"John Dobson. Einstein's Physics Of Illusion (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

finite and divided, and now comes the question: By what kind of causation
could we get from the changeless to the changing? From the infinite to the
finite? And from the undivided to the divided?
We haven't proved that we can get there by magic, but we have proved
that we can't get there any other way. We cannot get there by the causation
of our physics, because that would require that we change the changeless to
the changing, that we divide the undivided, and that we make the infinite
finite. As I say, we can prove that we cannot get there any other way, but
we have not yet proved that we can get there by magic. So now I want to ask:
What happens if we look at this problem from the standpoint of what I'll
call apparitional causation? My favorite word for this is not quite magic.
It's not quite illusion. It's apparitional causation. It's the kind of thing
you do when you mistake a rope for a snake. Could we have mistaken the
changeless for the changing? Could we have mistaken the infinite for the
finite? Could we have mistaken the undivided for the divided? That's the
question.
So let s go back to that old analysis of apparitional causation to see
if such a mistake could give rise to our physics. We want to know whether
apparitional causation can answer our why questions. When we mistake one
thing for another, you remember, there are three aspects to our mistakes --
three consequences, if you like. First, we must fail to see it rightly. In
this case, we must fail to see the changeless, the infinite and the
undivided. That's fine; we've failed. Then we must see something else in its
stead, and that else must be different. And so it is. What we see is
changing, finite and divided. Finally, you remember, we had to see the thing
to start with. If we had not seen a three foot rope we would not have
mistaken it for a three foot snake. When you mistake your friend for a
ghost, if your friend is tall and thin then the ghost will be tall and thin.
But if your friend is roly-poly you'll see a roly-poly ghost. Had you not
seen your roly-poly friend you would not have seen a roly-poly ghost. If,
then, our physics has arisen by apparition, the changeless, the infinite and
the undivided must show in that physics. But isn't that exactly what we see?
The changeless shows as inertia, the infinite as electricity, and the
undivided as gravity. Had we not seen the changeless, it would not have
shown up in our physics. It is the changeless which we see, and, as a
consequence, that changeless shows in what we see. That is why things coast.
That is what we see as inertia. That is what we call mass. Likewise in order
to see the undivided as the divided we had to see the undivided, and that is
what we see as gravity. It is a consequence of having seen the undivided.
You cannot see a universe of particles, all spaced out, without Einstein's
Physics Of Illusion


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having them fall together again. You cannot make the mistake of
seeing it as divided without having the undividedness show. And, finally,
you cannot make the mistake of seeing the infinite broken up into
teeny-weeny particles without the consequence of seeing those particles as
electrical. Probably some of you don't know quite enough physics to
understand what I mean by that, but every electrical particle has energy