In his
now-famous 1962 essay, The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas
Kuhn proposed that the common idea
of scientific progress as a
continuous, albeit bumpy, approach
toward the truth or toward reality
failed to explain particular
historical episodes that were
discontinuous.Kuhn wrote, "[S]cience has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the
ones we hold today." These beliefs were "produced by the same sorts of methods
and held for the same sorts of reasons" as are today's beliefs. And this "makes
it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion."
He goes on to describe "revolutions" in science, and he notes that theories on
opposite sides of a revolution are "incommensurable." Because the worldview of a
theory colors the facts, selects the problems to be solved, and defines the
acceptability of solutions, there are no scientific criteria to justify judging
one theory to be closer to the truth than another.
Nevertheless, scientists do judge one theory to be "more true" than another. At
times of revolution, this judgment is transferred from an accepted theory to a
novel theory, and pieces of the old theory are reinterpreted in the light of the
new worldview to be precursors to the new more true theory.
What are overlooked are non-scientific criteria for choosing one theory to be
more apt or useful with respect to evolving goals and cultural conditions. While
theories cannot legitimately be judged by the standards of another theory, they
can be compared with respect to the problems, performance, and promise of each
one judged by its own standards.
This is the same kind of judgment that a cook uses in the produce department
when deciding whether to buy turnips or asparagus. The facts, the problems, and
the potential solutions are incommensurable among theories, but scientists'
interest and curiosity, shaped by the surrounding conditions of life in a
particular time and place, lead them to decide among the offerings.
Recourse, then, is not to facts or to compatibility with some "already known"
but to differences in vision and promise. This series of Pictures of the Day
will contrast such differences between presently accepted theories and Electric
Universe theories.
The image above is of the nearby spiral galaxy in Andromeda. From the viewpoint
of gravity theories, what you don't see is more important than what you do. A
black hole at the center of the galaxy pulls in matter and squeezes it until
it explodes with a superabundance of radiation. A halo of
dark matter surrounds the galaxy and causes the stars in the spiral arms to
revolve at the same velocity. The quasars, small galaxies, and gas clouds that
stretch out along the rotation axis far from the galaxy are coincidental
alignments of background objects. The
blue shift of the galaxy indicates that it is moving toward us.
From the viewpoint of an Electric Universe, what you don't see also is
important. A
plasma focus mechanism at the center pulls in current and squeezes it until
it explodes in a superabundance of radiation. The
pinch effect in plasma currents causes filaments to form, and
these you can see. A persistent current can only exist in a circuit, so the
spiral arms are "feeder" currents that complete the circuit to the center.
These
currents are in "dark mode" and therefore are invisible, like dark matter.
But unlike dark matter, dark mode currents can be investigated in a lab. Lab
dark currents are a source of copious microwave radiation; so, the
cosmic microwave background radiation, which the Big Bang theory identifies
as a distant remnant of its secular "Genesis story," is likely a microwave "fog"
generated locally by the web of currents in our own galaxy's spiral arms.
Because these currents are also subject to the pinch effect and to concomitant
instabilities,
stars (cosmic ball lightning) form along them. Since electrical forces, not
gravity, drive them, they all have the same velocity. The plasma focus at the
center repeatedly discharges its accumulating charge by
ejecting blobs and streams of plasma along its spin axis.
Because the electrical stress
among these blobs varies in a resonant, step-wise manner,
their radiation shows a
quantized variation of redshifts. The
blueshift of the galaxy, one quantum step from the
sequence of redshifts that ends with the Milky Way at zero,
indicates that the Milky Way may be one of the first objects
ejected from the Andromeda galaxy.
