South Place Ethical Society
Conway Hall Humanist Centre
25 Red Lion Square,
London WC1R
4RL
( 0171 831 7723
THE
POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE
Ivor Catt
Lecture
to the Ethical Society, 24 March 1996
Published in The Ethical Record, June 1996. Tel. 0171 831 7723
In a letter in Wireless World, Nov. 1981,
J.L. Linsley Hood writes that "censorship has
been effective throughout my own professional career....".
He lists nine authors who could not have been published anywhere else but in
Wireless World.
There is usually no conspiracy to suppress
heretical ideas. There is no need of one, except in some specific instances,
because as Charles McCutcheon wrote in the New Scientist (itself a notorious
suppressor, but not as bad as Nature) on 29 April 1976, p225, "An evolved
conspiracy" suffices.
A pivotal event in science was the
Michelson-Morley experiment in the 1880's. I ran into a discussion in the
interval at the Royal Institution seminar to celebrate the centenary of the
Michelson-Morley experiment. An American who was setting up an international
conference on relativity discussed with Prof. Kilmister,
one of the lecturers, whether ether buffs should be suppressed at that
conference. He also asked how Harold Aspden should be
dealt with. That is, he was discussing how to suppress a specific dissident.
They concluded that if ether believers kept to Establishment mathematics they
should be allowed to put their case. The American, who told me that he was a
born-again Christian and had previously been evil, said that he regarded heresy
in science much as he regarded heresy in religion. More generally, suppression
in science results from fear that a new idea will obstruct the normal, calm
progression of academic career progress and research funding.
Suppression is the norm rather than the
exception. Even Maddox, editor of Nature, who gave the Ethical Society's
Voltaire Lecture on 18th November 1995, now says he is worried. Maddox says
that suppression is increasing. The Daily Telegraph of 1 May 1989 quotes him;
"The epoch making paper by Francis Crick and James Watson outlining the
structure of DNA, which appeared in Nature in 1953, would 'probably not be
publishable today', Maddox laments....". That is Maddox, the greatest
suppressor of all, joining the band-waggon of concern
about suppression. With his track record, that is mind-blowing. Scientists have
successfully resorted to false authorship (Theocharis),
and Lovelock, the inventor of "Gaia", said on radio that he resorted
to a false address to get into Nature.
The most interesting, and most destructive,
aspect is the pandemic suppression of advances relating to the AIDS epidemic.
Other experts specialise in the allied subject of fraud in science. Stewart and
Feder lead this field.
My first publication on suppression in
science was "The Rise and Fall of Bodies of Knowledge", published in
The Information Scientist No. 12 (4), Dec. 1978, pp137-144, where I discuss
some of the cases of suppression which litter science. My article was
re-published in my book "Electromagnetic Theory vol
1", 1979, p. 117. All of the content of that book is suppressed, including
the point I raised at the Michelson-Morley centenary seminar, asking about the
apparent paradox in their experiment that although Michelson-Morley pre-date
wave/particle dualism, both wave and particle have to be assumed at different
stages in the experiment to suppress anomalies. Central to the most famous
experiment in science, there is an apparent paradox which may not be discussed.
Discussion of the paradox is suppressed. This paradox was published in Wireless
World in May 1995, and there has been no reply. What we are talking about is
massive, multi-level suppression in science today. When I raised this paradox
at the centenary seminar, the speaker, Professor Kilminster,
said, "That has never been mentioned before". In the nineteenth
century, that would have been a remark of praise, but today it is a criticism.
He made no further comment. I was later disciplined by the chairman, but the
other lecturer told me; "Of course, that's not my department, because I'm
a mathematician, and I leave that to the physicists." Both the lecturers,
chosen for the honour of speaking at the centenary seminar, withdrew from the
matter.
The M-M apparent paradox has never been
mentioned since, being suppressed for good reason. To raise such questions, and
there are many, is cheating, like making your pawn move as a combination of
knight and bishop in a chess match. Science today is the manipulation of
pre-agreed axioms and old knowledge, nothing more. Further, the request for
more detailed statements of the axioms, as in my case with Michelson-Morley, is
resisted to the death. Not only are new ideas suppressed, but attempts to get
the full description of the old ideas, if they are threadbare, is ignored. They
will not play their own game of chess, let alone play your new game.
Today's science resembles the religious
service, which should not be interrupted by the raising of theological questions.
I am not a failure, not an outsider, and the
insider-outsider dualism is the wrong analysis. Anyone, for instance Dingle,
who speaks out of turn becomes an outsider in that
context. I have had major successes, which I am now citing. It is important to
listen to people who have been successful in the system as well as the
failures. By any criteria, I have been successful.
My work on Wafer Scale Integration, described
in Wireless World July 1981, was always rejected for publication by all learned
journals, even though it attracted £16 million of funding and became a widely
praised product in the field. Of course, its suppression reduced the threat
that it would upset the research funding being received in their universities
by journal referees for their own approaches to Wafer Scale Integration. When
an article comes in, the editor sends it out to the accredited experts, who are
receiving the funding for their own approaches to Wafer Scale Integration. They
now had the job of understanding what I was talking about. Their best defence
of their own funding was to fail to understand my approach, which I am sure
they did. They did not recommend suppression of a perceived rival. They
suppressed some nonsense which they could not make head or tail of.
The resulting product came to market in the
USA. It was featured on the front cover of the journal Electronic Design,
25oct89, and won the "Product of the Year Award" from the journal Electronic
Products.,
January 1990. In spite of my track record, my new WSI invention, see Wireless
World mar89, for which I have worldwide patents, cannot be published in any
learned journal.
In a letter in Wireless World in January
1983, I wrote that during 25 years of work, I had never succeeded in publishing
any of my work on electromagnetic theory. This is suppression of another
subject - scientific discovery, totally different from Wafer Scale
integration, which is invention. This ban now extends to 35 years.
However, we should particularly think about the refusal of the Establishment,
when approached, to clarify the classical theory they are teaching and
researching. It is not just a matter of suppressing the new theory. It is a
matter of refusing to explain the old theory when questioned on detail. We have
a threadbare Establishment defending a threadbare body of knowledge. I have a
question, about where certain charge comes from in the classical theory, and
that question is not answered. It is called The Catt Anomaly. My colleague
Harold Hillman believes that it was not an error to give it that name. The
evasion would have occurred however it was described. It is not my theory -
nothing to do with me. It is an elementary question about classical
electrodynamics, and the answer is refused, as you will see later.
Professor Pepper FRS and his boss Professor Howie FRS, Head of the Cavendish,
disagree with each other on this detail of their theory - on where the
charge comes from. They refuse either to discuss it with us, or with each
other, or to say that the matter is of no importance, or to say that the matter
is of importance, or to say anything at all, because Catt has arrived in the
middle of a cathedral service and started arguing with the preacher about
theological matters. The whole notion of asking for comment on theological
matters in a cathedral, thinking one is in a theological college, is absurd. We
are talking about an established religion here, and asking for details of the
Holy Ghost - "Where is the Holy Ghost?", or "What do you mean by
the Trinity?" - might be acceptable in a theological college, although I
doubt it, but it is certainly not acceptable during a service in a cathedral.
We are talking here about an established religion, and Howie
and Pepper are paid priests.
Not only are new theories ignored and
suppressed. We also find that the Establishment is nonchalant about its
contradictory versions of old theory. See for instance the co-existing,
hopelessly contradictory versions of the TEM wave pointed out by me in
"The Heaviside Signal", Wireless World July 1979, which has been
totally ignored.
New knowledge and New Knowledge
What is suppressed and what may be
communicated? The major piece of knowledge has to be suppressed and the minor
piece of knowledge can be tolerated.
Basil Bernstein, Institute of Education, is
one of the key contributors to the model I am developing. He himself writes in
Chinese, so he has to be interpreted. Although his other subject is language,
he communicates with great difficulty. In his book
"Class, Codes and Control", pub. R.K.P., 1971, he wrote what
can be interpreted as follows;
Knowledge is
Property, with its own market value and trading relationships, to be
administered and defended by those who are living off that body of knowledge.
The central control of our culture in these fields
is the university lecturer, and what controls him is a slab of lecture notes.
This slab of lecture notes covers a particular section of a first-degree
course, and each year it brings him in sixty pounds for two hours of lecturing.
Knowledge is property. We can go more close
in, to find that piece of property, that set of sheets of paper, that slab of
lecture notes, which he wrote once, perhaps a very long time ago, and which
will bring him sixty pounds each year, pay his mortgage and impress his maiden
aunts - the maiden aunt is most important in his situation. It is his security
and it is his identity. He passed examinations in that block of knowledge,
maybe only very recently.
That is essentially Bernstein's theory.
I have the concept of new knowledge, which is
harmless, and the dangerous new stuff is in italics.
New knowledge. Information is safe, or new, if it indicates a
further section in a second degree syllabus. He just has to write some more
notes and imbibe some more material.
New knowledge.
Information is definitely not tolerable if it would lead to a change in an A
level syllabus. New knowledge cannot be allowed in today's system,
today's body of knowledge, and will be suppressed at all levels. This is
totally predictable.
We come down to the interface between
unacceptable, and acceptable, knowledge. If some new information led to a
change in a first degree syllabus, that will be
blocked. If it merely indicated a new section in a first degree syllabus, that
is not new. That is not threatening.
The Vandal
"A capacitor is a transmission
line," (Wireless World, dec78,) which is new, leads to the
destruction of the text books. Twenty years later, this fact is still witheld from students. To think of the horror with which
this fact is viewed, think of the Nazis burning the books. The man who
brings new knowledge is a vandal, and should understand that that is
what he is. He is attacking the established culture, and the established
culture will defend itself against him, because he is trying to get the books
destroyed. With this concept, you will understand the dialogue between those
who are living off a body of knowledge and those who are attempting to develop
it further, or in his terms, attempting to destroy it and him.
The Establishment has a dilemma. The parasite
knowledge broker is in the science Establishment, not an accountant, because he
wanted to push forward knowledge. But he must suppress knowledge in order to
survive. He must not admit to himself, and even more to his wife, that he is a barrier
to progress; that in order to survive, and keep paying their mortgage, he has
to block advance in his field. That is where he is vulnerable. He fights an
increasingly desperate rearguard against new knowledge, because of this
freezing of the body of knowledge. The date I give for the freezing of the body
of knowledge is 1927, at the Brussels - Solvay Conference, which mirrors the
Council of Nicaea for Christianity. At Solvay 1927, the New Physics was
codified and dogmatised, against Einstein's forceful and recurring objections, see Gribbin in The
Ethical Record of nov95. We are well into it now, and the repercussions become
more and more serious.
Grattan-Guinness said that the introduction
of universal education, in around 1850, which instituted the new class of
knowledge professionals, meant that in the end knowledge would be frozen. We
have been feeding through this process, and finally progress comes to a halt.
It is not necessary to comprehend a frozen
body of knowledge. An Establishment figure who is living off a body of
knowledge remains expert in detecting heresy, but as the decades go by he
becomes incompetent in the body of knowledge. In the end, that body of
knowledge disintegrates, and you can see them disintegrating today. If you
discuss Modern Physics with its practitioners, they will tell you that the
depth of grasp of the subject by its practitioners today is very flimsy. The
whole thing is highly vulnerable, so the PR and the window-dressing becomes more and more frantic and bizarre, an example being Gribbin's lecture in the November 1995 issue of The Ethical
Record. As one who was employed for many years in the U.S.A. and Britain to
"design computer chips", I know that, pace Gribbin's
assertion, ".... the standard version of quantum theory taught in
universities [was never] used .... to design computer
chips." The leading High Priest of Modern Physics, Paul Davies, recently
received the million dollar Templeton Prize for contributions to religion.
We see today the merging of the science section with the religion section in
book stores, something unimaginable fifty years ago. The message is out, that
something is deeply wrong with Modern Physics, and the student uptake of A level and degree courses in Physics is dropping rapidly.
If you pay professionals to maintain a body
of knowledge, it will finally disintegrate. But more importantly, a
professional paid specifically to advance a body of knowledge, will freeze it.
Science is international, so this problem is
worldwide. Although the English are of course the worst, all other countries
are determined to copy our errors. The Chinese will not leapfrog us. They will
not take advantage of our errors. They all want to follow behind. There is no
way round this. They all want to go through these errors. In particular, the
Israelis will not exploit new knowledge, new inventions, in order
to resolve their security problems, because their scientists need primarily to
find their several niches in the worldwide science hierarchy.
We now go for the core of the problem. Paid
professionals sit astride a body of knowledge, trying to freeze it, trying to
defend it against those who want to rock the boat. Modern Physics is a kind of
science which is most defendable against new knowledge. The professional
knowledge broker resembles the Pope, using the apostolic succession, rather
than the fundamentalist Christian with his bible. The professional knowledge
broker, like the cardinal, opts for Authority via apostolic succession rather
than any written Authority which he may fail to control. An extreme form of
this is Lakatos, who says that a theory is a research
programme, thus trapping theories within the apostolic succession.
Four things coming from 1927 are
diametrically opposed to classical science, but are now mainstream Philosophy
of Science. These professional scientists have funded an entourage of
Philosophers of Science who are opposed to the old Philosophy of Science, but
which sustains these professional usurpers. They have reversed most of the
fundamental precepts of science. The new principles are; wave-particle dualism;
the Uncertainty Principle; non-causality; and the extraordinary idea that the
observer corrupts the experiment. These are not scientific in the old sense.
A Frozen Discipline
You can read that electromagnetic theory was
signed and sealed one hundred years ago, and that there will be no further
advance. So if a college lecturer wants a quiet time, he migrates to
electromagnetic theory, copies and re-arranges old text books to form his new
text book, and teaches the ever more narrow and
obscure body of knowledge which is today's accredited electromagnetic theory.
Einstein emphasised the importance of the
subject when he wrote; "The special theory of relativity owes its origin
to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field." (ed.
Schilpp; Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist,
Library of living Authors, 1949, p62.) At the core of electromagnetic theory in
the world today you find the Wizard of Oz, a frightened little man who, under
today's Philosophy of Science, which is Instrumentalism, (see K Popper,
Conjectures and Refutations, RKP, p100,) believes that he should maintain the
fiction that he knows what he is doing. Under Instrumentalism, the only value
of a theory is its usefulness. Now the judgement of the usefulness of a theory
is subjective, and you can be sure that for a university lecturer, the
usefulness of the theory is that sixty pounds per year.
Dingle and Essen
Louis Essen, elected FRS for developing the
Caesium Clock, wrote to Nature that the alleged confirmation of Relativity by
the gentlemen who took Caesium Clocks round the world by airplane was bogus
because the caesium clock did not have the claimed accuracy. Nature refused to
publish, preferring the PC 'confirmation' of relativity to stand. Essen told me
that Dingle queered the pitch by making a mistake. Essen also told me that the
Inst. Phys. broke its contract with him to publish an article even after he had
checked the galleys. The Inst. Phys. also broke its contract with me to publish
my article which later appeared in Wireless World in March 1979. The Inst.
Phys. is riddled with unscientific PC - mania.
The Catt Anomaly
Dingle wrote the book, Science at the
Crossroads, pub. Martin Brian O'Keefe. He discussed the Twin Paradox, a problem
in Relativity. Half of the book discusses his suppression, and the other half
discusses the Twin Paradox.
Twenty-five years later, I am writing the
book, The Catt Anomaly - Science Beyond the
Crossroads.
When a battery is connected
to a resistor via two parallel wires, electric current flows which depends on
the voltage of the battery and the resistance of the resistor. Also, electric charge appears on the surface of the
wires, and we concentrate on the charge on the bottom wire. In the case of a 12
volt battery and four ohm car headlight bulb, the electric current is three
amps and the resulting power in the lamp is 36 watts.
Consider the case when the battery and lamp
are connected by two very long parallel wires, their length being 300,000
kilometres. When the switch is closed, current will flow immediately into the
front end of the wires, but the lamp will not light for the first second. A
wave front will travel forward between the wires at the speed of light,
reaching the lamp after one second. The wave front comprises electric current,
magnetic field, electric charge and electric field. Negative charge appears on
the surface of the bottom wire. All this is agreed by all experts.
Below is the version of the Catt Anomaly as
it was presented to Establishment figures including Pepper and McEwan.
The Question
Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote to past
members of the college including myself asking for money to finance their expansion
programme. They argued that Trinity had been in the forefront of academic
advance, and my money would help to keep them there.
I replied that Trinity and Cambridge had for
twenty-five years refused to comment in any way on Catt's theories on electromagnetism,
and for ten years on the Catt Anomaly, a problem in classical electromagnetism,
of which I enclosed a copy (above). I suggested to Atiyah,
Master of Trinity, a mathematician, that he cause his
leading expert to comment. The result was the following letter from Pepper. I
also include a part of his later letter to my colleague Raeto
West, which clarifies his position;
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
CAVENDISH LABORATORY
MADINGLEY ROAD
CAMBRIDGE CB3 0HE
From: Professor M. Pepper, FRS June 21, 1993
Ivor Catt, Esq.,
121 Westfields,
St Albans
AL3 4JR
Dear Mr Catt,
As a Trinity physicist the Master suggested
that I might provide some comments on the questions raised in your recent
letter to him on aspects of electromagnetic theory.
If I understand the position correctly, your
question concerns the source of the charge at a metal surface which by
responding to the presence of the EM wave ensures that the reflectivity of the
metal surface is virtually unity, hence providing waveguide action and related
applications.
If I may restate the basis of your question,
what is the maximum frequency of radiation which is reflected? It is this
parameter rather than light velocity which is important. The solution lies in the
maximum frequency response of the electron gas, which is the plasmon frequency w p and is calculated in a
straightforward way. If light frequency is greater than w p then the electron
gas in the metal can no longer respond and the reflectivity tends to zero. The
problem you are posing is that if the wave is guided by the metal then this
implies that the charge resides on the metal surface. As the wave travels at
light velocity, then charge supplied from outside the system would have to
travel at light velocity as well, which is clearly
impossible.
The answer is found by considering the nature
of conduction in metals. Here we have a lattice of positively charged atoms
surrounded by a sea of free electrons which can move in response to an electric
field. This response can be very rapid and results in a polarisation of charge
at the surface and through the metal. At frequencies greater than w p the
electron gas cannot respond which is the reason for the transparency of metals
to ultra-violet radiation. However for frequencies used in communications the
electron gas can easily respond to the radiation and reflectivity is unity.
If a poor conductor is used instead of a
metal, i.e. there are no freely conducting electrons, then there is no
polarisation, and as you point out charge cannot enter the system, and there
can be no surface field. Consequently reflection of the radiation will not
occur at these low frequencies and there is no waveguide action.
I hope that these comments provide a
satisfactory explanation.
Yours
sincerely,
[signed] M Pepper
cc: Sir Michael Atiyah
- Trinity College [Master]
Mr.
A Weir - Trinity College
Telephone: 0223
337330
August 23, 1993 Dear Raeto West, I write with reference
to your letter of August 19. Your description of the process is correct; as a
TEM wave advances so charge within the conductor is polarised and the
disturbance propagates at right angles to the direction of propagation of the wave .... .... Yours
sincerely, M Pepper
The portions of Pepper's letter which strike
you as either too erudite for your comprehension or else as drivel, are
drivel. Generally, he has copied out irrelevant slabs of material from text
books.
This was an exciting development. For the
previous decade, all experts, when trapped into commenting, had insisted that
the charge came from the west, and did not have to travel at the speed of
light. Now we had an accredited expert, writing under instruction from his
boss, saying that the charge could not come from the west, but came from the
south.
There the matter rested for two years, until
a group of mature, dissident Combined Humanities undergraduates at Bradford
University organised a week-end conference entitled "What is Education For?" I offered to give a paper entitled "The
Politics of Knowledge in Science". This was accepted, Kathy Symonds
telling me that I served a useful function, because apart from me they had
failed to link up with science, and also because the lecturers who asked to
speak all turned out to be Establishment, which I was not quite.
This was the second time that I became kosher
for a short period in a university, admittedly only Bradford, and so had more
power to elicit rational comment on science. As part of my presentation, I
asked Kathy Symonds in advance to ask the appropriate official to instruct the
top expert to comment on the Catt Anomaly. Here is her letter, and McEwan's reply.
Dear Professor John Gardner
As part of our program,.
"What is Education For?", we need comment
from the accredited Bradford University expert on the subject below. I shall be
very grateful if you send me written comment before the start of our seminar on
22apr95.
Thank you very much for your time and trouble
[signed] Kathy
Symonds.
P.S.
I enclose an S.A.E. for your reply.
To Kathy Symonds 20 April 1995
Phone
01274-384006
Dear Kathy,
John Gardiner has passed this on to me - I
think I can claim to be reasonably competent to discuss it.
To deal first with the problem raised in
"Catt's Anomaly", there is definitely a correct answer, and it is
just that the new charge required in the one foot of cable DOES flow from
somewhere to the left! The charges DON'T have to travel at anywhere near the
speed of light to do this!
The sentence that begins "Not from
somewhere to the left ....." is fallacious ... such charge would NOT have
to travel at the speed of light in a vacuum! The reason that the sentence
cannot be grasped by those "disciplined in the art" is because it
happens not to be true!!! It may be obvious to the untutored mind because they
haven't had the theoretical training to see why it is wrong. It is exactly at
the point where the assertion seems really obvious that you need to think most
clearly to see where the logical deduction is unsound - and perhaps this is
where the lesson for educators lies. The heart of the fallacy is as follows:
(a) If the voltage step originally at a
transverse plane "A" on the conductors moves one foot to the right to
a plane "B" (indeed about one nanosecond later) then it is true that
a certain amount of charge must have entered the portion of the conductors
between A and B. What is not true, however, is that
any of the electrons that were in the neighbourhood of A actually had to travel
to B to keep up the wave!
(b) The charge that appears between A and B
is required to be uniformly distributed along the length between A and B. This
charge really does enter at plane A - so how is it
possible that the electrons didn's have to rush to
the right at the speed of light? - I will now explain:-
(c) When the wires are electrically neutral,
they are actually composed of vast numbers of positive charges and negatively
charged electrons in equal densities - the total charge balances out. The thing
we call the "charge on the line", which is required to account for
the voltage wave is actually the unbalance between the two sets of charges.
(d) Imagine that, between A and B, you have
100 electrons and 100 positively charged nuclei arranged uniformly in pairs
along one foot distance. There is no net charge.
(e) Now imagine that you push in one extra
electron in at the left hand side A, and you squash the electrons up a bit so
that they remain evenly spaced but now 101 electrons fill the distance that was
previously occupied by 100. There is now a total of one unit of "charge on
the line" between A and B, and, rather surprisingly, this unbalanced
charge actually appears to be fairly uniformly distributed between A and B. The
electron originally at A would only move about 1/100 of a foot as you squeezed
the electrons closer together, and it would have to move this distance in the
one nanosecond it took for the voltage wave to move from A to B. The electrons
further to the right would move even less.
(f) If you imagine that you did this again
with a larger number of positive and negative charge pairs - say 1000 becoming
1001, then as you squeezed in the extra electron the one next to it would only
have to move up about 1/1000 of a foot in the one nanosecond - and so on.
If you go on increasing the density of
available charges, you can easily see that the velocities required of the
electrons to produce one unit of unbalance becomes smaller and smaller. (Also,
the one unit of unbalance appears to be more and more uniformly distributed
across the one foot of distance.)
It turns out that when you "put the
numbers in" that the real number of free electrons in the one foot wire is
colossal, and that consequently they only need to move at walking pace or less!
You can summarise all this by saying that the
"charge" that is required to account for the voltage across the line
is not produced simply by a small number of charges moving in to the section of
line but by a very slight redistribution of a vastly larger number of charges
that were already in that section! Putting it in still another way again, there
has been a confusion over the identity of the charges
that account for the voltage across the line.
You can go on describing this problem at
deeper and deeper levels and it will go on revealing more and more interesting
physics - which soon gets very hard. For example, there is a quite noticeable
effect because you do need some force to keep the electrons moving against the
collisions with the stationary atoms. This appears as resistance in the line
and it can cause the advancing voltage step to become distorted, ie it smears out into a more gradual step.
At a higher level of precision there is even
a very small effect from the finite acceleration of the electrons. As the
voltage step passes over them, the local electrons in the conductor are accelerated
(very rapidly!!!) to the very small speed that is needed. There is no paradox
about the rapid acceleration of the particles, they are very light. This
produces an extremely small effect on the velocity of the wave travelling down
the line, but you would not be able to detect it at the frequencies used in
ordinary electronics.
I hope this has helped and given you
something to think about. The "anomaly" is very instructive educationally, it is a real challenge for the teacher to
explain clearly, and a very good example of how fruitful it can be to be wrong
about something!
Turning more generally to your 2 - day event,
I am extremely intrigued about how "Catt's anomaly" came into the
discussion. I do realise that progress has often been made by challenging
orthodoxies, but in the case of Catt's problem I happen to think that the
accepted theory gives a pretty good account, but you can learn a lot if you are
really made to set out how. I would be very interested to hear what you make of
my comments, and how they have been used in your event.
Best wishes
[signed] Neil McEwan (Dr.), Reader in Electromagnetics
[University
of Bradford]
[Copy typed by I Catt, 1oct95]
McEwan was the orthodox response that I had been waiting for.
I had not previously had it styled 'ex cathedra'; that is, stated by the
accredited expert from an institution (Bradford University), under instruction
from the appropriate top official of the institution (Professor of Electrical
Engineering, Head of Department). I was now in a position to approach the
accredited learned institution and ask them to help. This was a better chance
to get rational comment on scientific fundamentals than I had had during the
previous quarter of a century of searching. I had to tackle it in the best
possible way, using comprehension and techniques that had developed since
Dingle's day, as the whole of twentieth century science slid deeper into the
morass of its own careful devising. Here was the best chance to scientifically
establish the facts about today's science; possibly the last chance.
I took the Pepper/McEwan
contradiction to the head of the IEE.
Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields,
St. Albans AL3
4JR,
England
(01727 864257
26may95;
Second copy sent
27june95
Third copy sent 18aug95
Fourth copy sent 3sep95
The Secretary,
Institution of Electrical Engineers,
Savoy Place, London.
WC2R 0BL (0171 240 1871
Dear Dr. J. C. Williams,
The Catt Anomaly.
An essential component of classical
electromagnetism remains unstated. There is disagreement about this feature by
accredited experts, Professor Howie FRS, Professor
Pepper FRS, McEwan Reader in Electromagnetics,
but no discussion by them to resolve the matter.
Is the IEE the accredited institution with a
primary responsibility for Electromagnetic Theory? How does the IEE proceed in
a situation like this, where the theory which is the basis for its raison
d'être turns out to be unstated and unclear?
Yours sincerely,
Ivor Catt
encl.
21june93 statement on the Catt Anomaly by
Pepper
20apr95 statement on the Catt Anomaly by McEwan
apr95 Half page note from Symonds to McEwan
plus description of the Catt Anomaly
Catt letter to Electronics and Wireless
World, May95
Summary of disagreement, or
confusion, in classical electromagnetism, below.
Summary
of disagreement.
"Dear
Professor John Gardner, As part of our [Bradford university] program, 'What is
Education For?', we need comment from the accredited
Bradford University expert on the subject below" - Kathy Symonds, 4apr95.
"[Professor] John
Gardner has passed this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably
competent to discuss it.... .... the new charge required in the one foot of
cable DOES flow from somewhere to the left! The charges DON'T
have to travel anywhere near the speed of light to do this! .... It may be
obvious to the untutored mind [plus Pepper FRS] because they haven't had the
[Bradford univ.] theoretical training
.... The [Catt] 'anomaly' is very instructive educationally...." -
Neil McEwan (Dr), Reader in Electromagnetics
[Bradford University], 20apr95.
".... As the
wave travels at light velocity, then charge supplied from outside the system
[i.e. from the left, or west,] would have to travel at light velocity as well, which is clearly impossible. ....we have a lattice of
positively charged atoms surrounded by a sea of free electrons which .... move in response to an
electric field...." - Pepper, 21june93.
".... as a TEM wave advances so charge within the conductor .... propagates at right angles to the direction of the wave.
...." - Professor M. Pepper, FRS., Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 23aug93.
"Institution of
Electrical Engineers - to promote the general advancement of electrical science
and engineering and their applications, and to facilitate the exchange of information
and ideas on those subjects; 130,000 members. President Sir David Davies" [italics by I.C.] - from
p1557 of "The World of Learning 1995", Europa
Pubs. Ltd.
As you will see from the dating of my letter,
the reply, from Williams' deputy, was long in coming. I learned later that
Williams and Secker were new men, anxious to show more willing than their
predecessors. This led them into the quagmire. The new broom got stuck in old,
sticky cobwebs.
Dear Mr Catt
Thank you for your letter of 18 August, to
which the Secretary, Dr Williams, has asked me to respond.
Firstly, I should mention that we have had
your book reviewed and that the resulting report will be published in the
Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal - either in the October or December
issue. [Actually oct95.]
The Institution has a responsibility to
'promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering and
their applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on
these subjects to the members of the Institution'. The general view of the
experts within the IEE is that the so-called 'Catt anomaly' is not an anomaly
at all, and does not, therefore, require discussion or exposition. The favoured
explanation aligns with the statement to which you refer, attributed to
Professor Pepper, namely that as a TEM wave advances, so charge separation
occurs close to the conductor surface effectively giving a transitory current
flow at right angles to the direction of wave propagation.
Yours sincerely [signed] Professor
Philip E Secker Deputy Secretary IEE 4sep95
Secker was politically inept to admit that
the IEE had a responsibility in this matter, and in so doing he betrayed the
forces of darkness. However, he showed better obfuscatory
tactics by introducing the irrelevant question of the review of my latest book,
which had been hanging over the IEE for more than a year. (Up to that date,
there had been no evidence in IEE literature that Catt had ever contributed to
electromagnetic theory. Except for the belated admission, fifteen years too
late, of his contribution in another field, Wafer Scale Integration, Catt
remained a non-person. The reader can learn about all these matters in Catt's
may95 letter to Electronics World + Wireless World. Its present editor Eccles
has since turned chicken and will not publish anything more by Catt. [ "Mr. Catt
returns" 2003] )
The important point is that Secker wrote that
his IEE experts had backed the wrong horse, opting for Cambridge with its
aberrant Pepper; producing charge from the south from inside the conductor like
a rabbit from a hat. The IEE opted for prestige rather than for the more
tenable explanation from lowly Bradford; that the charge came from the west,
and somehow managed to do so even though it travelled too slowly. The IEE did
not know that Pepper's boss Howie FRS was a
Westerner, or they would have gone for his revered Cavendish seniority, and
avoided the quagmire. The Westerner view could have been brazened out, and had
been for the previous decade since the discovery of the Catt Anomaly in aug81,
for instance in many letters to Wireless World. The ingenious but mad
Southerner view of Pepper could not.
I now no longer had to take sides, but only
to get Westerners and Southerners to resolve their differences, a task
which was to prove Herculean, as I expected. That is, I knew that the forces of
darkness in today's science were entrenched, strong and determined.
Much activity followed during the next few
weeks, but first we should jump to two further comments by Secker, to give a
brief taste of what followed. Whereas above, on 4sep95, Secker wrote
"....The favoured explanation aligns with the statement to which you
refer, attributed to Professor Pepper, ....", seven
weeks later, on 25oct95, he wrote; "Dr. McEwan
really has the answer ....". Thus, he was backing both the views whose
contradiction was the cause of Catt writing to Secker's boss in the first
place, and his boss instructing Secker to reply! Further, although on 4sep95
Top Dog in the IEE chose him as the appropriate expert to reply, after seven
weeks of repeated pontification and obfuscation,
Secker wrote on 26oct95; "I should explain that I am no expert in the area
to which the 'Catt Anomaly' refers....". He
repeated this claim on 19dec95. This earned the riposte on 15nov95
from Luca Turin, lecturer in biophysics in London University; "To claim,
as Professor Secker does, that this is a problem requiring unusual erudition
and expertise is disingenuous. It belongs in chapter One of all the
textbooks." It also raises the question as to why Top Dog Dr Williams
delegated to Deputy Dog Professor Secker the task of replying to Catt's letter.
Was Professor Secker Emeritus Professor of the London School of Ducking and
Weaving, not of Electromagnetism? Had Top Dog from the start
seen the Catt Anomaly as a political, not a technical, problem, to be handled
by his most senior political, rather than technical, Deputy Dog? Who
then was Top Dog's most senior expert on electromagnetism? We get a clue from
Secker writing on 19dec95; "I asked a number of 'experts' familiar with Ivor Catt's views if they would .... [review his book], but
all declined." This leads us to a statement on 8nov95
by Wilson of the IEE; "The Institution does not have Technical Committees
which address scientific principles." In turn, we compare this with
Secker's original 4sep95 letter, above, which quoted;
"The Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the general advancement
of electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate
the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects....'", which Catt
had copied to Top Dog in his original 18aug95 letter. Also we note Secker
25oct95; "The reason that the Catt Anomaly has been around so long is that
the 'experts' have not thought it of sufficient standing to take the trouble to
demolish it!"
The Test Case
The objective is to get the IEE (London,
130,000 members) and the IEEE (New York, 300,000 members) to comment in a
rational way on the Catt Anomaly. The IEE's expert first commented, then
obfuscated, then announced that he was not an expert. We are going through the
same process with the IEEE. Their top professional has instructed his top
expert Mink to comment on the Catt Anomaly, and Mink has initially produced a
lot of waffle. The scientific prediction is that after further obfuscation,
within nine months, Mink will announce that he is not an expert.
Unfortunately, other learned bodies, in
Germany and France and elsewhere, have very low
membership, perhaps 6,000, and so are relatively insignificant. So the New York
experiment has to be conducted very carefully as a comparative study with
London.
The "experts" are terrified,
desperate to evade the matter. The technique for getting the
"experts" to communicate includes the following;
Catt
himself will never communicate.
Catt's
agents will each limit to one letter, with only one question. Only sometimes is
a single question answered, usually after repeated letters. If a letter contains
more than one question, none of the questions are ever answered.
When
ignored, the letter with its one question is repeated every six weeks for ever.
The test case of the Catt Anomaly, and the
techniques developed to force the Establishment to communicate, will then be
used to open up our other frozen institutions.
Scientific method.
A scientist will refuse to use scientific
method when studying the subject of suppression in science. You can test this.
Ask a scientist friend to address the question of whether new information is
suppressed, and he will refuse to be drawn, hiding behind discussion of Catt's
egocentricity or paranoia, which are not scientific matters. Also, he will
refuse to put anything in writing.
Howie and Pepper, refusing to comment on the Catt Anomaly,
are front line troops. They are bitter because they will not be defended by the
Establishment. Their careers are over because I approached them and forced them
to comment on aspects of this body of knowledge. This is the second weakness of
the entrenched Establishment, that its front line troops will not be defended.
I can knock out any individual within the Establishment, and the rest of the
Establishment will withdraw from him. His duty is to not notice that I exist.
Once he admits that I exist, let alone my question, he is finished.
Absolute truth.
There are four people; Luca Turin, Biophysics
lecturer in London University; Theocharis and Psimopoulis, and myself, who all agree that the pivotal
question this century is whether absolute facts exist. Lacking the discipline
of objective fact, we fall into the hands of the salaried Establishment,
whatever its technical ignorance and nonsensical excesses.
Consider the statement, "It is
absolutely true that there are no absolute truths." However, this is
probably cheating, although worth pondering. More generally, the position that
there are no absolute truths triggers all sorts of major difficulties. However,
it is non-PC to analyse current PC dogma.
Theocharis (who published on this issue in Nature, 15oct87, Theocharis, 200a Merton
Rd., London SW18. tel 081 870 6191) challenges the
"opinion" that if Smith jumped off a high place, he would die. He
challenges Smith to accompany him to the high place, and jump off, in order to
test the relative strengths of Smith's imperfect view and T's certainty, that Smith will die.
For my part, I assert that the concept
"Energy" was propounded. This is absolutely true, and has nothing to
do with my point of view. It is an objective fact, not subjective. It is also
absolutely true that no other person slept in my bed last night, apart from me.
This is not a subjective view; it is objective fact. It is absolutely true that
at this moment I am typing into a computer. We are immersed in a sea of
objective facts. (We have direct access to them, not needing the mediation of
paid knowledge brokers.) Anyone who denies the existence of these facts must
deny the purpose of any communication whatsoever, and so should shut up.
Communication is a superstructure based on an array of agreed absolute facts.
Denial of the existence of any facts necessarily implies denial of the
possibility of communication. We are left merely with mutually supportive
noises of uncertain import.
In a lecture, the test of absolute truth is
to ask a dissident in the audience whether it is absolutely true that he is
attempting to listen to a lecture. If he demurs, he has to be ejected from the
lecture hall because he is an intellectual terrorist. He denies the possibility
of developing and extending a body of knowledge. The fact that he is merely
going along with the vandals who have captured learning throughout most of the
twentieth century does not excuse his nihilism.
For my part, I say that I hereby intend to
write a sentence which starts and ends with the word "For". I have
also probably succeeded, but this next step is unnecessary in order to
establish an absolute truth, about my intention. Even more succinct, I intended
to start and end a sentence with the same word. Absolutely
true. Anyone who disputes this is disputing the possibility of any
meaningful communication whatsoever, and so should not be talking, since they
believe they are wasting their and our time. Disputing the validity of this
exercise, the disputant is asked to communicate something (anything) within
their nihilistic universe of discourse (and such activity serves a purpose).
They will fail. Thus, I believe the assertion "There are no absolute
truths" becomes the assertion "No inter-communication is possible".
Thus, we are left only with "views", or states of mind, and all we
can do is commune together. See today's Quaker. He is well on his nihilistic
way.
Conclusion
The blocking of new information by all
our institutions means the end of civilization. It is of the utmost importance
that the facts of the situation be established soon,
and if the crisis is as severe as I believe, that remedial action be taken. All
that is required is that, should a knowledge broker be proved to have blocked new
knowledge, he be held accountable, something which does not occur today. This
accountability will be through his pocket by way of dismissal.
27apr96
File no. w4rlectu.doc
Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields, St.
Albans AL3 4JR., Herts,
England