The Nuclear Science Orthodoxy

Going back to the Martin Fleischmann interview, from IE (linked by Gregory Byron Goble )

Quote

MF: I think there was a very unfortunate development in the 70's, a sort of "anti-Francis Bacon development." People developed a view that a subject is not respectable unless it is dressed up with a suitable overload of theory, and consequently we have had this "top dressing" of theory put on the subject which has tended to make the approach very rigid. Also, the theories are of course written in terms of rather old-fashioned ideas.

Fleischmann's reference to Francis Bacon is very important here. Bacon's publication of the Novum Organum in 1620 was a landmark in philosophical and scientific thought. In it he criticised the Aristotelian method of Deduction that was regarded as the proper way to enhance knowledge at the time. Aristotle had basically said that by thinking deeply enough, and by making various assumptions, which appeared logically correct to a skilled philosophical thinker, it would be possible to reveal truths about the natural world. Francis Bacon insisted that the only way to gain information about the natural world was through direct observation, and by testing any ideas that are prompted by those observations by carrying out actual physical experiments. The Baconian method formed the original basis for what later became known as the scientific method.

Francis Bacon was well aware that human nature would drift towards the internally Deductive, rather than the externally Inductive, and that a formal method was needed to counter that drift. He wasn't against deduction in its proper place, and was aware that it was central to areas such as mathematics and theology, but he knew that natural phenomena needed to be treated differently.

Now read this piece, published only last week, in the Guardian - written by Sabine Hossenfelder:

No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless | Sabine Hossenfelder

In private, many physicists admit they do not believe the particles they are paid to search for exist, says physicist Sabine Hossenfelder

www.theguardian.com

Basically, the "natural drift" has reoccurred - and some areas of science have reverted back to Aristotelian Deduction.

Schauberger may have been thinking precisely on that when he put in a more poetic way: “understand and copy nature”.

Insisting in expecting to observe what we think nature does (I.e. theory) instead of observe it and try to understand it is what has caused the current dead end. Sabine realized of that years ago and is trying to make others come to accept it. She is certainly not very popular in some circles because of that.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

The science is mostly statistics (based on empirical experiments) which shows that almost every reaction that can be envisioned actually can and does at some point actually occur, but the rates are also so vanishingly small for most reactions that getting anything out of them worth the effort put into it is the hill that most new fusion ideas die on.

This is exactly what occurs to me when I read Rob's question. There is no orthodoxy saying that fusion can only happen by way of high-energy plasma. It's just that the probability for such things is small.

Laser-stimulated lattice confinement fusion is an interesting case. There is no plasma, but high energies are still needed. The concepts explaining the events leading to fusion are orthodox as far as I know.

Quote from Frogfall

He wasn't against deduction in its proper place, and was aware that it was central to areas such as mathematics and theology, but he knew that natural phenomena needed to be treated differently.

Big Big 😊 Thanks

For I have so much to learn...

Time to study up!

Bit of a poet myself, I appreciate Francis Bacon's allegorical title page...

The title page of Novum Organum depicts a galleon passing between the mythical Pillars of Hercules that stand either side of the Strait of Gibraltar, marking the exit from the well-charted waters of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic Ocean. The Pillars, as the boundary of the Mediterranean, have been smashed through by Iberian sailors, opening a new world for exploration. Bacon hopes that empirical investigation will, similarly, smash the old scientific ideas and lead to greater understanding of the world and heavens. This title page was liberally copied from Andrés García de Céspedes's Regimiento de Navegación, published in 1606.

Quote from Frogfall

Basically, the "natural drift" has reoccurred - and some areas of science have reverted back to Aristotelian Deduction.

I made a summary of all childish failures made by standard model physicists:: https://vixra.org/abs/2209.0037

Neutrosophic Theory means Neutrosophy applied in many fields in order to solve problems related to indeterminacy. Neutrosophy considers every entity together with its opposite or negation , and with their spectrum of neutralities in between them (i.e. entities supporting neither nor ). Where , which of course depends on , can be indeterminacy, neutrality, tie (game), unknown, vagueness, contradiction, ignorance, incompleteness, imprecision, etc. Hence, in one hand, the Neutrosophic Theory is based on the triad , , and . In the other hand, Neutrosophic Theory studies the indeterminacy in general, labelled as I, with I^n = I for n ≥ 1, and mI + nI = (m+n)I, in neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology etc. This volume contains 45 papers, written by the author alone or in collaboration with the following co-authors: Mumtaz Ali, Said Broumi, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Mamoni Dhar, Irfan Deli, Mincong Deng, Alexandru Gal, Valeri Kroumov, Pabitra Kumar Maji, Maikel Leyva- Vazquez, Feng Liu, Pinaki Majumdar, Munazza Naz, Karina Perez-Teruel, Rıdvan Sahin, A. A. Salama, Muhammad Shabir, Rajshekhar Sunderraman, Luige Vladareanu, Magdalena Vladila, Stefan Vladutescu, Haibin Wang, Hongnian Yu, Yan-Qing Zhang,

about

• discounting of a neutrosophic mass in terms of reliability and respectively the importance of the source,
• evolution of sets from fuzzy set to neutrosophic set,
• classes of neutrosophic norm (n-norm) and neutrosophic conorm (n-conorm),
• applications of neutrosophic logic to physics,
• connections between extension logic and refined neutrosophic logic,
• approaches of neutrosophic logic to RABOT real time control,
• some applications of the neutrosophic logic to robotics,
• correlation coefficients of interval valued neutrosophic set,
• cosine similarity between interval valued neutrosophic sets,
• distance and similarity measures of interval neutrosophic soft sets,
• generalized interval neutrosophic soft sets and their operations,
• G-neutrosophic space,
• neutrosophic orbit,
• neutrosophic stabilizer,
• intuitionistic neutrosophic sets,
• intuitionistic neutrosophic soft sets, neutrosophic multi relation (NMR) defined on neutrosophic multisets,
• neutrosophic loops and biloops,
• neutrosophic N-loops and soft neutrosophic N-loops,
• operations on intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets,
• fuzzy soft matrix and new operations,
• such as fuzzy soft complement matrix and trace of fuzzy soft matrix based on reference function related properties,
• neutrosophic parameterized (NP) soft sets,
• NP-aggregation operator,
• and many more.

Quote from the EVO Exotic Vacuum Thread

I think that Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, being past the heliopause, is akin to our voyaging past the heliopause of matter, beyond the Nano and Femto scale and into the unknown energies of the far ranges of inner space. Sorta think of it as the Heliopause of Matter, the atom etc. Protects us from the raw energies of the inner cosmos. Beyond this 'matter heliopause' the nuclear binding forces have little to no influence.

Just daydreaming like a layman tends to

I am a big fan of Francis Bacon. I have read Novum Organum ("A New Instrument") several times, and I read Loren Eisley's book about Bacon and Novum Organum, "The Man Who Saw Through Time."

You should note that Novum Organum as written in Latin. You will find various copies online. They differ because different people translated them. Also, many of them seem to be missing the opening section. Here is the opening:

Bacon

And here is the rest, except this is different from the copy I got somewhere else years ago:

Online Library of Liberty

Here is the whole thing in facsimile format. This is the text I have, only mine is binary. I think this was published by Britannica. It was translated by Basil Montagu, Esq, a cup-of-tea name. It was published in London in the year MDCCCXXXI, which I gather is 1831.

The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England: Containing translation of the Novum organum, and Of thoughts on the nature of things

www.google.com

Anyway . . . it is a good book. Since it was translated recently, in MDCCCXXXI, the English is modern, not Elizabethan.

There are many fine quotes in this book. Some of my favorites:

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called “science as one would.” For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

HIs most famous aphorism, # 3, is often abbreviated “knowledge is power:”

Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect. For nature is only subdued by submission, and that which in contemplative philosophy corresponds with the cause, in practical science becomes the rule.

And in the introduction:

The empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by obeying her.

My opinion, written years ago:

Bacon invented the scientific method. He was the first to proclaim the importance of experiments and the supremacy of observations over established textbook laws of physics. His understanding of science was imperfect of course. How could it be otherwise, since most of what he predicted did not come about for two hundred years? He considered science primarily inductive; he did not realize the importance of hypotheses and mathematics. What he understood was that knowledge is power and cooperative research lasting decades will lead to enormous progress and give mankind understanding of and control over nature. He understood that the major sources of error in research (what he called “idols”) are mainly caused by psychological and cultural limitations, such as our propensity to oversimplify arguments, see only what we are trained to see, and the limitations imposed by language, which may be ill chosen or inadequate to describe a new phenomenon. Terms like “cold fusion” and “host lattice” may confuse the issue because the objects they refer to, it turns out, are poorly described by the words we first selected to label them.

Much of what Bacon laid out in Novum Organum is forgotten, misunderstood or overlooked by today’s working scientists. We still have a great deal to learn from him . . .

And finally:

. . . One strange footnote to Bacon is that some people think he wrote Shakespeare's works. Those people have not read Bacon or Shakespeare. I cannot think of any two authors less alike. Bacon was matter-of-fact, analytical, and every sentence is crystal clear. There is no hint of poetry in his work. He is the archetypal scientist. Shakespeare is the opposite.

Quote from Rob

which is pretty much the key to understanding how the 1989 ERAB panel was able to both draw the wrong conclusion

It should be noted that the 1989 ERAB panel recommended funding for cold fusion. So the conclusion was not completely wrong. One member of the panel insisted they leave the door open to funding. As I recall, she threatened to quit if they did not leave the door open. Huizenga did all he could to slam it shut. Anyway, the DoE ignored this recommendation.

The text of the ERAB report is here:

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ERABreportofth.pdf

The 2004 DoE review also recommended funding, and the DoE once again ignored it:

2004 DoE Review

Since my copy of Novum Organum was published in MDCCCXXXI, it is out of copyright. Basil Montagu, Esq. is probably dead by now. So I can just upload it here . . . But I do not know where the library is. I'll just upload it to LENR-CANR.org . . .

https://lenr-canr.org/Collections/Novum%20Organum.docx

Someone else can transfer it to the library here, where ever that is.

More great quotes from the book:

The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down, (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords,) forces every thing else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions. . . .

The human understanding is most excited by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then begins almost imperceptibly to conceive and suppose that every thing is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind; whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and heterogeneous instances, by which axioms are tried as by fire, unless the office be imposed upon it by severe regulations, and a powerful authority. . . .

The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly: for man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; sobriety, because it limits his hope; the depths of nature, from superstition; the light of experiment, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should appear to be occupied with common and varying objects; paradoxes, from a fear of the opinion of the vulgar; in short, his feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible ways. . . .

We may also derive some reason for hope from the circumstances of several actual inventions being of such a nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a conjecture about them previous to their discovery, but would rather have ridiculed them as impossible. For men are wont to guess about new subjects from those they are already acquainted with, and the hasty and vitiated fancies they have thence formed: than which there cannot be a more fallacious mode of reasoning, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

Quote from Bruce__H

This is exactly what occurs to me when I read Rob's question. There is no orthodoxy saying that fusion can only happen by way of high-energy plasma. It's just that the probability for such things is small.

Laser-stimulated lattice confinement fusion is an interesting case. There is no plasma, but high energies are still needed. The concepts explaining the events leading to fusion are orthodox as far as I know.

Yes.

And, more subtly, existing theory cannot be sure that conditions in a lattice (electron coherence with a high Q) are not enough to boost reaction rates much higher than expected. Existing theory actually predicts that electron shielding will increase reaction rates and make LENR more feasible than it would otherwise be. But these two effects are quite difficult to be sure about from the theory, quantitatively, because the systems on which they occur are large and complex.

Probability then becomes more "well we have not seen it, and have not worked out exactly how it could happen, and there are many OOMs enhancement needed to make it work, so it seems pretty unlikely". The same "continuity theory" approach to type 1 has a much tougher time - Hagelstein has been looking at it, so you should ask him.

There is also the black swan probability of something completely new and unexpected that predicts all existing results as well as existing theory, and also explains LENR. that is never impossible, by definition, but it is low probability.

THH

Quote from Rob

JedRothwell has there ever been any effort in documenting the preexisting bias of the members, and/or their conflict of interest by being associated with hot fusion research?

I don't know how you could make such a study. My guess is that future historians might do this after the members die and the historians get access to their e-mail. The members are not going to tell me anything! I am the last person they would talk to. As I have often said, if there is a secret conspiracy against cold fusion, they don't invite me to their annual conferences, so I don't know about it.

I don't think there is an active conspiracy. I have the impression the plasma fusion people thought about cold fusion for a few months in 1989. They helped destroy the reputations of the researchers and crush the research. They have not thought about it since. They sincerely believe that cold fusion was never replicated, and that all cold fusion researchers are frauds, criminals and lunatics, and Robert Park used to say. I assume they mean what they say. As Maya Angelou said, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."

There is no doubt that opposition to cold fusion is strong and deep among many scientists. (Not all, by any means.) I was there at the APS meeting when Park addressed a large crowd of physicists, saying that he and his friends in the Federal science agencies would "root and fire" anyone who tries to do an experiment, or even tries to hold a meeting. The crowd cheered and gave him a standing ovation. That is what he said he would do, and what he did. This was years after 1989, but Park and the crowd acted as if it had happened a week earlier. They were red-hot angry, and out for blood. I was expecting him to say, "anyone can make a mistake, and we must leave the door open to mistakes in science . . ." or some such thing, but there was no hint of that. It was "root and fire"; exterminate the enemy, and it is exactly the same today. I have heard from enough enemies of cold fusion to know that.

THH and others imagine the opposition is now lifting, and we can now publish in mainstream journals, and we are only making excuses for not publishing. He has no idea what he is talking about. People's careers were derailed. Their experiments trashed. Their reputations destroyed by accusations of fraud in the pages of the Washington Post, Nature, New Scientist, the Scientific American. Their lives and marriages destroyed. And he seems to think this is a quiet debate over tea and buns with the Dean. At nearly every university, national lab, or corporation, anyone who proposes an experiment or talks about cold fusion will be destroyed. They will be fired. If THH wants to know why, and where this irrational, anti-science hysteria comes from, he should look in a mirror. His own attitudes are expressed more politely than Park's, but he does not have a shred of evidence or any rational basis for these views, any more than Huizenga or Park did. I will grant that he sometimes makes a feeble effort to come up with a technical reason to reject cold fusion. Park was too smart to try that, and too well informed by Nagel and others. Park beat only one drum: "frauds, lunatics and criminals." Huizenga, as we have seen, wrote a whole book, but it boils down to one sentence:

"Furthermore, if the claimed excess heat exceeds that possible by other conventional processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), one must conclude that an error has been made in measuring the excess heat."

Strip away the bullshit and nonsensical "explanations" from THH, and that is all he ever says. "One must conclude that an error has been made."

Quote from Rob

JedRothwell has there ever been any effort in documenting the preexisting bias of the members, and/or their conflict of interest by being associated with hot fusion research?

Regarding conflict of interest by being associated with hot fusion research ... why not just ask? Or see if the moderators would agree to run a poll.

I have no such associations.

THHuxleynew

Please remind me how you define Type 1 and Type 2 LENR.

Quote from Bruce__H

Please remind me how you define Type 1 and Type 2 LENR.

May be he has diabetes...

Here is another great quote from Bacon, describing excessive skepticism. Underlining inserted by me:

The school of Plato introduced skepticism, first, as it were, in joke and irony, from their dislike to Protagoras, Hippias, and others, who were ashamed of appearing not to doubt upon any subject. But the new academy dogmatized in their skepticism, and held it as their tenet. Although this method be more honest than arbitrary decision, (for its followers allege that they by no means confound all inquiry, like Pyrrho and his disciples, but hold doctrines which they can follow as probable, though they cannot maintain them to be true,) yet, when the human mind has once despaired of discovering truth, everything begins to languish. Hence men turn aside into pleasant controversies and discussions, and into a sort of wandering over subjects, rather than sustain any rigorous investigation. But, as we observed at first, we are not to deny the authority of the human senses and understanding, although weak; but rather to furnish them with assistance. ["Assistance" meaning instruments and experiments.]

This book might have been written last week, in response to the cold fusion controversy.

Quote from Rob

the LENR theory

can you do 4D animation? as in the u,v and x, y planes?