantage point is one of persistently
interacting aggregates with widespread resonance effects. A driven universe,
rather than one rolling to a stop. So the definitions are different, the facts are different, the math is
different, the theories are different. The universe looks different, because the plasma physicist is standing in a
different conceptual location from the gravity physicist. And although the content of each
paradigm can't be compared with the other, the respective viewpoints and views can be compared.
B.J.F. Lonergan's 1957 work “Insight” on the nature of understanding, provides one
ground upon which different viewpoints can be compared. Theories come and go, but the underlying
function, purpose and construction of theories, arise from the nature of cognition.
As one of the ways in which people relate to the universe, cognition fashions intellectual tools, theories,
to accomplish particular goals, such as understanding selected sets of observations.
Hence, from a selection of theories, one can be preferred on the basis of its
utility value. The one which seems most likely to achieve the desired goal with the greatest efficiency.
One criterion for the efficient achievement of the goal of understanding
the universe, is comprehensiveness. Again, comparing the intellectual landscape with
the physical, the higher viewpoint, the greater the purview. In this sense
Kuhn’s process of periods of cumulation of knowledge within a paradigm, separated
by episodes of paradigm shifts, can be understood as the progressive
achievement of higher viewpoints affording greater purviews. Notice that from this understanding the
often used, and abused, when applied outside a paradigm, judgments of right/
wrong, correct/incorrect, or even true/ false, are meaningless. Upon this ground for comparing
viewpoints, the case can be made that the plasma paradigm is higher than the
gravity one in that it encompasses a larger domain of evidence. Not only does
it explain more phenomena, it explains those phenomena with a comprehensive and
unitary theory. It sees more landscape, more features of that landscape, and more
relationships among those features. Gravity, in contrast, sees fewer features
and sees them as disparate events, each requiring a separate ad hoc explanation.
For example similar features on different planets have their own theory. Impact craters, volcanoes,
tidal cracks, floods of disappearing water, lava that runs uphill, and runaway greenhouses.
The generality of gravity is obscured with ad hoc inventions and those
inventions fail to account for details that are intrinsic in the plasma view.
Gravity fails to account for entire new observations, extrapolating itself beyond reality and into fabulation.
Supermassive stars spinning super-fast, exploding stars whose shock waves create braided filaments.
Cannibalistic galaxies. Dark matter that overwhelms observed matter. Photos cropped between galaxies, and
connected quasars, in denial of discrepant redshifts. Silence in the face of the quantization of redshifts.
More and more evidence is being ignored. Newton was unaware of plasma. Today his
disciples spend years in training, learning when and how to shut their eyes
to it. It's not just the Big Bang and general relativity that are in trouble, but the foundation of them all.
Gravity is an exhausted and bankrupt concept. A higher, more comprehensive foundation is needed.
The technologies of gravity have lifted us to a viewpoint that's bigger than gravity.
We need new ideas and new tools, such as the Electric Universe model, to make sense of the new plasma vistas.
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