3 Approximations to Reality
3 Approximations to Reality
The First Approximation to Reality – Isaac Newton
The Second Approximation to Reality – Albert Einstein
The Third Approximation to Reality – Andrew J. Galambos
V-50X Surface the Giant! – Sic Itur Ad Astra
The First Approximation to Reality:
As a matter of fact, the correct way to view it is that the Newtonian theory of
gravitation and the cosmos in general, is the first approximation to reality. Reality is
the totality of that which is observationally viewable and knowable. That by itself
expands, as I have pointed out.
And so, consequently, I claim that the nature of the physical achievement of Einstein, with respect to Newton, is that what Newton did is the first approximation to what we can know about the universe. What he did is not wrong, but it is not the final thing, and there’s a fine-tuning that Einstein added which philosophically altered it totally, and numerically altered it hardly at all, except in certain very critical cases. Anything that shows disparity is very major, but there are certain major disparities which are very small in measurement; so small that anyone but a major scientist would ignore the difference. As a matter of fact, he could never know it was there; it’s too small to measure for the average yo-yo, and he could never even detect it.
For example, the angle that is measured to determine whether the Newtonian or
the Einsteinian deflection of light in a gravitational field prevails is .87 seconds of
arc. Let’s see, a second is a sixtieth of a minute, a minute is a sixtieth of a degree. It’s
one three thousand six hundredth of a degree. And a degree is in turn one three
hundred sixtieth of a full circle. Now, that is so small an angle, that if you try to draw
that angle you would not be able to, because whatever tool you would use to draw
an angle with, whether it is a pen or a pencil or just a very thin scratch with some
kind of a sharp pointed instrument, the actual thickness of the line or the scratch
mark would be thicker than you could draw—unless you extended that angle
beyond any paper you could be working on. Now, if you extended it out to cosmic
distances, you could detect this angle. That’s the displacement of the stars as the earth
moves around the sun.
The closest star to the earth is Alpha Centauri Proxima, which is four and a third
light-years away, which means it takes light four and one-third years to get here
from there at a speed of a hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second, or three
hundred thousand kilometers per second. That’s seven and a half times the distance
around the earth at the equator. If you wrapped a piece of string around the earth at
its equator, which is twenty-five thousand miles approximately, or forty thousand
kilometers, then you untangled it and straightened it out so it’s a straight string and
extended it to seven and a half times that distance, then the light would travel from
one end of that to the other in one second. And it takes four and a third years at that
rate to get here from the nearest star.
Well that star moves in the sky based on the earth moving around the sun
hundred and eighty million miles, or three hundred million kilometers across from the
one point in the earth’s orbit to a half a year away. That displacement of the earth in
the universe changes our line of sight towards that star a certain little bit, which is
measured as an angle. It’s called the parallax angle. Actually, that’s twice the parallax
angle. Technically, the parallax angle is the distance subtended to the earth to the
sun, and with Earth to Earth as opposite ends of the orbit, it’s twice the parallax
angle. So technically, it’s half that angle.
The Second Approximation to Reality:
Anyhow, so the point I’m driving at is: that difference in line of sight changes the
viewing direction by an amount less than one second of arc. Now, what person in
politics or in selling hardware goods or what person in the carpet business or in the
floral design business or whatever, would bother with the angles like that? Only a
scientist would and to them it’s not inconsequential. As I pointed out, it’s that size
angle that is the disparity between the Newtonian gravitation and the Einsteinian
gravity. So don’t get any bright ideas that Newtonian gravitation has been
superseded. We have a second approximation. And the first one is so good that instead of wondering why and what was wrong with Newton’s theory, I’m awe-inspired it was
that close on the first try. That’s awe-inspiring! When have you tried something
that’s hard to do that you got that close the first time?
The Third Approximation to Reality:
Now, I am also not under a delusion that Einstein’s work is the last word. Most
people think it is. It isn’t. Now this is yet to be demonstrated. That’s a second ap-
proximation. Each time there’s an improvement in the epistemology, the ability to
know what is valid, what is knowable, expands. Ladies and gentlemen, the
epistemology of human ability to understand the universe expanded with the
introduction of volitional science and specifically with the second postulate.
This has increased the epistemology of man’s ability to know what is knowable.
How does that affect you, for example? Well, for one thing, in the past if there was
anything that was not describable as a science—that was called human interaction,
or human behavior. And the only way people could try to interpret or explain or
predict human behavior was to coerce people. For example, if you put a man in a cage,
which is called a prison cell, then you can predict where he will be tomorrow
morning. He will be in the prison cell. Why? He can’t get out. He’s physically locked in. If
you put him in a coffin, you can predict where he will be for the rest of eternity, un-
less they move the coffin. But you have to have such forms of restraint. But you do
not have the ability to predict human behavior individually, erratically. That is part of
the nature of volition.
Andrew J. Galambos, Sic Itur Ad Astra, V-50X: Session 1, Part B, pp. 45-7