"John Dalmas - The Puppet Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

will take, so I don’t know what’s relevant to it. I am, of course, interested in your research and yourself.”
“You’ve read my paper.”
“And watched you read it to the Astronomy Society.”
“Then you saw how it was received by my professional brethren.”
“Right. I also saw interviews with a few of them. They said what you talked about was astrology, not
astronomy.”
Ashkenazi smiled. “Astrology without astrological terminology. I followed basic astrological principles but
abandoned the traditional framework and analyzed large volumes of data.” The smile became a grin. “I call it
‘predictive astronomy,’ to irritate the astronomical fraternity.”
“But apparently you don’t know why it works. If you could have described the mechanism, you would have.
Wouldn’t you? You must have some kind of theory.”
He shook his head. “If Ali Hasad’s Limited Theory of Generated Reality is valid, it provides a partial
explanation.”
One of the advantages of reading 800 to 1200 words per minute is, you can read a lot of books and magazines.
So I knew a little of what he was talking about. “Isn’t Ali Hasad’s theory rejected by scientists?”
“By most of them. Not all. If you polled the physics community, maybe six of ten would reject it out of hand,
two would withhold judgement but express strong skepticism, and two would say something like, it’s
heuristically interesting and might lead to new understanding.
“But science isn’t supposed to be democratic, in the sense of a vote making a theory viable or valid. Most of
those who reject Ali Hasad’s theory haven’t read it, except perhaps the summary of his first paper on it. And
aren’t likely to.
“Its chief problem is, it supports and thus revives an old contention of Fred Hoyle’s, based on the values of
basic physical parameters of the universe.”
I knew what he was talking about, and kept my mouth shut, letting him continue.
“The basic parameters are those fundamental forces on which the universe depends for its characteristics. And
if those parameters were even moderately different than they are, we wouldn’t simply have elements and planets
and life somewhat different than they are. We wouldn’t have them at all. And considering probabilities, Hoyle
couldn’t accept that those parameters are what they are simply by accident. He contended that it must have been
designed. That this universe is an artifact programmed by some superintelligence operating outside our universe.
“An intelligence that some people identified with God, which is a word with a lot of unfortunate Bronze Age
superstitions attached to it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Have I thoroughly confused you?”
“I’m familiar with Hoyle’s view,” I said. “I never read anything by him, but I read an article about it years
ago. It sounded reasonable enough, and when I read a description of Ali Hasad’s theory, it did remind me of
Hoyle. But I’m in no position to evaluate either one scientifically.”
Ashkenazi chuckled. “Neither are the physicists who refuse to look. It’s interesting how much of advanced
physics is nonexperimental. Which in the traditional sense means nonscientific. That’s not to knock it. Given the
problems, they do what they can. For decades, the frontiers of physics have lain largely in the realm of
mathematics. The subject demands theories that commonly can’t be tested physically. They test them by seeing
how consistent the math is, particularly with other, already-accepted math that describes physical phenomona.
“That’s a simplification, I’ll admit, but basically it’s accurate. And Ali Hasad’s math is compatible with the
Meissner-Ikeda Lattice. And accommodates the math, such as it is, of the omega matrix.”
My half hour was melting, but I let him go on. I had a notion he might let it stretch to as long as it took.
“You don’t look old enough,” Ashkenazi went on, “to remember when legislative know-nothings had the
Tarzan books banned from school libraries in Tennessee. They said Tarzan and Jane weren’t married, were living
in sin, and the books were a danger to the morals of young people.
“Actually they were married. In Book Two. Jane’s father was a professor, and they were married in the jungle
at Tarzan’s family’s cabin, if I remember correctly. The damned know-nothings had never read the sonofabitch.
Typical.
“Well, Ali-Hasad’s critics haven’t examined his math. There are know-nothings in science, too.