45 years ago, back in 1980 - I remember the year because I remember the room in which this idea first came to me in the apartment where my wife and I were living just after the birth of our first child - it first dawned on me that it is ludicrous to imagine that gravity is a pulling force that existed between any two objects even through the emptiness of space. It's easy enough to imagine two objects pulling on one another through a cord of some kind, string, rope, chain, solid rod, whatever, but not through the emptiness of space. Empty space neither enhances nor impairs gravity.
Science has extensively studied the effects of gravity but has never found a definition of it, even to the extent of embracing the ludicrous claim that gravity isn't even a force at all but rather (somehow) a warpage of "space-time" - whatever that term means. We're all supposed to just accept that idea because it came from Einstein, the most intelligent human who ever lived, so we are told by the experts.
Of course, in order to contest this concept of gravity as either a pulling force or not a force at all, one would need another explanation, right? What is gravity if it isn't a force of attraction?
What came to me that day back in that room was that what is called the attracting force is instead the result of an imbalance of force. Objects exist in an intense and essentially unobservable field of force, and those objects accelerate or decelerate as a result of an imbalance in that force field.
Mind you I have never found support for this theory and everybody I have ever explained it to has rejected it. Even though it makes perfect sense to me, nobody wants to conceive of this force field. In my mind, force itself, unimaginably intense force, is the fundamental substance that all matter is made of. Nobody can conceive of that although the discovery of unimaginably intense nuclear force (the basis of nuclear energy) should have been a clue.
So why is it scientifically inconceivable for there to be such a force field if its effects are so well known? Why would any rational mind need to speculate that gravity isn't force at all? I have written about this theory of mine before and I don't wish to do it again right now, so I'll stick with this last question, a question that has plagued me for decades.
Why is it that people can't accept the notion of this force field?
I am writing this today because I just came across my first clue.
I'm currently rereading a book I came across a few years back in a thrift store somewhere entitled Doubt, a history, written by Jennifer Michael Hecht, Copyright 2003. The book basically attempts to assess the history of atheism in philosophy. In this rereading I was stunned by one paragraph on page 336 in chapter eight, "Sunspots and White House Doubters, 1600 - 1800". The author is writing about John Locke (1632 - 1704) and John Toland (1670 - 1722). Wikipedia just informed me that this was the "Age of Enlightenment". I have to admit, this comes as a complete surprise. I had always assumed that Europe was "enlightened" long before that but, as usual, my bad, I was wrong.
Anyway, although I rarely quote anything here in the Journal, especially not entire paragraphs, I am making an exception here since I couldn't possibly paraphrase this paragraph. Hecht writes:
"Toland was an atomist and believed that Aristotle's problem with the motion of the world had been proved foolish by the new physics: if matter had motion intrinsically, that is, if it turns out that matter is in motion by its very nature, the hypothesis of a prime mover becomes unnecessary. Newton saw that force is not a thing outside matter that pushes on it, but rather that pieces of matter exert forces on each other. Today we think less of forces at all, and instead think of the pieces of matter having a field of interaction. Still, Toland had noticed that Aristotle had been tricked by friction and gravity into thinking that things needed outside force in order to move. The Prime Mover was unnecessary after all."
This unnecessary "Prime Mover" is, of course, God. Remember, this book is about the philosophy of atheism.
So if I am reading this correctly, the main reason why the human race cannot conceive of the force field I speak of is ... are you ready for this?... atheism. Science, and more specifically physics, cannot move beyond atheism.
I've always suspected this was the problem, but this is the first time I have seen it expressed in writing.
