An Epic Tug of War Between Progress & Regression
As we look into the history and current state of Science, we notice a peculiar pattern: first, there is a groundbreaking, paradigm shifting discovery that opens the minds of men, and clarifies the structure, composition and dynamics of the universe; but afterwards, there is often a regression of knowledge, where the discovery is turned on its head, either by interpretation or manipulation. The result is that what meant one thing to the scientist who discovered it, takes a whole new meaning to those who alter the original discovery. The question is why does this happen? Below are 14 examples of this phenomenon throughout the history of the sciences.
Habitable Zones
One Step Forward ...
When copernicus, postulated that the solar system (universe, in his days), was not geocentric but heliocentric and that the earth, like all the other planets revolved around the Sun, he was placing the earth in the position that made the most sense in terms of his logic. Since then, we come to understand, through a deep analysis of what it takes to sustain life, that earth's location is indeed perfect for supporting life. While Copernicus had not scientific notion of Habitable Zones, he was a deeply religious man, in fact a priest, and in his mind the location of the earth in the third orbit from the Sun was a calculation by God, that was to the precise benefit of mankind. Another way of saying "habitable zone." Below, find both his reasoning, and to whom he attributes the beneficial results:
In the midst of all dwells the Sun. For who could set this luminary in another or better place in this most glorious temple, than whence he can at one and the same time brighten the whole" Nicolaus Copernicus
In the above quote, it might sound like Copernicus is saying "where else would anyone put the Sun?" But the next quote shows that his true meaning was "no one can find a better place for the Sun than where God put it." He was reflecting on the reasonings of previous scholars, who believed in the geocentric model of the universe, and had come to the conclusion that they were wrong in their beliefs: the earth was not the center of the [solar system]; the Sun was! They had gotten all the details right, except for the most important one - the location of the earth in relation to the center:
When, therefore, I had long considered this uncertainty of traditional mathematics, it began to weary me that no more definite explanation of the movement of the world-machine established in our behalf by the best and most systematic builder of all, existed among the philosophers who had studied so exactly in other respects the minutest details in regard to the sphere" Nicolaus Copernicus
Two Steps Back
In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle states that humans, on the Earth or in the Solar System, are not privileged observers of the universe, that observations from the Earth are representative of observations from the average position in the universe. Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus' argument of a moving Earth" Copernican Principle - Wikipedia
The above quote is the first paragraph of information when you look up the Copernican Principle on Wikipedia. Immediately three ideas stand out as the opposite to what Copernicus envisioned: 1) the fact that humans are "not privileged observers" in the universe; whereas Copernicus had stated that the design of the universe was "established in our behalf," that is, for our benefit and privilege; 2) "Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption...." Copernicus bold conclusion to his thoughts on the structure of the universe were the exact opposite of a "working assumption," they were the end result of diligent, logical thought processing and represented the most "definite explanation" of the movement of the world-machine, or universe! Nothing haphazard about that conclusion, and 3) Wikipedia states that the Copernican Principle is a working assumption that comes from a "modified cosmological extension" of Copernicus' argument of a moving Earth. But such a modification has no merit in light of Copernicus' own feelings on the subject. You cannot claim that a reversal of intent, is an extension of it! No modification was necessary, or extension permissable: the paradigm shift Copernicus introduced with the introduction of heliocentrism, was perfect and complete.
Physics & the Laws of Motion
One Step Forward ...
Newton was precise in his formulation of the laws of motion, the most basic principles guiding the cosmos. Law number one:
Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon" Sir Isaac Newton
In current English that amounts to: "A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force." Simple. Clear. And precise! A huge leap in the forward march to man's understanding of the dynamics of the universe, which he inhabits.
Two Steps Back
We wonder then why this most basic of laws, empirically proven through endless experimental tests; and more importantly: never disproven by any experiment, somehow does not apply to the CMB. Here's what I mean. The CMB is postulated by Big Bang cosmologists to be the relic afterglow of the Big Bang. This ancient light is said to have started streaming through the universe from the moment the universe cooled to 3000 Kelvin and became transparent to radiation. Here's the problem: if that light was streaming towards the location of the earth from the edge of the universe it would have passed by earth by now. So, that scenario is falsified. On the other hand, if it had streamed from any other position in the universe in the opposite direction Newton's laws tell us it would continue in a straight line unless "compelled to change that state by forces impressed" upon it: what force then is at the edge of the visible universe, and forms a perfect sphere that effectively bounces the CMB back towards the center of the universe, to where we on earth can "see" it? Big Bang cosmology has no answer for such a question, as they believe that the universe is infinite and would thus have a difficult task of identifying the structure at the edge of the visible universe that is responsible for reflecting the outwardly streaming CMB back
In this way the Big Bang theory violates Newton's first law of motion! Two steps back.
Gravity
One Step Forward ...
Stephen Hawking writes admiringly about the tremendous impact Newton's discovery of the Laws of Gravity, had on mankind's knowledge of the universe,
Newton was thereby coming to recognize that gravitation is universal - that one and the same force causes an apple to fall to the ground and the moon to race around the earth." Stephen Hawking
And ...
Newton, by a single set of laws, had united the earth with all that could be seen in the skies" Stephen Hawking
A monumental achievement at a time when most civilizations believed the different variable in the universe were controlled by different and sometimes competing deities. Newton pushes all that aside and not only asserted, but gave convincing mathematical proofs that as far as the structure and dynamics of the universe were as concerned, gravity was the glue that controlled how bodies - earthly and celestial moved and behaved. His theory was not complete though. He spoke frankly about not having achieved the aim of finding out what the mechanism that effected gravity was, what was the force carrier, that communicated the force from one body to another over vast distances? He hated the idea of "action at a distance," that is, one object affecting the dynamics of another object without contact. In lieu of physical contact between the bodies, what was communicating the force from one to the other? Here he is proudly acknowledging the fact:
Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. Indeed, this force arises from some cause that penetrates as far as the centers of the sun and planets without any diminution of its power to act, and that acts not in proportion to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles on which it acts (as mechanical causes are wont to do) but in proportion to the quantity of solid matter, and whose action is extended everywhere to immense distances, always decreasing as the squares of the distances" Sir Isaac Newton
Though he wanted to identify the cause of gravitational attraction, what motivated him more than personal glory was the pursuit of truth. Hence, he never tried to pretend he knew answers he did not, nor did he shy away from disclaiming foolish notions that would depend on one or other ether:
That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it" Sir Isaac Newton
And ...
That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it" Sir Isaac Newton
Thus, while Newton had not identified the "cause" of gravity, he understood that resorting to an ether was not the solution. Instead his words show that he was looking for a force carrier as the mechanism through which the action of gravity could be mediated or conveyed from one body to another at a distance.
Two Steps Back
In what has been celebrated as a work of counter-intuitive reasoning that surpasses Newton's own prowess for original thought, Einstein has been credited with coming up with the conception that gravity is not a force but a an effect, caused by the curvature of Space-time. This effect, Einstein claimed merely gave the illusion that gravity is a force, when nothing of the sort was true. We have seen that that cannot be true, since gravity and space do not share the same locations in coordinate space! Yet, we have not yet identified what gravity is. We will do so a little later. Regardless, the point is that Newton's formulation of the definition of gravity was complete, except for his identification of its "cause" and how this "cause" effected attraction unseen, and at such great distances. From this near complete formulation of the phenomenon, Einstein set mankind back by many leaps, due to his ill-thought out conception of Space-time, which turned out to neither real, nor the cause of gravity!
The Scientific Method
One Step Forward ...
The Scientific Method, was put into practice sporadically by the most gifted of scientists over the centuries, and by the fathers of astronomy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, in the middle centuries of the last millennium. However, the man who popularized the definition was Francis Bacon. It is interesting to note that the scientists who adhered most closely to the need for experimentation, reason and observation in their scientific methods are the same ones who are the most ardent believers in God. They are also, the most successful at discovering the secrets of nature! Is that coincidence, or by design? According to Wikipedia, in 1733 was introduced by Voltaire, as the "father" of the scientific method. Part of his approach was to stay away from metaphysics, in much the same way as Newton warned against it. Does it not surprise readers who think of men of God as the ones who appeal to metaphysics, to learn that in fact, the exact opposite is true: men of God revere observation, experimentation and empiricism; while their opposers often turn to the metaphysical and to ethers in their quest for scientific knowledge.
In his quest for such knowledge Bacon's Wikipedia page says he promoted "scientific experimentation as a way of glorifying God and fulfilling scripture." Within the scientific method hypothesis held a lowly place, and was only to be engaged in after observation and analysis of the facts. For otherwise, how could one form an opinion? As William Whewell put it, new hypotheses must be "collected from the facts"* (William Whewell - Wikipedia)
Two Steps Back
In the age we live, in these priorities have been turned on their head. When we read of the myriad of conjectures that scientists come up with almost at on a whim, it becomes clear that hypothesis has trumped experimentation and observation as the contemporary scientists favourite tool for knowledge discovery. Only, it never leads to knowledge; just more and more expensive experiments, that produce null results! This is the point that Sabine Hossenfelder often complains about: scientists do not learn from the failures of past experiments, but merely request more funding to go even deeper into the same rabbit holes. Here, is an excerpt from the Institute of Arts and Ideas debate she was a part of *(24:21 - 27:03)
Sam Henry: There seem to be no shortage of other theories: [inaudible]-Kline particles; extra dimensions; z primes; leptoquarks; technicolour baryons. You know, so many theories, that as an experimentalist focusing on the hardware, I can't keep up with them all. So, I just have to listen to people like Sabine, to tell me which ones I should be paying attention to.
Philip Ball: Well, I was very struck by that. As soon as this result came out, the physics community, in the pre-print server where physicists post their papers were flooded with theoretical explanations. So many, that you kind of have to wonder, how constrained at all is this problem, if so many theoretical explanations, for something quite new, can seemingly be cooked up almost overnight? ... Sabine, maybe you can talk to that issue: ... Is there too much room for manoeuver?
Sabine Hossenfelder: [Yes], that's an excellent point. Though, I have to say as is often the case: if there's a new result coming out, there are a lot of people who already know it's coming. So, they may not have written the paper overnight, and they had some advance warning. But, it's certainly true, and that's exactly what I mean when I say we have a problem with theory development. When you can explain everything, by your theoretical methods, then, since you [Sam] were asking, you shouldn't pay any attention to those predictions. They are entirely worthless! And that's what we see. That's why their being ruled out over and over again. Because, you have all these theories: they literally guess their models! ... And, it just leads nowhere. I really think that theoretical physicists, they have to have a hard look at their methods of theory development - and throw out what didn't work. But, the problem is exactly what Bjorn said: we have this path dependence. So, we have settled on a particular method ... and that works very easily, if you've learned how to do it. Like: this is what I was trained to do - basically - I know how it works. And that's how you can write papers, and that's how you get grants, and that's how you get your students, and then the students become professors. So, it just goes on and on like this. And if you want to do something fundamentally new, you'll have to start over again from scratch, and it becomes very very hard to find any support!
Did you notice in the exchange, how Henry outsourced his own function for the need for critical thinking to Hossenfelder? Can you imagine Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Carnot, Clausius, Fraunhofer, or Faraday doing anything like that? Do you now see why science, as it is currently practiced by Intellectuals is in such a dire state? Do you see why path dependence cannot be broken? Do you see why Intellectuals who pursued education not for its character building values, but as the surest way for them to chase money as Sir Glubb so poignantly put it, can never be the answer of the current morass engulfing scientific circles? Are they, the very cause of the decay, going to be the ones who break the mold, and halt the descent to collapse? The answer is clear ... two steps backward - indeed!
Spectroscopy
One Step Forward ...
Sir Isaac Newton, Norman Lockyer and Josef Fraunhofer did so much for the scientific field of optics. Their definition of spectroscopy, was groundbreaking and led to many subsequent discoveries, as their analysis was applied to numerous other fields. So precise is the science of spectroscopy, that scientists such as Lockyer, confidently identified elements in the periodic table before they were discovered. That is how Norman Lockyer identified Helium as an element before its discovery some years later. Spectroscopy, is not an art, it's a science. But it has uses that go beyond the mere identifying of natural substances. Through the kind of spectrum an element or compound produces, we can know what states of matter it is in! In this way, the early pioneers correctly surmised that the corona of the Sun was formed of gas, while the Sun itself is made of elements in their liquid states.
Two Steps Back
Humanity didn't have to wait very long before this forward step in knowledge, was reversed when soon afterward scientists insisted that the Sun is made of a gas, a fact which easily demonstrably to be false.
Kirchhoff and Planck - among others - have done much to confuse the issue and cloud the topic. Using credentialism and the false authority of consensus, scientists have managed to wrest the ability for critical thinking away from everyday citizens, who need but look at the experimentally proven laws of spectroscopy to be able to come to logical conclusions on the topic.
Entropy
One Step Forward ...
No one did, or could have done a better job of explaining Entropy, than Joseph Clausius. Perhaps more than any other scientist in the history of mankind, Clausius understood the concept that he explained to the world, more fully than any other scientist including Galileo and Newton, understood what they discovered. There was no aspect of entropy that Clausius did not understand thoroughly, or fully explain. He left no stone unturned. When Newton made discoveries in optics and gravity, he noted that there was more to learn, and that he would leave the quest to future generations. Clausius did not need to make any such provisions, because he had discovered and carefully laid out all that there was to know about Entropy! His accomplishment is truly mind boggling. Be that as it may, there were other, who felt his understanding was not sufficient and needed fine-tuning.
Two Steps Back
James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig von Boltzmann, took it upon themselves to transform the meticulous work of Clausius and do mankind the disservice of modifying it to being a statistical model of complex systems. This revision started while Clausius was still alive and so enraged the humble man that he refused to accept Maxwell's manuscript of proposed changes.
In changing altering the definition of Entropy from one based on irreversible processes, to one based on probability, Maxwell introduced the false notion that impossible events were statistically possible. So that events which a 5 year old child can tell you are impossible - such as a glass of water returning a melted ice cube, back into its original shape, or separating milk that has been blended with coffee, back into two separate liquids - will nonetheless be spoken as possible, but highly improbable by a full grown adult - scientists who believe the erroneous theory that entropy is a statistical phenomenon.
Laws of Gases
One Step Forward ...
It took six different thinkers to compile the laws of gases. These laws then became the unified law of gases. Based on centuries of experiment proofs, they accurately describe the dynamics of gases, whether on earth or elsewhere in the cosmos.
The contributors to this potpourri of discoveries include Boyle, Charles, Avogadro, and Gay-Lussac. Each of these great scientists a meaningful piece of the puzzle, allowing mankind to discern the big picture of how gases work, and the rules that regulate them.
Two Steps Back
But, without ceremony, these laws have been disregarded in Cosmology's quest to formulate a theory of how the universe came to be that does not include God. Whereas, proven experimental evidence says gases expand to fill a volume, the Big Bang theory says the opposite: gases collapsed in on themselves to form stars. No gas, in any experimental setting has ever been observed to collapse in on itself!
Whereas, experimental evidence tells us that gases do not have potential energy, the Big Bang theory posits that gases have gravitational pull. Whereas, experiment tells us that gases only have exert pressure when bordered by a boundary, cosmologists who espouse the Big Bang tell us that gases can do so free of any bounding surface. Whereas, experiment after experiment have proven that gases take have no boundary shape and take the shape of their enclosing container, Big Bang cosmologists promote the idea that the Sun is made of gases, even thought the Sun is the most spherical object ever observed.
Work & Power!
One Step Forward ...
Emily du Chatelet, Sadi Carnot and Gustave Coriolis contributed much to the pioneering efforts of understanding what work was. Fundamental to those endeavours was Carnot's paradigm shifting conception of an "ideal machine." In trying to design such a theoretical machine, Carnot laid the groundwork for understanding all real machines. Geniuses like Clausius would later explain why Carnot's engine was an ideal machine that could never function in reality.
On the other hand du Chatelet's definition of energy, and Coriolis' later refinement of it, helped to establish the formula for work and our understanding for the different types of energy in the universal, i.e., potential and kinetic etc. Mankind, having understood the simple mathematical formula for work, could also clearly define power as the work over time, or the rate at which work is done.
Two Steps Back
For Big Bang cosmologists, such definitions are mere inconveniences as their theory is full conjectures that violate the laws of work and power. Such first and second order violations of the laws of physics means their explanations are not physically possible. It is not possible for a gas to do work on itself - by collapsing in on itself. For a gas to compress instead of expanding to fill the void, or its container, something else would have to do work on it, that is, something else would have to compress it. Yet, that very impossible dynamic is how cosmologists propose that all stars were formed: gases imploded in on themselves and formed stars. When science discards experimentally proven results, for baseless, unproven hypotheses it is taking two steps backwards!
Lines of Force & the Electromagnetic Spectrum
One Step Forward ...
Faraday's wild leap of conjecture about lines of force, which would later become the "field lines" of today, his contemporaries thought he was crazy. Crazy was the last thing that talented man was. In forming such a counter-intuitive thought experiment, Faraday was able to grasp mentally, how objects which had no visible connections could influence each other. His further intuition about how impulses from one charged particle to the another communicate force was also groundbreaking. But he wasn't finished yet: ever the deep thinker: Clausius was about to suggest the craziest, and the most brilliant of his well informed guesses: light was itself one of these "disturbances in the force lines of electrical and magnetic fields."
Although Faraday could not prove it mathematically, he also posited that the electromagnetic spectrum did not need a medium to travel, as it was self-propagating. An idea as radical and counter-intuitive as the suggestion that it was not the Sun, but the earth that moved, and our perception that the Sun revolves around the earth was a misinterpretation of celestial dynamics. Incredibly, Faraday was right!
Two Steps Back
Again, it is James Clerk Maxwell - universally recognized as a genius of the highest order - who we once again find with his fingers in the wrong jar. Of all the titans of science to try and correct, Clausius and Faraday are in the top three of minds you should never try to surpass - the other is of course, Newton!
But usurp is exactly what Maxwell, once again, tries to do. This time, his proposal is that Faraday is wrong about the nature of light and how it is propagated. It is not self-propagating, but depends on an ether to transmit through the vast distances of empty space where there is no visible medium. Though not visible, there is indeed a medium argues Maxwell, and it is the ether. Wrong on all accounts!
Elements & the Discovery of Elements
One Step Forward ...
This example is a curious one because the forward step and two backward steps are both the actions of the same person - scientist extraordinaire, Laurent de Lavoisier. Rich and full of ingenuity, Lavoisier was looking for the identity of the gas that allowed matter to be combustible. When his friend Joseph Priestley told him about his discovery of ether-free dephlogisticated air, Lavoisier, knew at once what the mystery substance was - oxygen. His precise and methodical mind, free of the mystical precepts of alchemy, then worked feverishly to replicate the experiment and catalogue what would become known as the periodic table. Laurent de Lavoisier is often credited, and justly so, with being the father of chemistry.
Two Steps Back
How surprising then, that the man who dispatched with the ethers of alchemy, was to invent one himself. For, hot on the heels of his triumph with identifying oxygen and abolishing Phlogiston, Lavoisier himself, created a new ether Caloric! Much as phlogiston had done before it, the idea of caloric confused earnest thinkers for many years to come. Carnot was one deep thinker who laboured under its influence, and it drove him away from the conclusions he would have so readily have arrived at, had he not been hamstrung by trying to dovetail reality with a non-existent ether. Only after much trial and error did both Carnot and later Thomson arrive at the correct understanding of heat. Heat, was not the product of an ether named caloric, but the result of the motions of atoms! Lavoisier's account gives us the noteworthy lesson that scientists can so easily abandon the logic that allowed them to discover and prove the existence of one entity, when they cannot explain the dynamics of another. In such cases, much better it is to be humble and declare, as Newton did - one's ignorance of yet unresolved mysteries:
... The cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more time to consider of it" Sir Isaac Newton
The remedy to ignorance of natural laws is "more time to consider it," not conjuring up ethers. Of course, such an action plan requires humility, and therin lies the rub.
Blackbody Radiation & the Ideal Element
One Step Forward ...
When Stewart Balfour achieved his pioneering results in establishing how blackbody radiation works, it was an experimental triumph. The most beautiful aspect of this discovery was how easy it was to understand. Its simplicity was its best feature. But then came the regressors.
Two Steps Back
However the gains of these experimental triumphs were short-lived as fist Kirchhoff, and then the highly esteemed Max Planck, both rolled back Stewart's Law, by abandoning scientific rigour for unfounded speculation. By inserting claims into their work that were not founded on experimental evidence, or corroborated by any observational data, they plunged sciences into darkness: particularly, the discipline of Cosmology!
By distorting the fundamentals of blackbody radiation, they managed to turn what should have been a fool-proof way of determining the composition and internal structures of celestial objects that are too distant for humans to ever experiment on directly, on its head. Not only are the analysis wrong; they lead to theories that are non-physical. That means, a wrong view of blackbody radiation, gives rise to theories that can never be modeled into physical structures; and physical structures that humans can never discern the underlying patterns of! Regression indeed.
Energy - Where Does it Come From?
One Step Forward ...
Again, as in the case with Lavoisier and introduction of the Caloric, we have a scientist who makes a great discovery about some aspect of reality, only to later succumb to the pull of conjuring up an ether. In the case of Lavoisier, the unfounded ether was the Caloric. In the case of Einstein, it was the reimagining of the "Luminiferous Ether" of Michael Morley fame into the ether of Space-time, by Einstein's own admission!
E = mc2 ...
Is one of the most important formulas ever created. It's simplistic beauty belies the complexity of what it describes. This magnificent equation tells us where everything we see comes from: it tells us that all mater is a form of energy! So important are his contributions to the entity we call energy that they form the bedrock of how we understand its very nature. Not if's function, or the laws regulating its dynamics, or usefulness but its very nature! He has given us three priceless quotes about its nature, I shall quote two here and save the third for later,
Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter" Albert Einstein
And much more importantly ...
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another" Albert Einstein
Two Steps Back
Thus the unfortunate surprise, to learn that such an accomplished mind not only believed in ethers, but instead of finishing the work Newton had left for future generations to finish, he regressed - undoing the great work of giants of physics!
Redshifts & how they Explain how the Universe Expanded
One Step Forward ...
Perhaps, the most egregious example of regression comes from the modifications that were made to Edwin Hubble's pioneering work on the cosmos. Hubble spent endless nights and days observing, analyzing and cataloguing the night sky. His conclusions opened the minds of mankind to realities that many had never before imagined.
Not only did he show that the Milky Way galaxy was not the universe, but one of many many galaxies that together formed the universe, but he also proved a most startling fact: the universe today, was not its original size - it had expanded. As if that wasn't enough, he went on to show that redshifts proved that the earth was older than the galaxies. But in a true moment of clarity and high order critical thinking he came, correctly, to the conclusion that the expansion of he universe had first been very rapid and slowed over time, to the point that today, the universe had stopped expanding! But according to the undeniable pattern you have now seen applied over and over again - it wouldn't be long before other scientists, not only revised his findings to fit a counter-narrative, but that, that narrative would soon usurp the original one, but retain the branding of the original discoverer - as if to portray the sense that the modified thoughts were original to the pioneering discover!
We saw the pattern with Copernicus, whose Copernican theory got twisted until it was unrecognizable: going from the Sun being in the middle of the "most glorious temple" was an act "established in our behalf, by the best and most systematic builder of all," to it being a demotion that cast mankind as insignificant and alone, awash in a meaningless universe!
We saw this pattern with Clausius and the retrograde revision of his startling achievements, moving them from a complete definition of why work processes in the universe proceed as they do; to a statistical theory that no one fully understands. One, that admits into the realm of possibility - through probability - events which are clearly impossible!
We saw this pattern with the great Isaac Newton, when his magnum opus, was revised to occupy only a corner of reality - for it was said to apply only to classical mechanics; while Einstein's theory of general relativity was elevated to cover not only classical scenarios, but quantum realities also. We will see it now with Hubble and his phenomenal understanding of redshifts and their true meaning. And we will see it again in examples that occurred after Hubble and down into the present day.
The question is why?
Two Steps Back
From the great fanfare and clarity that Hubble proposed his achievements were quickly turned into ashes, by the overturning of the reasoning, and solid logic he employed to reach them. While he was still alive, his findings were corrupted to fit a contradictory narrative: the universe expanded from a singularity, a "primeval atom"n in a Big Bang, which Georges Lemaitre called "the beginning of the world," in exact opposition to Hubble. Hubble had clearly stated - and backed it up with proofs - that the earth was older than the expansion of the universe. But that fact was not in keeping with the Big Bang narrative on the origin of the universe, and so was quickly discarded. Hubble's findings were also inverted in other areas. His evidence-backed assertion that the redshifts proved that the expansion of the universe had slowed over time and was now zero, with the universe being static. Have you ever heard the saying: "follow the money?" In science matters to understand why this pattern of retrogression exists, we have only to trace who benefits from such corrupted revisions? We move on to the reversal of Vera Rubin's findings.
Dark Matter
One Step Forward ...
When Vera Rubin diligently analyzed the stars at the edge of galaxies, she never expected to find what she discovered: that they were moving faster than they should have been according to the laws of physics and the amount of visible mass that was present. As the laws of physics were firmly established, and simple to understand, Rubin took the giant mental leap to realize there must be unseen entities, whose mass is the missing variable to make the equations work! And thus was born dark matter.
Two Steps Back
The regression is more subtle than the others. While it is universally acknowledged to be an invisible form of matter; scientists nonetheless, keep trying to find candidates for dark matter within the catalogue of physical, baryonic matter. A proposal, that like Qplasma, was dead on arrival. It is scientifically not feasible to look for a non-physical culprit among physical suspects! That should be clear.
However, the real regression regarding dark matter, comes from lumping it together with Dark Energy. Dark Energy is an ether. A non-existent ether, as we have already considered. Which is why the search for it. Like Maxwell's ill-fated search for the propagating medium of electromagnetic radiation, will always return null results! In closely associating, the scaffolding of the universe, with a non-existent ether, The Pattern creates doubt and fog, where there should be clarity and conviction. Two. Steps. Back!
The Common Thread
By now, none of this should surprise you. Nor should the point of intersection of all the regressions - the Big Bang theory - surprise you. What is responsible for this pattern of regression that runs all through scientific progress? One thing we can for certain, is that the retrogressive pattern it is not of human origin, because it manifests itself over periods that are longer than human lifespans, and thus, we can definitively say that it cannot be the work of human agency.
On the other hand, what we cannot know with any degree of certainty is the culpability of the human agents through which it manifests itself - are they merely mistaken; or acting with intentional malice, and therefore fully complicit in the scheme? We cannot say. God knows. The proof for the identity of the responsible agent will not be shared in this episode of The Greatest Story Ever Told, because it is not germane to the subject of this episode, but it will be expanded on later - in its own episode. Suffice it to say that if the effect of regression was merely accidental it would form a gaussian distribution. When effects are not products of chance, they evince a very real pattern called a power law. That is, agency can be determined by the fact that all the regressions seem to favour one and only one narrative: they all converge on the false theory of the Big Bang and the debunked standard model of cosmology! That pattern of alignment is the tell-tale mathematical sign of something at work which goes far beyond mere corelation. It is an Evidence Profile, of honed intentionality and demonstrable causality. Pull the thread, and the quilt work will unravel - but that is a delight for another day!