The Final Theory?

I stumbled upon this website, The Final Theory and thought you all might be interested in checking it out, if you havent already. There are some pretty bold statements on this site...well, actually - no - it makes bold statements seem like inconcequential whimpers. They author of this work is an electrical engineer, rahter than a physicist, and claims his theory does away with Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and pretty much every current physics theory you could care to mention.

They guy seems to put a logical argument forward on his website, but here's the catch - you have to buy the book to read the theory, and no mathematical reasoning is offered on the website. Could this be just a scam, or is he on to something here? Has anyone read the book?
Here's a link for the book on amazon. I'm tempted to buy it just out of curiosity, but I dont want to be had by some BS scammer.

So what do you think? Scam? Uneducated drivel? Food for thought?



[edit on 27-7-2004 by Paul]

I've oftened wondered about that book as well. Just because the book cost money doesn't mean that it's a scam. Stephen Hawking charges for his books.

He claims to be an electrical engineer. I've done a little searching and found many resource on the "A-Laws". This guy may or may notbe making reference to them.

Either way, I think you'll find them interesting if you haven't already stumbled upon them.

Here's a link to get you started:

www.meta-religion.com...

If you ever do purchace it, let me know what you think.

Originally posted by Rev_Godslapper
I've oftened wondered about that book as well. Just because the book cost money doesn't mean that it's a scam. Stephen Hawking charges for his books.

Yeah, good point, and I've spent good money on Hawking's books, so why not have a dabble?

Thabks for the link, I'll have a good look at that!

Wow...this guy may actually believe what he is saying, but he has some serious issues.

For starters, yes, newtonian physcis and relativity are wrong...mainstream science agress with that...so he is going through a lot of work just to agree.

Also in his example chapter he treats newtonian physics like algebraic eqations...which is how it is taught in highschool. But even newton used calculus because algebra was't good enough for more than ultra simple modeling.

I agree that science has some big holes, but I think any scientist would agree with that...all this guy does is point a few out then start messing up what science he does know and probably start confusing other people.

I don't think it is a scam, so much as just a guy who used to be the annoying kid in my highschool physica class who never understood rule number one of science...it describes our universe as best as it can, not offers perfect models.

Just as any new "all-encompassing theory-that-surpasses-all-other-theories", I'm pretty hesitant to accept this guy at face value. The fact that his reviewers are all laypeople, that he has no peer-reviewed articles that I could find makes me think that he's just another person looking to get rich off of people like us, the people who like to look at non-mainstream science.

I'm sure that someone will later mention that "of course he has no peer-reviewed articles, mainstream scientists don't want to lose their cushy government grants when they're proven wrong." While that is true, to an extent, science is usually openminded about new theories: as long as that new theory can stand the test of logic, and has experimental data to back it up. Einstein's relativity, and later quantum mechanics, both shook the foundations of physics in their time, and both were subjected to minute scrutiny by scientists hoping to find flaws in the theory. They were also both accepted into the mainstream of scientific thought because they withstood the test of this close scrutiny.

One may also bring up the fact that academic, peer-reviewed, journals would be loath to accept articles based on Mr. (Dr.?, I couldn't find much about him on the site) McCutcheon's theory. This is also true. There is a lot of politics surrounding the largest academic journals. There are, however, a lot of other venues, that still subject the articles to the rigors of peer-review: Smaller journals, online journals, mailing lists, even conference presentation papers are all ways that relatively unknown authors can make their voices heard.

I'm not saying that there's nothing to this guy's ideas, in fact I'm planning on seeing if a library can find me a copy sometime soon. I am saying, though, that I'm very wary about people promising revolution.

Paul, you might also want to check out Everything Forever.

On his website, he links to a physics forum debunking his claims.

www.physicsforums.com...

Well, at least he is brave, dismissing relativity and quantum mechanics while all the evidence points in the direction of those theories. He's mostly wrong though. Theories are just models of reality and don't explain why their postulates must be right.

He says science is wrong because nothing can faster than the speed of light, but Newton's gravity does. Well yeah, that's why general relativity was created. Gravity does travel at the speed of light in general relativity. "But that theory is more complex and against common-sense and therefore wrong." General relativity is not very complicated and there is no reason why nature must obey common sense. There is experimental evidence enough for general and special relativity. Gravitation has about 100 pages of experimental evidence for general relativity and was written in 1972. The Gravity B probe will test one the last untested of general relativity.

I won't ramble on, because nobody here seems to believe this guy anyway.

There may be a shade of truth in the claim that gravity is not well understood, but the guy says some very far-fetched things.

There are some nice debunking posts in the physics forums (a link provided by the final theory site), and some of them I understood and agree with.

I did not understand the twin paradox problem though: if twin A sits on Earth and the twin B travels with the speed of light, why will the twin A be more aged that twin B? Since there is no absolute frame and everything is relative, for twin B it is the Earth that travels with the speed of light, and therefore it is twin B that should age.

The above was not debunked easily and beatifully as the other claims. All that was mentioned was something about bringing general relativity to the table to explain the problem.

By the way, the universe is not infinite and timeless. Because if it was, light would be everywhere, and there would be no darkness.

An explanation of the Twin paradox using Minkowski space-time diagrams can be found here. If you like a more mathematical solution, this article is more suited for you.

Originally posted by masterp
By the way, the universe is not infinite and timeless. Because if it was, light would be everywhere, and there would be no darkness.

That's right.
But sky isn't bright everywhere.

Originally posted by Paul
They author of this work is an electrical engineer...

Well, doesn't that explain it all?
Too many times electricity still on when fingering connections.


"The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."
-Eric Hoffer
This does seem to apply to pretty many things.