conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled The Special Theory of Relativity about Physics, Order, Emeritus with the genre: Science & Math, Astronomy & Space Science?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The late the author was Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Much of his most important work is published by Routledge, including Wholeness and the Implicate Order, The Unidivided Universe (with Basil Hiley), Causality and Change in Modern Physics, Science Order and Creativity (with F. David Peat), and Thought as a System.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first paragraph for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Special Theory of Relativity
  Even though the Lorentz theory is no longer generally accepted today, it is worthwhile to study it in some detail, not only because it helps to provide an appreciation of the historical context out of which the theory of relativity arose, but much more because it helps us to understand the essential content of Einstein's new approach to the problem. Indeed, a critical examination of the Lorentz theory leads one, on the basis of already familiar and accepted physical notions, to see clearly what is wrong with the Newtonian concepts of space and time, as well as to suggest a great many of the changes needed in order to avoid the difficulties to which these concepts lead.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the earlier stages of the development of physics, it was in principle possible to think of all movement as a quality or property of some kind of particles. With the discovery that mass (and even the particles themselves) can be "annihilated," with the liberation of equivalent amounts of energy, this way of thinking ceased to be tenable. But if the energy does not belong to such particles, how then are we to conceive of it? If energy has meaning only as a relatively invariant function of movement, and if there are no basic and permanent constituents of the universe which possess this movement, what can we mean by the terms "energy" and "movement"?
  The full development of the point of view outlined in the previous chapter, concerning the transformation between "rest energy" and other forms of energy, implies that we shall eventually have to understand the so-called "elementary" particles as structures arising in relatively invariant patterns of movement occurring at a still lower level than that of these particles. In such structures even the "rest energy" of an elementary particle would be treated as some kind of "inner," to-and-fro reflecting movement, on a level which is even below that on which nuclear transformations take place.
  At this point, questions naturally arise. One is: "May we not find new kinds of entities below the level of elementary particles which do in fact constitute the real permanent substance of matter?" Of course, we have no way at present to know what will be discovered in future research on this problem. But it may perhaps be instructive to make a few observations here, which we can carry out on the basis of what we already know. Naturally, these observations will have to be somewhat speculative, but it is hoped that they will serve to help clarify the meaning of this question.
  But then when we come to the molecular, atomic, and "elementary" particle levels, we again note a similar process. Thus, an atom, which is a fixed entity on its own level (the very word "atom" means "indivisible" in Greek) is found to be just as capable of fundamental transformations which are the outcome of "inward" movements of its electrons, protons, and neutrons as are the entities on the large-scale level. And, indeed, nowhere have we ever encountered entities which do not have these characteristics.
  Indeed, without the development of such laws, science as we know it would be almost impossible. For a great deal of scientific research is, and must be, based on the effort to show that a theory already well-confirmed in a broad domain, can continue to be applied to ever greater accuracy and in ever new kinds of problems. A theory of this kind thus helps indicate the kinds of questions that are likely to be relevant in our investigations of nature. In the absence of such a theory, research tends to degenerate into a kind of random or disorderly collection of isolated facts, most of which are not, in general, very relevant to each other or to the disclosure of laws of nature.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the earlier stages of the development of physics, it was in principle possible to think of all movement as a quality or property of some kind of particles. With the discovery that mass (and even the particles themselves) can be "annihilated," with the liberation of equivalent amounts of energy, this way of thinking ceased to be tenable. But if the energy does not belong to such particles, how then are we to conceive of it? If energy has meaning only as a relatively invariant function of movement, and if there are no basic and permanent constituents of the universe which possess this movement, what can we mean by the terms "energy" and "movement"?
  The full development of the point of view outlined in the previous chapter, concerning the transformation between "rest energy" and other forms of energy, implies that we shall eventually have to understand the so-called "elementary" particles as structures arising in relatively invariant patterns of movement occurring at a still lower level than that of these particles. In such structures even the "rest energy" of an elementary particle would be treated as some kind of "inner," to-and-fro reflecting movement, on a level which is even below that on which nuclear transformations take place.
  At this point, questions naturally arise. One is: "May we not find new kinds of entities below the level of elementary particles which do in fact constitute the real permanent substance of matter?" Of course, we have no way at present to know what will be discovered in future research on this problem. But it may perhaps be instructive to make a few observations here, which we can carry out on the basis of what we already know. Naturally, these observations will have to be somewhat speculative, but it is hoped that they will serve to help clarify the meaning of this question.
  But then when we come to the molecular, atomic, and "elementary" particle levels, we again note a similar process. Thus, an atom, which is a fixed entity on its own level (the very word "atom" means "indivisible" in Greek) is found to be just as capable of fundamental transformations which are the outcome of "inward" movements of its electrons, protons, and neutrons as are the entities on the large-scale level. And, indeed, nowhere have we ever encountered entities which do not have these characteristics.
  Indeed, without the development of such laws, science as we know it would be almost impossible. For a great deal of scientific research is, and must be, based on the effort to show that a theory already well-confirmed in a broad domain, can continue to be applied to ever greater accuracy and in ever new kinds of problems. A theory of this kind thus helps indicate the kinds of questions that are likely to be relevant in our investigations of nature.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Of course, we must not suppose that all such acts of understanding lead immediately to correct theories. Far from it, many of them are found to be incapable of solving the basic problems under consideration. Hence each such understanding must be tested to see what the domain of validity actually is. To do this, it is necessary logically to work out the implications of the new structure of ideas that has emerged into the mind. Nevertheless, as important as these latter steps are, they all depend on the essentially creative acts of understanding, without which science would eventually either stop developing or else stagnate in a bounded domain that never went beyond some limited circle of ideas.
  There seems to be no limit to the possibility of the human mind for developing new structures in the way described above. And it is this possibility that seems to be behind our ability to put forth new theories and concepts, which lead to knowledge that goes beyond the facts that are accessible at the time when the theories are first developed. It should be recalled that this possibility exists as much in immediate perception as in scientific research, since very often what is constructed in the "inner show" leads, as we have seen earlier, to many correct predictive inferences for future perceptions. It is evident that such an ability cannot be due merely to some sort of mechanism that randomly puts forth "hypotheses" until one of them is confirmed. Rather, for reasons that are as yet not known, the human mind in its general process of perception, whether on the immediate level or on the highest level involved in understanding, can create structures that have a remarkably good chance of being correct in domains going beyond that on which the evidence for them is founded. On the basis of this possibility, the process of "trial and error" can efficiently weed out those structures that are inappropriate. At the same time it can help provide material, the criticism of which leads to a fresh act of understanding or perception, in which yet newer structures are put forth which are generally likely to have a broader domain of validity and better correspondence to the facts than the earlier ones had.
  To sum up, the essential point is that through perception we are always in a process of coming into contact with the world, in such a way that we can be aware of the general structure of the segment with which we have been in contact. Science may then be regarded as a means of establishing new kinds of contacts with the world, in new domains, in new levels, with the aid of different instruments, etc. But these contacts would mean very little without the act of understanding, which corresponds on a very high level to that process by which what has been invariant is presented in terms of structure in the "inner show" of immediate perception. It need then no longer be puzzling that science does not lead to knowledge of an absolute truth. For the knowledge supplied by science is (like all other knowledge) basically an expression of the structure that has been revealed in our process of coming from moment to moment into contact with a world the totality of which is beyond our ability to grasp in terms of any given sets of percepts, ideas, concepts, notions, etc. Nevertheless, we can obtain a fairly good grasp of that with which we have thus far been in contact, which is also valid in some domain, either large or small, beyond what is based on this contact. By remaining alert to contradictions and sensitive to new relationships, thus permitting the growth of a fresh understanding, we can keep up with our contact with the world, and in some ways we can anticipate what is coming later.
  In science this process takes place at a very high level of abstraction, on a scale of time involving years. In immediate perception it occurs on a lower level of abstraction, and it is very rapid. In science the process depends strongly on collective work, involving contributions of many people, and in immediate perception it is largely individual. But fundamentally both can be regarded as limiting cases of one over-all process, of a generalized kind of perception, in which no absolute knowledge is to be encountered.