NO LIMIT ON WEALTH, NO DEMOCRACY. Roman Limit: $22 Million (Why Rome Collapsed, Part III)

Why the Roman REPUBLIC, Hence ROME COLLAPSED, Part III: WHEN THE REPUBLICAN WEALTH LIMIT WAS DE FACTO REMOVED BY GLOBALIZATION, ROMAN DEMOCRACY COLLAPSED.

Now has come the time to Generalize the Roman Lex De Modo Agrorum, and to succeed where the Romans failed!

The Roman Republic had an ABSOLUTE LIMIT on wealth. I compute that absolute wealth limit  to be $22 million (see below). A Roman family, under the Republic, indeed, could not own more than a reasonable amount. Why?

Wealth is power.

If only a few have relatively enormous wealth, only a few have relatively enormous power. People power (demos-kratia) thus requires to limit the power of the few. Limiting wealth of the few absolutely the ingredient which enabled the Roman Republic to last 5 centuries. This has been safely ignored by conventional historians (who are not anxious to disrupt their paymasters).

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/limit-wealth-absolutely/

When Augustus was “Princeps” (“First Man”) , he was not just the most powerful Roman, legislatively, but also materially, the wealthiest. Limiting income absolutely would be a good first step; as the UK Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn may propose. A tax rate of 95% on the upper margin could be even more effective.

Limiting wealth absolutely is not about being pro-capitalist, or anti-capitalist, it’s a question of being pro-democracy, or anti-democracy. This is what the highest, most educated, scions of the nobles lineage in Rome themselves thought: the Gracchi

Gracchi Brothers. Heroes. And their mission is still unfulfilled.

The Roman Republic limited wealth absolutely. At a time when 99.99% of wealth was land, the wealth law LEX LICINIA SEXTIA DE MODO AGRORUM specified that no family would be allowed to possess more than 500 jugera of public land. That’s approximately 125 hectares, roughly 325 acres (1.32 square kilometer). Any land that a family occupied above this limit was confiscated by the state (and redistributed to ex-soldiers, or would-be peasant-owners, as needed). The law was passed in 368 BCE. It also limited grazing on public land by one family to 100 heads of cattle. A law in the same spirit of preventing the wealth exponential limited the interest rate of loans (Lex de aere alieno). The laws were passed after Lateranus and Stolo were re-elected tribunes of the People for nine consecutive years, blocking the Patricians (that’s worth mentioning as the Gracchi were accused of kinship for being elected tribunes twice… two centuries later). 

Following the Battle of Telamon (225 BCE), Rome swallowed Cisalpine Gaul, adding huge swathes of land to the ager publicus, land which was given to new Latin colonies or to small freeholders.

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Scale Of Absolute Wealth Limit: 150 Times The Poverty Level, Thus 23 Million Dollars 

It was viewed, by Republican Roman Law, that families should be given a minimum of 2 acres of fertile land, which was known to be barely sufficient for survival. So let’s do a little Patrice’s style computation (simple minded, but clarifying). Let’s view those 2 acres as defining the poverty level. Although this may sound like pata-logic, I will equal Roman property with modern income (because then agricultural land was income).

I will also compare Rome with the richest area in the United States, San Francisco (Rome in 367 BCE was pretty much around one million people total; this is my own guesswork, from a population I guess to be around 200,000 soldier-citizens; the subject is still a matter of research; it seems that the Roman census started to count women and children as citizens around 70 BCE, bringing an artificial boost in the number of “citizens”). San Francisco has a bit less than a million residents, with a poverty level, for a family of four of $72,000 (!). This is what it takes to survive in San Francisco to pay rent, eat, take care of children. Yes, that’s extravagantly high (nearly four times the median family income in the USA; life is San Francisco is outrageously expensive relative to the rest of the USA). However, the income of the Roman population was also extravagantly high relative to the rest of the Mediterranean zone, when the Lex De Modo Agrorum was supposedly enforced (say in 150 BCE; OK, I just mixed 367 CE, when the law was passed, and Rome was much poorer; however, this is an order of magnitude argument).

So, we have: 2 acres = $72,000. 300 times this is around 22 million dollars. Thus, even in San Francisco, wealth friendly terms, according to the roman Republic Law, the absolute wealth limit should be no more than 22 million dollars. Instead, the wealthiest families in the area are more than 200 times richer. 

(One could use the 2017 US Federal poverty level, $25,000 for a family of four. Then the limit on wealth should be, according to Roman Republican standards 7.5 million dollars.)

So there is definitively a distributive, socialist side to the Roman Republic.

***

Romans Made Wealth Hating Laws, In Place For More than 6 Centuries:

Not only the Roman Republic limited wealth, it limited the exhibition thereof. A number of so-called sumptuary laws were passed, including the Lex Oppia (215 BCE), after the disaster of the battle of Cannae (all in all, the Romans may have suffered 500,000 soldiers killed in the Second Punic war, more than Rome counted male adult citizens! It was a repeat of the performance in the First Punic war…). “Sumptus” means expenditure, so sumptuary laws limited expenditures of private citizens doing private things.   

Sumptuary laws limited how much gold a woman could possess (half an ounce), and the sort of numbers of colors she could wear. Also women could not enter a city in a vehicle drawn by animals. Lex Fannia and Didia limited how much could be spent at a dinner. (With the deaths of so many men in the war against Hannibal, women inherited most of the wealth. Women were associated with extravagant and useless displays of luxury, considered dispiriting with Hannibal roaming around, and so many in mourning. The law was repealed 20 years later, in 195 BCE, when the matrons of Rome demonstrated massively in the streets, and blocked the centers of powers of Rome… Apparently many Roman women cared more about wearing expensive purple than about the fate of the Republic…) 

The first sumptuary laws were passed well before the (official) Republic, and limited the spending during funerals. Thus Rome was in the mood of limiting wealth and its exhibition for about seven centuries, and the democracy fell when that mood fell. Greek democracies also had anti-sumptuary laws.

***

By 140 BCE, Rome Mastered The World, And Its Masters Went Global, Escaping Taxation,Thus Overwhelmingly Satanic:

Plutarch reports that, “when Tiberius on his way to Numantia passed through Etruria and found the country almost depopulated and its husbandmen and shepherds imported barbarian slaves, he first conceived the policy which was to be the source of countless ills to himself and to his brother.”

Plutarch also noted, “Then the poor, who had been ejected from their land, no longer showed themselves eager for military service, and neglected the bringing up of children, so that soon all Italy was conscious of a dearth of freemen, and was filled with gangs of foreign slaves, by whose aid the rich cultivated their estates, from which they had driven away the free citizens.”

[This is very analogous to the immigration policy in places such as England or California in recent years: under the guise of immigration friendly practices, “sanctuary cities”, millions of immigrants without rights were imported to do the indispensable work nobody else wants to do (agricultural and domestic work in California). Those people are not technically slaves, just practically so.]

Speaking as a Tribune of the People, to a crowd at the Rostra, Tiberius said, “The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens, each has a place of repose and refuge. But the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light; without house or home they wander about with their wives and children.”

Tiberius Gracchus had a lot of military experience and experience of military command (he saved a Roman army from the Numantines, by signing a treaty!) He was one the pillars of the Senate, and was destined to become as prestigious as his two famous Scipio relatives.  

Tiberius bravely fought to help Rome’s devastating victory in the Third Punic War.  His most glorious accomplishment was to become the first man over the wall at Carthage, surviving to tell about it.  He was awarded the “mural crown” for his stupendous achievement (as he was from the highest nobility, destined to the greatest commands, he didn’t need such heroics to become somebody). Tiberius’ courage in battle and at war against Carthage or Numantia enabled him to have the courage to fight the Roman plutocracy. It became a fight to death, and, unfortunately, the Gracchi didn’t win. So here we are, still fighting plutocracy, 22 centuries later!

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WHY THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, HENCE ROME, WENT DOWN:

People have gone around like caterpillars, following each others’ butts about the collapse of the Roman State. However it’s pretty clear that MOST of the Roman State territory was settled under the REPUBLIC, NOT the fascist empire (under Nero, Britain was conquered; however Caesar had invaded there prior, and the hard work was to conquer Gaul; Trajan also conquered Dacia, and pushed to the Persian Gulf where an illness fell him). Modern PC types may smirk that I am equating conquest and civilization. Yet, the German border was highly unstable; the Romans were not necessarily in bad terms with the Barbarians, and they actually helped the Goths to fight the Huns, under Valens, before catastrophe in a refugee crisis.

It remains that the Republic imploded, crushed by plutocracy, centuries before the military empire. But the latter was created, and could only survive, thanks to the former.

Tribune of the People Tiberius Gracchus tried to enforce the law of absolute wealth limit. He modernized it, and tried to make it so that it would stop the impoverishment of the average Roman, by redistributing land. For his effrontery, he, his brother, and more than 5,000 of their followers, were assassinated (conventional historians will tend to insist on some alleged technical violations of tacitly constitutional ways Tiberius would have engaged in; earlier Tiberius had saved a Roman army by slightly bending the usual ways too, so this does not carry any weight, and misses completely the importance of what Tiberius tried to achieve). Thus the Roman soldiers, deprived of redistribution of wealth acquired in newly conquered lands, kept on getting ever poorer.

The general Marius, who had saved Rome from certain annihilation by defeating the coalition of the savage Numidians, and then later the equally as savage German Ambrones, Cimbri and Teutones, and was elected seven times Consul, had faced a situation where he had to fight hundreds of thousands of barbarian warriors with the sole remaining Roman army, transported from Africa, with just 40,000 soldiers. For being able to call on more would-be soldiers, Marius removed the legal requirement that Roman soldiers should be property owning (what he should have done, if he had been able to do it, was to redistribute wealth from the hyper rich, to the soldiers, as Sulla did for his own soldiers, a bit later;  120,000 of Sulla’s legionnaires received plots of land).

What was going on with Rome was that the globalization of wealth and political influence, thanks to globalization, had run away from the needed expansion of law and of the the Roman Republic “checks and balances”.

***

Wealth Global, Law Local: The recipe for global plutocracy, in Rome, as it is now:

We are facing the same exact situation as the Roman Republic, 22 centuries ago, but we face it on a planetary basis: wealth is global, law is local. We need to change that by making global the taxation of power, that is, wealth!

One has to start somewhere. If the so-called “Conservatives” are ejected (as they deserve) Great Britain, under a rejuvenated “Labor”, may as well be that trail blazer! Even The Economist is equivocal about Jeremy Corbyn, whereas it used to hate, despise, and disregard him only a few months ago.

The Gracchi failed to impose global assent to the law which would have saved democracy, that was a failure of theirs: instead of bringing republican consensus, civil war started. The Gracchi’s law passed, but its main proponents had been durably killed and exterminated. This precedent of ultimate violence enabled the plutocrats, in power in the Senate, to not really enforce the Gracchis’ law; in later generations, all laws pertaining to wealth and corruption were violated.

Ever since, democracy has not been fully re-established: for example all the media, that is, what people use to make up their minds, is owned by plutocrats; one can’t have democracy when the minds of people are made up by masters (example: yours truly is banned at the New York Times, although a subscriber for decades).

Ownership of media should be very limited, in a generalization of the Lex De Modo Agrorum. Hopefully, by suggesting all these measures for limiting wealth, we won’t finish as the Gracchi (Tiberius was beaten to death with the leg of a chair). Not to worry: the control of the wealthy is so great, most people have no idea what we are talking about, or even that the subject exists, let alone that there are insects, such as yours truly, and they talk! ;-)!

It goes without saying that prestigious historians from famed institutions do not teach any of the preceding: they don’t understand the economics, the philosophy and the human ethology, all of them being out of their fields of expertise. Besides, their salaries and careers depend upon them not understanding it. They are small men, or women, avid for crumbs, whereas the Gracchi were giants, reaching for the stars.

So, instead, conventional historians, in the rather dim light of their deliberately reduced mental means, all too often, question the psychology of Tiberius, affecting perfidiously to wonder why he was so ambitious (in the usual method of the petty: questioning the messenger rather than the message).

Well, that’s easy to dispose of: Tiberius was at the very apex of Roman society, in roughly all ways. He had no ambition and no power to gain with changing the law and redistributing riches. He had no fame to earn, but that which enmity brings. Tiberius pushed for change, because it was the right thing to do.

That’s what exceptional people have always done. They succumb to the attraction of what is right. Humanity is symbiotic with truth.

It could have saved the Republic, and Democracy. The Republic, and Democracy, could only be have been saved that way. This was true then, it’s even more true now.

All the more as nowadays, the Barbarians at the gates yield nukes, and the Barbarians inside the gates, mold most minds, having made them, through the media they own and fabricate, from their own petty obsessions.

Patrice Ayme’

WHY ROME COLLAPSED Part II: Stoicism, Fascism, Death Of Humor & Senses

Seneca was one of the most famous Stoic philosophers. He talked wisdom as haughtily as Hitler talked about protecting minorities and correcting injustice. It’s one of the shortcoming of philosophy as usually taught to being unable to see, and explain what a creep Seneca was. Verily, once we can explain the horror therein Seneca, the horror therein Hitler, and the like, starts to make sense.

Seneca, looking as disheveled as his ignominy made him. Arguably one of the worst thinkers in history, still, much admired. Especially by Christians, of course. Here are extracts: “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”
“Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”

***

Stoics we all are,

We, the humble animals of planet Earth,

Nature is our yoke.

Stoic,

We all have to be,

Just because we go through life

Much has to be endured and suffered

And we all find out,

Babe or old, crippled or splendid,

Human or beast,

There is only so much we can complain about and aloud

Unending tears do not bring a ploy, or a joy

Neither is too much sorrow a buoy, or a toy.

We need humor, so we all have it.

We need joy, so we all find it.

Thus what is it Seneca insisted so much on?

What are we supposed to do with this bloody multibillionaire’s

Mellifluous advice?

Why so loud, Seneca, you old criminal?

Your artful trade?

To hide your crimes, and those of your master.

And what of that other “stoic”,

Marcus, ruler of the world?

What do they teach those,

All of us,

Trudging in that valley of tears we call life?

That words of the haughty do not have to match their lives,

That we shouldn’t complain too much,

When we live in the times when only few rule?

Why? Can’t we talk to our heart’s content?

Not when infamy is in power, sure we don’t,

It’s clear that when Nero is the boss,

Not complaining enough is all the truth worth having.

Any alternative hypothesis means death.

When Marcus couldn’t pay for the army,

As the plutocrats kept all the wealth,

Not complaining, even for an emperor,

Was all the truth worth having:

Even for an emperor,

Complaint invited assassination from the other few,

Who also ruled,

And they were not joking.

So yes, stoics lack a sense of humor,

Telling us to follow nature,

When they do the opposite.

We have seen it all before,

Preaching the exact opposite of one’s true nature,

A basic trick of the vicious,

In all points similar,

To the dots of light and dark,

Adorning a forest cat’s coat.

We have seen it,

When racists accuse their victims of racism,

To better drown them in gore.

Stoicism, as philosophy,

And the closely related Buddhism,

Preaching common sense,

Supposedly,

While insisting to divest from all the senses,

And the emotions they relate to,

Starting with anger and indignation,

And figuring out infamy,

Until it makes sense,

A preaching to accept the unacceptable,

We may as well start with killing humor,

The poison of power, when it’s concentrated in a few hands.

Stoicism may be what’s left to good men,

When resistance to infamy is futile,

When weakness is erected as a virtue,

Thus drenching sorrow with the dubious pleasure,

Of the deepest anesthesia of most passions, and senses,

Conveniently, and comfortably, forgetting,

Passion is to reflection,

What looking is to sight.

If you want to think well,

Start with emoting well,

And emoting well,

Even earlier than breathing well,

Emoting right precedes all,

And die with us,

Never killed,

And only mitigated by the powers of reason.

So meditate, you the Apostles of Stoicism:

You are teaching the air we all breathe.

***

Technical Background On Stoicism:

Stoicism was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. Zeno taught from his front porch (“stoikos” in Greek).

At the time, Athens was officially and effectively a plutocratic dictatorship owned by fascist Macedonia. Thinkers had to be stoic, or they would die like Demosthenes and other philosophers assassinated or suicided when the Macedonians took over. The Stoics taught that emotions resulted in errors of judgment which were destructive, due to the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature.

This is obviously idiotic, because, for at least five million years, our direct ancestors have deliberately imposed their will on nature, with the conscious goal to make nature serve us. Moreover, for several billion years, life has done the same with the entire planet, however seemingly unconsciously (depending upon what conscience really is, as our friend the Quantum physicist would point out).  Nature is the nature of life, and, in this context, life, we don’t even know what’s natural and what’s not.

Stoics flaunted their philosophy as a way of life (lex divina, they humbly said), and they claimed that an individual’s philosophy was not what a person said but how a person behaved. To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of nature, since everything was rooted in nature.

But of course, this is silly, as it ignores the nonlinear nature of human nature… which happens to be the greatest influence on nature. Humanity is grounded in nature, and the nature of humanity is to go beyond all and any limit, that’s how and why we evolved.

Stoicism blossomed in antiquity, while and because tyranny and oligarchy blossomed. Stoicism was not just a symptom, but an engine of the decay of civilization. As Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were. Seneca defended Nero’s assassination of his mother in front of the Senate (extending Nero’s rule for years; much later, after Seneca’s assassination by suicide, the Senate would finally order Nero’s execution; so Seneca’s backing up of Nero had a huge influence on history; it keeps on having one now, as nobody has bothered to enquire seriously on how such humongous creeps can become Masters of the Universe!).

Marcus persecuted Christians for no good reason, making sure Christianism would only get worse, as it did. But Marcus steered away from what was truly needed to save civilization, terrorizing plutocrats.

Here is Marcus: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” (Retort of mine: In particular you don’t need democracy, or even a Republic).

Here is Marcus again, pain is all about you not thinking right: “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.” (In particular, I would observe, if the Christians Marcus burned alive suffered, that’s just because they didn’t think right, proving it was tight, indeed, to burn them…)

When not lost in hypocritical obscenities, stoic philosophers are good at truisms everybody always agreed with (so did Hitler, explaining why Hitler, Seneca, and Marcus were incredibly appreciated by those who can’t see much further than the most trivial evidence…) However, deriving higher wisdom is not something everybody agrees with, when it happens.

Fascism gave birth to Stoicism, a case of a madness and exploitation creating the own mental environment it needed.
How do we know this?

One can look at the dates: Stoicism was created and taught 35 years after the fascist plutocracy was imposed on Athens.
More generally, fascism advocates a shrinking of (free) thinking, and that’s best implemented by a shrinking of the emotions (viewed as noble).

Christianity went further in all this intellectual fascism, as only thoughts validated by the fascist god were allowed. Conclusion? Books were destroyed, libraries burned, intellectuals terrorized, chased down, and assassinated. Civilization collapsed. In great part because of the infamy and corruption all too much of a stoic attitude enabled to thrive, unimpeached.

Voltaire recommended to “crush infamy”. We can’t crush what we learn to live with, as the Stoics advised to do.

Patrice Ayme’

p/S: The essay above was inspired by “Do The Stoics Lack A Sense Of Humor“, by Massimo Piglliucci, and the comments I sent there (the comment was not published, perhaps because would-be Stoics also lack a sense of humor!)

Return of the Nazis (AfD), Fascism, Antifa, NFL, etc.

Elections in Germany have brought what could be expected, after Merkel’s ill-conceived refugee policy. The elections of September 24, 2017 dealt the lowest scores for the two main parties in nearly a century (the SPD was already around more than a century ago). The elections produced 94 Members of Parliament to Alternative Fur Deutschland, (or AfD) the party for an Alternative for Germany. One of its co-leader, the exultant Alexander Gauland, called for Germans to be proud of their army… You know, the notorious one, the German army of the Second World War, in other words, for the “Volk” to be proud, again, of the Nazi army.

There was of course nothing to be proud of: instead of organizing a coup against the Nazis, as civilization and basic human ethology called for, the German army which launched the Second World War was crucial to the killing of 5% of humanity and the suffering of all of Europe, and much of Asia.

For those who don’t know, the Nazis were officially allied to the fascists in Italy, Spain, Japan, and, secretly, Stalin and its goons. The alliance with Nazi Germany enticed the fascist Japanese high command to go into a full-out war against China… A war which could work only if it were implemented with war crimes and exterminations.

Now, of course, Merkel, by opening the floodgates to 1.2 million refugees in 2016, cultivated her own defeat. The problem being that most of them come from the Muslim zone, and Islam was fabricated as an anti-civilizational weapon. Seeing women covered with veils on German state TV explaining that covering women with veils was the future, could only bring a reaction against this blatant sexism.

 

Leader AfD (on the right) with her Sri Lanka Born Wife; they have two children. Yes, she worked for Goldman Sachs, and lived years in China, did you need to ask?

***

Meanwhile a guy called Milo went to the UC Berkeley campus, protected by police officers from all over California. The cost of the police operation was 800,000 dollars. Milo stayed 15 minutes, didn’t talk in a microphone, said nothing of substance.

Why does Milo need to be protected so much? He is depicted as “ultraconservative”. Actually he is a very loud homosexual, keen to depict his sexual prowess. At the same time, Milo criticized homosexuality as a bad role model for children, and yet, condoned pederasty according to the old Greek system, as good for teenage boys (at that latter point, Steve bannon’s Breitbart News fired him). Milo is full of little ideas, many too provocative by half. However, it’s nothing to get deranged about.

Getting deranged can be most useful. For example, the spectacular breakthrough of the AfD in Germany should derange the consensus that Islam is a good thing. (And, to tell the whole truth about the AfD, it’s co-led by a woman, Weidel who lives with another woman, a Swiss originally from Sri Lanka, and they have two children…. So AfD partisans will tell you they are not Nazis; this ignores the fact that several of the top Nazis were… Jews! Some officially, some hiding in plain siht below good “Aryan” looks). 

It is really a testament to something terrible when the self-declared left got so enamored with Islam. After all, Islam inspired Hitler, including for the wearing of yellow star, a Muslim idea adopted by six centuries later by the Christian theofascists in the midst of the Inquisition, Crusades and other deranged horrors of the most vicious and infamous type..

And the mechanism is always the same: when the self-described “antifa” assault dementedly the likes of Milo, they are not just proving idiotic, they are doing exactly what the Masters of the Universe want them to do.

Not all protests are misplaced: when sport figures refuse to honor the national anthem, they join me in healthy protests across the decades. Long ago, I made lots of enemies, and not just in the USA, or France, by refusing to rise during the Republics’ anthems. It was a form of protest against the ambient fascism from the higher-ups, and the strangulation of the mind by vicious conformism. At the time, I was judged weird, crazy, impolite, and of low moral standards. But to honor the authority of the state publicly, when one disagrees with it, is not just debasing, it’s to admit one is so afraid that one does not live in democracy, that one has to debase oneself by a public display of adoration.

Ah, and time to realize that a lot of sports is just frantic nationalism in another guise… Those who get all excited for the local sport team are not fundamentally different, in some passions they honor so loud, from the average North Korean singing the praises of the Great Leader.

“Antifa” should hunt big game, not dust mites, frantically. Because fascism is big, not small, and smart, and well dressed. Now, of course, after eight years of talking falsely, I can understand the frustration. Young people are starting to discover that they were had by the so-called “Democratic” establishment. It’s high time, and we can only thanks that irritant, Donald, who trumps all, for that belated enlightenment…

Patrice Ayme’

SUB-QUANTUM GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE 2 SLIT Thought Experiment

A Proposed Lab SUB QUANTUM TEST: SQPR, Patrice Aymé Contra Albert Einstein: GRAVITATIONALLY DETECTING QUANTUM COLLAPSE! 

Einstein claimed that a “particle” was a lump of energy, even while in translation. He had no proof of this assertion, and it underlays all modern fundamental physics, and I believe it’s false. As I see it, this error, duplicated by 99.99% of 20 C theoretical physicists, led the search for the foundations of physics astray in the Twentieth Century. How could one prove my idea, and disprove Einstein?

What Einstein wrote is this, in what is perhaps his most famous work (1905 CE): “Energy, during the propagation of a ray of light, is not continuously distributed over steadily increasing spaces, but it consists of a finite number of energy quanta LOCALIZED AT POINTS IN SPACE, MOVING WITHOUT DIVIDING…” [What’s in capital letters, I view as extremely probably false. Einstein then added nine words, four of which explaining the photoelectric effect, and for which he got the Nobel Prize. Those nine words were entirely correct, but physically independent of the preceding quote!]

If those “energy quanta” are “localized at points in space“, they concentrate onto themselves all the mass-energy.

It’s simple. According to me, the particle disperses while it is in translation (roughly following, and becoming a nonlinear variant of its De Broglie/Matter Wave dispersion, the bedrock of Quantum Physics as everybody knows it). That means its mass-energy disperses. According to Einstein, it doesn’t.

However, a gravitational field can be measured. In my theory, SQPR, the matter waves are real. What can “real” mean, in its simplest imaginable form? Something is real if that something has mass-energy-momentum. So one can then do a thought experiment. Take the traditional Double Slit experiment, and install a gravitational needle (two masses linked by a rigid rod, like a hydrogen molecule at absolute zero) in the middle of the usual interference screen.

Sub Quantum Patrice Reality Is Experimentally Discernible From Einstein’s Version of Quantum Physics! Notice in passing that none of the physics super minds of the Twentieth Century seem to have noticed Einstein’s Axiom, which is ubiquitously used all over Quantum Physics and QFT!

According to Einstein, the gravitational needle will move before the process of interference is finished, and the self-interfering particle hit the screen (some may object that, because photons travel at c, and so do gravitons, one can’t really gravitationally point at the photon; however, that’s not correct, there should be a delayed field moving the needle).

According to me, the particle is dispersed during the self-interfering process: it’s nowhere in particular. Thus the mass-energy is dispersed before the collapse/singularization. Thus a gravitational field from the self-interfering particle can’t be measured from inside the self-interfering geometry.

Could the experiment be done?

Yes. But it won’t be easy.

Molecules constituted  of 5000 protons, 5000 neutrons and 5000 electrons have exhibited double slit behavior.  That’s plenty enough mass to turn a gravitational needle made of two hydrogen atoms. However, with such a large object, my theory may well fail to be experimentally checked (the molecule probably re-localizes continually, thus the needle will move before impact). Ideally, one should best check this Sub Quantum Reality with a simple unique particle, such as a photon, or an electron.

Why did I long believe Einstein was wrong on this point, what I called “Einstein’s Axiom” above?

First, he had no proof of what he said. Allure can’t replace reason…

Second, localization into a point is contrary to the philosophical spirit, so to speak, of Quantum Physics. The basic idea of Quantum Physics is that one can’t localize physics into points in space… or into points in energy (this was Planck’s gist). Both space and energy come in LUMPS. For example, an electron delocalizes around a proton, creating an atom of hydrogen.

The lump thing for emissions of energy is Planck’s great discovery (a blackbody sends energy packets hf, where f is the frequency and h, Planck’s constant). The non-relevance of points is De Broglie’s great intuition: De Broglie’s introduced the axiom that one can compute everything about the translation behavior of an object from the waves associated to the energy-momentum of said object.

So Einstein was wrong on the philosophy, as he himself concluded thirty years of thinking hard about Quantum Physics, as one of its two founders, with his discovery of what he called “Spooky Interaction At A Distance” (the “EPR”, which has turned from thought experiment to real experiment, checked now in hundreds of different experiments). If “elements of reality” (to use the Einstein EPR language), are spooky action at a distance” why not so when the particle is in flight, which is precisely the gist of the EPR… (After I thought of this, I found a paper by Zurek and Al. who seem to draw a similar conclusion.)

The philosophy of Quantum Physics in one sentence: small is big, or even, everywhere.

Third, Einstein’s hypothesis of points particles being always localized has led to lots of problems, including the so-called “Multiverse” or the “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” (at least, according to yours truly…).

Fourth, the development of Twentieth Century physics according to Einstein’s roadmap, has led to theories on 5% or so of known mass-energy, at most: an epic failure. Whereas my own Sub Quantum Reality readily predicts the apparition of Dark Matter and the joint apparition of Dark Energy, as observed.

Fifth: If Einstein were right, the which-path information in the 2-slit experiment would be readily available, at least as a thought experiment, and that can’t work. The entire subject is still highly controversial: contemplate the massive paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Finally making sense of the double-slit experiment”, March 20, 2017, whose lead author is Yakir Aharonov, from the extremely famous and important Aharonov-Bohm effect. The Aharonov-Bohm effect pointed out that the potentials, not the fields themselves, were the crucial inputs of Quantum Physics. That should have been obvious to all and any who studied Quantum Physics. Yet it was overlooked by all the super minds for nearly 40 years!

Sixth: This is technical, so I won’t give the details (which are not deep). One can modify Einstein’s original EPR experiment (Which had to do with pairs of particles in general, not just photon polarization a la Bohm-Bell). One can introduce in the EPR 1935 set-up, an ideal gravity detector. If Einstein was right about the particle being always localized, determinism would be always true on particle A of an {A,B} interaction pair. Thus particle A could be tracked, gravitationally, always. But that would grossly violated the free arbiter of a lab experimenter deciding to tinker with B’s path, through an experiment of her choosing. (How do large particles do it, then? Well they tend to partly localize continually thanks to their own size, and random singularizations.)

The naked truth can be in full view, yet, precisely because it’s naked, nobody dares to see it!

Richard Feynman famously said that the double slit experiment was central to physics, and that no one understood it. He considered it carefully. Gravitation should stand under it, though! The preceding proposed experiment is one which it was obvious to propose. Yet, no one proposed it, because they just couldn’t seriously envision Quantum Collapse, and thus its impact on gravitation. Yet, I do! And therein the connection between Quantum Physics and Gravitation, the quest for the Graal of modern physicists… 

So let’s have an experiment, Mr. Einstein!

Patrice Ayme’

Physics Of Hurricanes: Force Six Hurricanes Someday Soon?

There is another powerful hurricane on the way in the Caribbean: Maria now already, category V and strengthening, will hit the large islands of Guadeloupe (population 500,000), Martinique (400,000), and Dominique (75,000) today. Steady winds up to 260 kilometers an hour (150 miles per hour) are already experienced, with gusts at 350 km/h. Meanwhile, long lasting hurricane Jose is still active, out there in the Atlantic ocean.

The physics of hurricane as usually depicted in the media shows what’s going on, but not fully, why it’s going on. Probably because those who write the articles have insufficient understanding. Let’s fill in the cognitive gap.

Overall, a hurricane works like a rotary thermal engine, with a warm source, the warm, moist ocean, and a cold sink (the icy stratosphere, up high). The warm moist air goes up, because it’s lower density than colder air.

The mechanism above depends only upon having a warm source and a cold source (known in thermodynamics as a “Carnot engine”). So one can have Polar Cyclones, or Cyclones on Jupiter (“Great Red Spot”)!

How does it start, why is it self-feeding? If the ocean is warm, many of these large clouds will rise, and dot the ocean. Now the overall rising of warm air creates a low pressure L in the center of a particularly active zone of storms (or “cells”). This is not, per se, exceptional: the entire tropical belt tends to be low pressure, just because the warm air rises more than colder air up north.

That phenomenon creates the trade winds, air from the upper tropical belt which rushes in towards the equator, the “inter-tropical convergence zone” (ITCZ). Because of the rotation of the Earth, the trade winds, which would just go straight south if the Earth didn’t turn, get deflected to the west.

Hurricanes have been piling up in September 2017, from lack of wind shear in the hurricane forming region… Six hurricanes in the Caribbean in 2 weeks… If this keeps up the question of evacuation of many islands arises…

Now let’s go back to hurricane formation. Three or four large cells in the ocean, if close by, will develop a particularly low Low L in the center of the formation. At that point, the cells will tend to gather towards that center. However, the cell closest to the equator will have a greater momentum to the east, thanks to the Earth’s rotation, and the one furthest to the equator, will deviate west. Thus a counterclockwise rotation (in the northern hemisphere) of the set of cells will appear. From conservation of angular momentum, the more the warm air rushes towards the center, the more it tends to rotate (the same effect which makes a skater rotate faster by closing her arms). Next, the cells will merge, a hurricane is formed.

Now the warmer the ocean, the more powerful the rise of air in the middle, the lower the Low L, the greater the rush of air towards the center, and thus the greater the rotating winds. And the greater the winds, the more warm, moist air can rush in from low above the surrounding seas, thus feeding the hurricane.

When part of the frontal edge of the hurricane touches land, or, worse, a mountain range, it loses power in that part (as the power comes from rushing warm, moist air), losing its low there. So naturally the hurricane steers towards areas which can feed it, avoiding large land masses and mountain ranges.

(Thus hurricane steering is reminiscent of how an elementary particle should be steered by the geometry in a future Sub Quantum Mechanics.)

In any case, the hurricane is a rotating engine, whose rotation brings in the warm moist air it uses as fuel. Thus, if the rotation can’t develop, the engine won’t start. And the rotation develops because of the unequal drag of the clouds depending upon how far the equator is (big word: Coriolis Force). In particular, if the clouds cells are astride the equator, they will be equally dragged, and no rotation will occur. Thus, there are no hurricanes around the equator itself.

(The energies involved are enormous: around a ten megaton H bomb every twenty minutes; nuking a grade 5 hurricane would have no effect whatsoever, but for augmenting a bit more the sucking action of the hurricane…)

What of the frequency of hurricanes? The scenario above supposes that the large storm cells can start to rotate. However, the greenhouse augments winds all over. Linear winds, not just rotating winds. It’s a question of equipartition of energy (spreading the energy around in all dimensions available).

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/the-equipartition-of-energy-theorem-should-be-applied-for-climate-change-and-predicts-wild-fluctuations-of-temperatures/

Those winds can, and will, shear thunderstorm cells… Just as Saharan sand can collapse them (so stronger trade winds also play against hurricane formation, at least in the Atlantic). Thus hurricanes will tend to form a more ferociously, but not more frequently. What will augment, though, will be the ferocity and frequency of linear storms, and many have ravaged Europe in the last decade.

So far, the Earth has warmed up one degree centigrade, from the anthropogenic greenhouse, since 1800 CE. Another two degrees seems baked in. In the Carboniferous (“Carbon-making”) era, 400 million years ago, the CO2 and the heat were greater. There is also evidence that pretty much all the continents had joined. Yet, there was moisture in the interior of said continents (because there were plants). Moisture, in the sort of climate we know now, should never have penetrated so deep. How come? Super giant hurricanes, obviously. So we can expect force six, or more, hurricanes in the future… It happened before.  

Patrice Ayme

Christianity’s Jesus Is Evil

All Religions Calling For Human Sacrifices Should Be Outlawed

The Romans believed so, under the Republic. However, after Rome degenerated into tyranny, Roman leaders from Constantine to Theodosius, embraced a religion which called, in semi-disguise, for the mass-killing of “unbelievers”. Thus “unbelievers” rather than “barbarians” became the enemy of civilization. (And right away, Roman emperors welcome all sorts of barbarians in the armies… even the Huns!) Here is Jesus allegedly speaking:

Luke 19:27: “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/luke-1927/

Islam copied all this New and Old Testament violence, on steroids (for example explicitly recalling in the Qur’an that the Bible Old Testament called for a “rain of stones” on homosexuals; so the Qur’an does not order to stone homosexuals, it just says that the Bible orders to do so).

By the way, when a professor from a prestigious US university pointed out, in 1961, that there were barely disguised cannibalistic elements in the Catholic mass, he was thrown out of the university. Yet, Jesus asks to eat his body and drink his blood, there is little ambiguity.

No greater love than loving the cross? Torture What You Love, Love What You Torture. That God has a rather tortured mind. Tortured, thus torturing. In any case, quite a nice religious symbol for tyrants to brandish!

Can we tolerate ideologies which celebrate mass violence and mass murder against classes of individuals who are what they are for biological reasons, or because they practice freedom of thought, or from non-ideological identity? No. Because mass murdering violence invites much more of the same as defense, and before you know it, one will have global mayhem.

***

Al Frommi, in a comment on Aeon, agreed in general with me about Islam, yet made a nuanced (all too kind) interpretation of the Bible. Then he objected to my use of Luke 19;27.

In the case of Islam we should remember most Muslim think they are holier than any body. They put themselves in God place, and proceed to judge and punish depriving people of their God giveen free will. [Part of this comment has been censored by Aeon for contravening Aeon’s community guidelines] They think we are not going to do research on the matter. God punishment of homosexual, is God’s to do not for humans to impose. And God punished them with homosexuality. Not for man to re-punish. The real sin is described in Romans 1: 18- 23 and also Read: Romans 1:26-32

26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; ( who were those who didn’t accept the knowledge of God. The Romans & the Greeks & the Jews of that time.)

Now, Luke 19:27 is a quote from the Bible that is an illustration said in the form of a story which Jesus was telling his disciples & here is the complete illustrations: Luke 19:

12 So he said: “A man of noble birth traveled to a distant land to secure kingly power for himself and to return…

Dear Al Frommi: OK, my bad. I was reading Luke pretty fast, and I failed to notice, before Luke 19;11, that Jesus was telling a bedtime story about a king, and, although Jesus was speaking in the first person, it was supposed not to be him, talking, but that king. However, the fact one could make such an honest mistake is, per se, a problem. And the overall reason is that Jesus, as depicted by various Gospels, is viciously nasty of the murderous type, as the rest of this essay will make clear.

Indeed violent, extremely injurious and even lethal threats are found in the New Testament. The degree of violence is on a par with the Qur’an, written six centuries later, or the Old Testament, written five centuries earlier. Such a level of cruel, often lethal violence is plenty enough to instill the mood that the divinity (here Jesus) is murderously insane… Thus Jesus’ most significant teaching may not be “love”, but that it is OK, not to say real cool and holy, to be murderously insane in the name of religion.

Problem with tyrannical god: Love is a caress, death terminal. After all, everybody can love everybody everyday, all over again, but killing is done only once.

Here is a sample of Jesus murderous insanity, just in (some of) the gospel of Matthew:

Those who bear bad fruit will be cut down and burned “with unquenchable fire.” 3:10, 12

Jesus strongly approves of the Hebrew god law and the prophets. He hasn’t the slightest objection to the cruelties of the Old testament. 5:17

Jesus recommends that to avoid sin we cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes. This advice is given immediately after he says that anyone who looks with lust at any woman commits adultery. 5:29-30

Jesus says that most people will go to hell. 7:13-14. Those who fail to bear “good fruit” will be “hewn down, and cast into the fire.” 7:19

(If that reminds you of that constant admonition in the Qur’an, that’s no coincidence!)

“The children of the kingdom [the Jews] shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 8:12 Jesus tells a man who had just lost his father: “Let the dead bury the dead.” 8:21.

Even the beasts are not exempt. Jesus sends some devils into a herd of pigs, causing them to run off a cliff and drown in the waters below. 8:32

Cities that neither “receive” the disciples nor “hear” their words will be destroyed by God. It will be worse for them than for Sodom and Gomorrah. (see Gen 19:24). 10:14-15

Families will be torn apart because of Jesus (this is one of the few “prophecies” in the Bible that has actually came to be true, as Christians of various creeds killed each other, as early as the Fourth Century). “Brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.” 10:21

Jesus says that we should fear God who is willing and “able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” 10:28

Jesus says that he has come to destroy families by making family members hate each other. He has “come not to send peace, but a sword.” 10:34-36

(This is a statement similar to Luke 19;27, but, this time, Jesus attributes it to himself!)

Jesus condemns entire cities to dreadful deaths and to the eternal torment of hell because they didn’t care for his preaching. 11:20-24

Jesus will send his angels to gather up “all that offend” and they “shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” 13:41-42, 50

Jesus is criticized by the Pharisees for not washing his hands before eating. He defends himself by attacking them for not killing disobedient children according to the commandment: “He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” (See Ex 21:15, Lev 20:9, Dt 21:18-21) So, does Jesus think that children who curse their parents should be killed? It sure sounds like it. 15:4-7.

And so on. This was just an appetizer, in some of Matthew alone.

This mood of mayhem is why the Crusade against the Cathars killed 5 million (total, including one million in France alone). At the end of the Sixteenth Century, there was seven religious wars in France alone. The famous massacre of the Saint Barthelemy alone, which was just prior, in 1572 CE, killed up to 30,000 (most of them Protestants).

Oh, and during the First Crusade, Frankish writers and historians themselves, related that Muslim children were roasted and devoured, by the Franks themselves, as part of their holy Crusade (after all, Jesus asks his followers to do just that, to himself… So why not to third parties?)

But the worst was probably the systematic destruction of books, library, intellectuals and thinking which the Christian fanatic launched in 363 CE, with the explicit support of Roman emperor Jovian. That brought the near-collapse of civilization.

All preaching of a literal reading of Abrahamism should be outlawed. And believers should be remembered that the holy texts are just allegory, if not outright fiction.

This, by the way, is how to fundamentally handle Fundamental Islam, also known as “terrorism”. Just outlaw the preaching and public literal interpretations and applications. In particular, all countries with an official religion, especially when it influences the secular law, should be told by those who think, to cease and desist. (Tunisia 90-year-old president wants equality of man and woman in inheritance, contrarily to the present, Islamist Tunisian law, which makes man above woman.)

Jesus is a prophet of Islam. Some texts in Islam holy script say that those who insult prophet Jesus should be killed (the law of killing those who “insult” Jesus was applied in Pakistan, an Islamist State, in the last few years). Hence Fundamentalist Muslims order to kill those who dare to say that evil is evil. When will Western Intellectuals rise as one, and condemn those who condemn, to death, those who condemn evil?

And how could one condemn those who brandish thermonuclear fire, if evil is a protected notion?

Patrice Ayme

We Think, Therefore We Predict As Scientists

Intelligence Produces Science & Previously Theories Thereof, In Monkeys, As It Does In Men:

Intelligence adapts to (known) circumstances, and, or predicts “successfully” the future. Adaptation and prediction is why intelligence evolved.

The adaptations and predictions intelligence brought were so successful, that the most intelligent animals reproduced more (thus brain size has been steadily augmenting among apex species, in the last 600 million years). The preceding was initially a polite answer to astrophysicist Ethan Siegel who wrote publicly that “Successfully predicting the future requires theoretical science”. No, it doesn’t, or then lemurs are theoretical scientists! Because lemurs can predict some elements of the future, just as human scientists can. Many a scientist shares comparable lack of awareness about the capability of other species to predict the future, too… Such arrogance is to the detriment of science in the public eye. Because the public, even if it doesn’t say so, smells a rat, when confronted to such statements, and rightly so.

To “successfully predict the future“, no “theoretical science” is required, or then “theoretical science” has been practiced for millions of years, by apes and their predecessors!

“Science” is what we know, for sure (or so we think). “Theoretical” science is guesswork, which will become “science” if it’s successful. That is, truthful. Philosophy is why and how the foundations of the theory, any theory… evolved.

I Think, Therefore I Eat

[But I don’t try to eat those frightening, nasty human super-predators, who are only trouble.]

Of course many people claim to know, to profess, even, plenty of haughty theories, whereas, in truth they are just paid to disseminate not just fake news, but false knowledge (think of many economists, and their “free market” lies, or “intellectuals” revering religions which brought the Dark Ages, as horrendously happened with Middle Age theology, and is still happening with Islamophilia). And there is a difference between false knowledge and the true knowledge new art and poetry can bring. Yes, art and poetry can be knowledge.

So yes, prehistoric men carrying fire in fire cages, or fire starting kits, were scientists: try it on your own, with what you find in nature, to realize how much knowledge is involved in basic fire husbandry. Ötzi, the 5200 years old neolithic person found in a melting glacier, carried a fire starting kit comprising more than a dozen different materials…All indispensable for fire starting, from dried mushrooms to flintstones.

Right, we know more, than our ancestors because our knowledge is more significant, deeper. We know fire is the chemical combination of an oxidizer and an oxidant, and we even know now how thermonuclear fire works, something even Albert Einstein had not figured out (as Ethan Siegel, him again, points out, as the thermonuclear fusion possibility computation crucially depends upon Quantum “Uncertainty”). But that does not mean we could start a fire in a wet, cold European winter and save ourselves from sleeping outside by scaring away Cave Bears with fire, from the local caves they also craved.

Indeed, left in a jungle to our own devices, we would quickly perish, from lack of… science, while prehistoric men would have seen only business as usual. Stumbling across that fact, professor Jared Diamond erroneously deduced, or at least, wrote, in his famous “Guns, Germs and Steel” that New Guineans were smarter than Europeans (!)

We shouldn’t be too arrogant, and believe we are so fundamentally different from Homo Erectus, a million years ago, learning to master basic skills such as clothing, firing, cooking, etc… Yes, we have more cerebral capability. But the task itself, science, knowledge, is not fundamentally different. Yes, there is a scientific method. But, even more fundamentally, there is a philosophical method. Either will be readily applied by wild, cerebrally advanced animals, even cephalopods. But, of course, certainly not in some human societies. In some societies values are inverted, to serve a few: those we call plutocracies. In particular they value stupidity more than intelligence. Precisely because if the individuals of such a society adapted and predicted the future, they may try to get rid of the satanic ones who exert power (“kratos”) on them.  

Arrogance, and even dominance, are marks of stupidity, except when directed at the stupid. Thus, by being arrogant and dominant, all too many scientists implicitly claim that non-”scientists” are stupid. If one really supports science, that’s real stupid, as science can’t exist without support of “non-scientists”. In truth, civilized people may not all be philosophically minded, but they are much more scientifically minded than is usually assumed.

So remember: although, relative to what it is today, science in Julius Caesar’s time may seem to have amounted to much, that doesn’t mean it was trivial. Some scientists may feel they are the geniuses who make science all what it can be, but they are delusional: it’s the society which makes the science (even the great mathematician Michael Atiyah became aware of this recently, and the necessity for mathematics to adapt accordingly… By making itself useful. However we are very far from it, considering the ridiculous obsession mathematicians have with infinity).

Scientists are just the organs of more or less scientifically minded societies. This is clearly what history shows. Few societies created science, or, more generally, really big ideas.  Such societies were, first, philosophically inclined to do so (for example Athens and the Ionian Greek cities at their apogees). The societies created the scientists, the scientists didn’t invent the societies. Trade did the rest.

And the first mood those societies should have is curiosity, an open mind, a lack of hubris, and a capability to predict possible futures. The downfall of Athens was caused by a shortness of openness (just like Sparta, Athens restricted citizenship to the point of drastically reducing population), an incapacity to predict the highly predictable fact that Athens, once besieged, or on the fleet, thus seriously overcrowded, would be attacked by a plague (Pericles bemoaned that he had predicted everything, but for that), and all of this rendered possible by an hubris so colossal that Athens soon engaged in war crimes (the case of Melos).

Thus scientists’ miens should display all these truthful characteristics of spiritual, mental openness, and humility. To claim only scientists can foresee the future, is flaunting just the exact opposite: it’s hubristic, closed-mind, and dumb. Not a good way to inspire youth with the search for truth. Nor is it a good way to inspire the political and social leaders, who, themselves are often little more than children (JFK, Obama, Macron; in the Middle Age, Europe was often led by outright children: Edward III was 16 years old when he took power, jailed his mom, and prepare to launch the “100” Years War).

Patrice Ayme’

Gibbon’s “Decline & Fall of Roman Empire” In Pluto Context (Fall of Rome Part 2)

The British, yet French educated historian Edward Gibbon explained that he accomplished the work of “philosopher” in his justly famous “Decline and Fall of Rome” (DFR). 3,000 pages of dense text! Gibbon explained that the art of the “genius” historian was to select, as a “philosopher”, among a morass of facts “which are just facts”, those of higher significance. The irony, of course, is that his life’s work eschew highest significance, although he himself pulls the curtains for a brief instant, flashing the reality his work misses entirely…

To detect facts of the highest significance, and make them speak, is the fundament of the art of highest thinking. (This is true for all of philosophy, including of the natural sort, as Albert Einstein pointed out.).

Under Trajan, the Empire was at greatest MILITARY & territorial extent, when Gibbon starts his story. Later, the empire would extent much further, spiritually speaking through the concept of “Christian Republic”.

Trajan also introduced welfare and taxes on the richest. He could have gone further, but bemoaned he was too old to emulate Alexander (who didn’t introduce welfare and taxes on the richest, BTW…) Indeed he promptly died and his successor Hadrian was not cut from the same cloth, and precipitously evacuated much of the empire Trajan had conquered. (The map above shows clearly that the German barbarians were too close from the heart of the empire, just north of Italy, and sure enough, Marcus Aurelius spent his reign repelling them there; his ignorant son, Commodus withdrew further, Hadrian style…).

Under Augustus, legions reached Ethiopia and Yemen, but Augustus was full of avarice, and the notion of a world civilization didn’t appeal to him. In any case, he had none to propose. So he pulled the legions back from Germany, Africa and the Indian Ocean shore, and left a will, read in the Senate, advocating a shrunken empire, the exact opposite notion from his great uncle, Julius Caesar….

The “Decline and Fall of Rome” embraced not just the Roman empire from 100 CE to 1453 CE, but also Islam, and the Crusades. Gibbon, rightly, wrote an entire history of the West, from 100 CE, to 1500 CE!

Indeed, the idea that Rome survived the Decline and Fall of Rome was not a new observation: the empire of the Franks, the Imperium Francorum, was, de facto, Rome: it used the latest refurbished (Justinian legal code) Roman law, etc. It could be argued that the Frankish Empire was more Roman than Constantinople, because it spoke Latin, not Greek. By 800 CE, the Imperium Francorum proclaimed itself  “RENOVATION of The Roman Empire”..

Thus, then, of course, Gibbon, by his own implicit admission, should have called his book: The Decline, Fall and Resurrection of Rome! When Gibbon was writing his book, the British empire was much larger than the Roman empire, and arguably better organized and centralized. The French empire was not far behind, and, by his own admission, Gibbon recognizes that the Russian empire dwarfed Rome, in some sense.

Something even stranger is that Gibbon recognizes the obvious: most of the Roman Empire was created under the Republic. And it was because the soldiers defended their rights and their properties. Whereas, in the period Gibbon considers, when the Republic has been replaced by what he calls a “monarchy”, soldiers were motivated by greed, obedience and “religion”.i

Thus, however broadly he encompassed the history of the West after 100 CE, Gibbon could only miss the true cause of the corruption which he bemoaned, and caused the decline and fall of the Roman State.

But there was no choice: for 8 years a Member of Parliament (where he was “mute”), Gibbon enjoyed fame and clout in the British plutocracy. Gibbon could not sing the praises of the Republic. All the more as he made clear, in 1793 CE, that however admirable French artillery was, the valor of French soldiers deserved a better cause (or words to this effect). Gibbon had seen the conspiracy and alliance of European plutocrats attacking the French Republic. Gibbon had actually seen a battle (and was part of a militia ready to defend England against a French invasion, a rather ironical matter, as it was France which was invaded by everybody from the gang of all “aristocrats” united, not England!.

However deliciously informative reading him is, Edward Gibbon was deeply biased. So was all of history, ever since “politics” was founded. “Politics” means “looking at the City-State”. That look was not friendly, because most Greek City-States had democratic characters lost, ever since. To the sort of regimes Gibbon admired… and was a part of.

Gibbon didn’t draw the obvious conclusion from the sketch, in a few lines which he made of the Roman Republic, or how the Roman Empire came to be. His entire “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is biased, from context alone. From the universe which he chose to consider.

Today the British Parliament voted 326 to 290 the previously named “Great Repeal Bill” overturning the law from 1972 infeodating  British law to European law (by accepting the supremacy of the latter). This displaces sovereignty on 12,000 laws.

It’s as Mick Jagger put it in an excellent video “England lost”. In it a dishevelled English gentleman loses his mind from imagined frights, and dashed hopes to turn England into Singapore. At the end, the Briton runs straight into the sea, then stops, dazzled. A black man helps pull him out. A terse blonde 14 year old.girl tells him:”where do you think you could go?..pull yourself together”.

Clearly, by the time of Gibbon, the delusion was going strong. We don’t harbor it here. To understand the Decline and Fall of Rome is to understand the decline and fall of the RESPUBLICA Romana. It’s the Republic and its republicans which built the empire, not the evil imperial baboons the English plutocrat Gibbon is fascinated by…

Patrice Ayme’

Why The ROMAN STATE COLLAPSED (Part I; Plus Contemporary Analogy)

The climate is, and will, collapse incredibly fast, at some point in the near future. Same, potentially, for civilization.

The hints of climate collapse are in, they are piling all over. Irma, a hurricane packing recorded gusts of 363 kilometers an hour appeared. It got enormous: 330,000 square kilometers. At the same time, hurricane Katia attacked the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Behind Irma, Jose, a category 4 hurricane, nearly as nasty as Irma. When things collapse, they collapse fast: think of the proverbial Twin Towers of “9/11” twisting, turning and leaning, and then down in 8 seconds. This is what happens during a transition to a new equilibrium. 

Collapses of civilizations have happened many times before. The most famous case, by far, is Rome. Roman society was the most complex, and the one most similar to the world civilization we have today. It collapsed, and it was first a psychological collapse.

Rome collapsed amazingly fast. Early in 379 CE, there was a refugee crisis, caused by a million Goths (including women and children) begging to enter the empire. The empire was at the height of its powers. By 406 CE, the empire had collapsed. The one million Goths  had been allowed to enter the Roman empire. Under the condition of coming, unarmed. They cheated. Disaster ensued.

By 400 CE, though, a German Confederation, the Franks, had been put in charge of insuring the defense of the two Germania and the richest Roman province, Gallia (Gaul). In 406 CE, the Frankish curtain broke when the Rhine surprisingly froze, and many tiny German nations broke through Gaul, and even Spain and North Africa. By 410 CE, the city of Rome herself had been conquered by the Goths.

The Vandals, with 40,000 warriors, went quickly all the way to the Roman province of Africa, where they established a maritime empire, comprising the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta (439 CE)… 

The Great Barbarian Invasions By Tiny German Nations Were Preceded By Roman Mental Collapse of the “Antifa” Type. Situation in 435 CE, after 29 Years of Invasions.

The Romans tried to dislodge the Vandals many times, but failed. In 455 CE, the Vandals sacked Rome (their fleet just went up the Tiber). Having seized control of the sea, the Vandals were able to control and cut the grain supply to the city of Rome (and much grain came from North Africa). This starved Rome, and the population collapsed. The Vandal empire would last more than a century, until an army sent there by Roman emperor Justinian defeated them.

By the late Fifth Century, Italy had fallen under the control of the Ostrogoths (who were relatively benign, except they killed the president of the Roman Senate, the philosopher Boethius; the king of the Ostrogoths had believed, erroneously, some lies about Boethius, he later bemoaned).

Emperor Justinian, the same one I just mentioned, decided to grab back Italy, and, in particular, Rome. The city was lost and taken several times. Ultimately, Oriental Romans won, and the Ostrogoths got annihilated (I say “Oriental Romans” because “Byzantine”, is an erroneous concept and word I try not to use: the Romans were calling themselves Romans, not “Byzantines”; the Romans had selected Byzantium as Oriental Capital; Byzantium, an ancient Greek city, had not selected them). However being besieged many times destroyed the city of Rome. Especially, most of her aqueducts. It was said that there was just one individual observed living in the ruins.

In ancient historiography, the Roman empire is described as declining, and then falling. However, the bias may have been introduced by the Christians, who controlled which books were worth saving. Christians hated (the) Greco-Roman civilization (which had created them), and were crucial to its demise, with the supine mentality which they promoted. So they committed a crime, and had interest to present the victim, civilization, as so decrepit, they had nothing to do with it. In truth, their fanaticism helped bring down a thriving civilization.

This is a clear bias, not supported by recent archeology. Archeology shows that the Roman State was actually richer, and more powerful, just before it collapsed. On the face of it, the army was the largest Rome ever had. Roma was much powerful in 379 CE than it had been, facing Hannibal. By a factor of ten. Rome should have been able to rise armies numbering millions in 379 CE (because a ten, or twenty times smaller Rome was able to rise armies numbering hundreds of thousands, facing Hannibal, or the German invasion around 110 BCE, by the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones!) The difference between the Punic and Cimbrian wars, when the Roman Republic faced annihilation, and the Germanic invasions of the Fifth Century, when it didn’t (the Germans being then half-civilized and anxious to become Romans), was mood. The Roman mood.

So what happened? How come that mightiest Roman army ever could be defeated, again and again and again, or shrink from battle? The Goth refugees had done whatever was needed (such as prostituting their wives and daughters, on an industrial scale) to keep their weapons. Mistreated by corrupt local Roman official, so corrupt that they didn’t take basic military precautions, the Goths, ably led by a charismatic leader, Fritigern, rebelled.

The Collapse of the Roman empire was sudden. This is the situation around 440 CE.

Emperor Valens rushed from Mesopotamia with the Oriental Roman field army. Thanks to an hubris reminiscent of that French generals around May 13, 1940, Valens rushed its dehydrated, exhausted army into battle on a hot August day, without having figured out where the mighty Gothic cavalry was.  The Occidental Roman army chief of staff, the Frankish general Richomeres  advised Valens to wait until the Occidental army arrived. The Oriental Roman field army was annihilated, Valens killed (in unclear circumstances). Richomeres kept discipline and saved part of the force (he would later become head of the army in the Orient, magister militum per Orientem, and a Consul).

We have some of the ingredients of the fall of Rome there: dictatorship by the emperor not listening to advice, and most of the top military genius of the empire having to do with Frankish generals.

The Roman State was severely defeated at Adrianopolis in 379 CE. That battle, against the Goths, was reminiscent of the massacre of Cannae, 600 years before. Cannae was a tremendous Roman defeat originating straight from Hannibal’s genius. Roman legions, including 60 Senators found themselves so compressed by Hannibal’s army of mercenaries, that they couldn’t fight: they had been drawn to the center by Hannibal himself, at the head of his Gallic troops. Adrianopolis was more of the same. However, whereas Hannibal was crafty at Cannae, the Romans were stupid at Adrianopolis.

After Cannae, the Romans rose another two large armies, and Scipio “Africanus” landed the main one in Africa, next to Carthage. . After Adrianopolis, the Romans didn’t rise a new army so much as they showed Constantinople to the Gothic king, who was mesmerized. The Goth thus decided to make peace. And to celebrate so much, that he died from it (his successor honored the accord).  

Clearly, by the end of the Fourth Century, the immensely wealthy empire, much richer than Rome six centuries earlier, was able to rise armies (hence the systematic recourse to Frankish armies, forces and general; even emperor Constantine had a crucial battle won by the Frankish general Bonitus; another Frankish general, Arbogast, was emperor in all but name, as he tried a secular, laic counter-coup).

This lack of armies explains why the empire of more than 60 millions was defeated by tiny German armies (the Goths had by far the largest army, around 100,000 men).

Gibbon would perhaps point out that the Christian mentality was antagonistic to war. Right. Actually the Christian bishops were heading the empire by 400 CE (this government of bishops had started under Gratian, when he became weird after Adrianopolis; maybe he was weird because he had to name Theodosius emperor of the Orient; Gratian was barely 20, Theodosius, 33, and accomplished, however his father had been executed earlier for high treason…).

The Late Roman empire had become a very strange place. While the Germans threatened to roam all over the place, with their own Sharia (although they were Aryan Christian, but for the Franks, who were obdurate Pagans), the bishops declared that murderous highwaymen should not be executed (so the roads became impassible).

All this weirdness was there to hide the main fact: the Roman plutocrats prefered experiencing German invasions to paying taxes to the Roman State, to feed the prodigious army Rome could have had, and the Roman plutocrats had the means to NOT pay taxes by influencing people and blocking others. They married the invaders, and that was it.

Does this remind you of today?

It should!

Meanwhile, Trump operated a 180 degrees (long announced). He announced a deal with his new-found friends “Nancy and Chuck”. The buxom Nancy Pelosi has headed the Democrats in Congress since before 2006 (when she acquired control of Congress); “Chuck” is the head of the Democratic Senators. So the rising of the US debt ceiling was passed (it had been attached to 20 billion dollars heading to the relief of Houston). I wonder if all those who called racist whoever had a nice word about some aspects of Trump, will now direct their fury towards “Nancy and Chuck”. Probably not: too complicated for their simple minds.

To come back to Late Imperial Rome, all the wealthiest families had a bishop in their ranks: Christianism was a smokescreen for plutocracy. Among plutocratic families, Christian propaganda was basic civic service. By superficially embracing Christianism, and imposing it deeply, plutocracy made We The People into We the Sheeple.

The empire, in tatters, rose again thanks to the Franks, but the destruction caused by the collapse was beyond a force 8 hurricane. Because the minds, the rational, republican, democratic culture, had collapsed so entirely.

It would take seven centuries for civilization to rise higher. Even then, it got poisoned again by the second plutocratic wave known, with misleading semantics, as the “Feudal” system. That rose again with a second Christianization wave known for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Religious Wars,and various terrors, which wrecked Europe for another eight centuries after 1026 CE (when burnings for “heresy” got launched again, after centuries without.)

More than 200 potential or known causes for the Decline and Fall of Rome have been listed. The plutocratic explanation therein suggested implies them all, so it is the master explanation.

Why was the collapse of the Roman state so thorough and so fast? Contemplate the present North Korean crisis. Suppose it would evolved in the way most unfavorable to civilization: Kim threatens the West, atom bomb a few cities, like Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, and then one makes a treaty with him, and North Korean and Jihadists become the overlords, under special laws applying to them alone. Meanwhile the “antifa” are in charge of the justice, police and military systems and impose to not fight crime in any form.

This is roughly what happened to the Roman state, and it happened within a few years. At the time, some Romans were indignant, and tried to react, to prevent the Decline and Fall of the Roman State. Maximus in Britain led his legions into Gaul, defeated (next to Paris) and killed emperor Gratian (in Lyon), because Gratian was roaming around dressed like a Scythian, and had put the Catholic bishops in power. Maximus became Augustus, and Theodosius had to live with him. Yet, the rot within average minds was already too deep.

The facts above are mostly ignored in the major universities, because such facts would disrupt them by disrupting their major sponsor, the plutocratic system, which feeds so well the top university leaders (they earn up to 2 million dollars a year in the USA). Still we, humble philosophers, shall obstinately preach the truths, just because they are there, and need to be conquered even more than the highest imaginable mountains.

Patrice Ayme

People Need Faith, Not Philosophy?

No, just the opposite:

PEOPLE NEED BETTER PHILOSOPHY TO BUILD BETTER FAITH(S):

Faith arises from philosophy. Saying one needs faith, not philosophy is as if one said one needs lungs, not air. I will defend a very different thesis: people need to have faith in philosophy, in the philosophical approach. Such an attitude is not very popular in the USA, where philosophy seems only second to Conspiracy Theory as a subject worth studying.

The word “faith” comes, through Old French as usual, from the Latin “fides”, trust. Anything we believe in, be it a physical law, or a historical fact, we have to trust it’s true. So trust, faith is at every corner, every step of the way.  

To have faith in philosophy never has been, and never will be, as long as the US population doesn’t make a deep analysis of the deliberate stupidity the USA used as a cover-up for 4 centuries of exploitative criminality and counting…

“People need faith, not philosophy” suggests a faithful commenter on Thoughts, Eugen R. The idea has been frequently brandished by intellectuals in the jungle of ideas out there. Some basic concepts cause problems here. “People”, and “Faith”. Their considerable, multidimensional bulk has to be examined. Moreover, I deplore the mood behind the entire aphorism: indeed, a correct, most appropriate faith can only be established by a more advanced philosophy. All and any faith is the fruit of a philosophical process. If not yours, then someone’s else (Zarathustra, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.)

Contrarily to repute, “faith” is eminently practical. Because, in its most frequent form, it’s laic, not superstitious. “Faith” is necessary to operate: one has to have faith that, whatever one is engaging into, it will bring something good.

Take for example the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, which used to be called Burma, and whose PM is An San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace prize laureate (who deserved it, unlike Obama!). One has to have faith that the abominable situation they are in can be mitigated, if one pays enough attention to it. Myanmar claims that of almost 400 people killed since Aug. 25, nearly all are insurgents. Apparently Rohingya toddlers are very rebellious, and deserve death. Myanmar officials have accused insurgents of burning Buddhist monasteries and statues.

Well, I have faith in the good nature, overall, of most people, and that good things come from exhibiting this faith. This is why mentioning infamy leads to fighting it. Or so I believe. Faith, you see?

***

As life, or any project, ends in death always, faith in the desirability of daily tasks, is a triumph over the prospect of death. It’s an act of the deepest faith. That doesn’t mean that faith should be blind: one has to desire to indulge in worthy pursuits.

But of course, by “faith”, Eugen R implicitly meant the sort of fanaticism Abrahamists are known for. Consider Catholic priests in Japan, refusing to put their foot on an image of Christ (as if Christ would feel the foot, which it deserved, anyway; see the book and movies “Silence”)

Assuming “People” need “faith” but rulers do not, is a perpetual stand-by, as long as there are rulers and they rule. The nature of the faith varies: to oppress and subjugate other people, one has to oppress and subjugate their minds.

***

Toyotomi Hideyoshi Or When Rulers Decide What The Faith Of The People Is:

Toyotomi Hideyoshi correctly perceived that Christianity, known and perceived as the cult of equalitarian Christ, would have revolutionary consequences in Japan. Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified a warring Japan, thanks to an extremely hierarchized society where peasants had been disarmed. Christianity, under the guise of generalized goodness, threatened to undo all of this. So it had to be extinguished, and this started by extinguishing its symbols.

 

A Given Faith Can Be Revolutionary There, Anti-Revolutionary Here:

Overall ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Sixteenth Century Japan put an end to peasant revolts by making illegal for peasants to have swords (and a fortiori firearms). At the same time, he crucified 26 Franciscans in Nagasaki, and made Christianity illegal (although he had to embrace Christian traders). Toyotomi was a man of many strong faiths: for example he tried to conquer China (that involved conquering Korea first, and that he did; but next the Korean navy sank his fleet, a problem, considering that China had been pulled into the war…).

In 1600 CE Japanese society, Christianism was revolutionary (all men were equal in the eyes of Christ). Whereas in Fourth Century Rome, Christianism was debilitating, distracting and by 390 CE, a way to not just subjugate, by actually assassinating free spirits.

It’s actually fascinating that the same religion could be liberating in Japan, and subjugating in the Roman empire. The reasons are clear, albeit complex: Rome started as a republican democracy, Japan as a military ruled society (where Rome ended, yet not so well, because it didn’t start this way).

***

Constantine, Theodosius, & Other Roman Emperors Imposed Faith In Catholic Terror:

In all societies, religions of the rulers is different from that of those they rule: Charlemagne wanted the Saxons to submit to Christianism scrupulously, under the penalty of death, but he personally took king David of Israel as a model, and in his realm Christians were free to convert to Judaism, while he himself, like all the top Franks, lived with a harem.

Nietzsche spent much time exposing the hypocrisy of Christianism as practiced in Europe: the military hereditary class known as the “nobles” or “aristocrats”, similar to the one in Japan, had, in practice, a very different religion from the “People”.

(By the way, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who achieved immense power, even trying to invade China after invading all of Korea, was of unknown peasant stock, he rose through the military hierarchy, all by himself, a story not found in Rome, and Europe, because, there, those who reached ultimate command, were themselves children of individuals who had reached power by themselves: for example the uncle of emperor Justinian, or the parents of emperor Constantine, etc; most of the others were part of dynasties, some of them last centuries).

***

The Roman Republic Had Faith In Itself:

In other words the Roman PEOPLE, during the full Roman Republic, had faith in itself, and reason, not some fascistic, capricious, jealous Bible god.

Continual, overwhelming, astounding heroism, fortitude and obdurate will characterized the Roman Republic for centuries. Many times, the Republic should have perished, facing desperate military situations, as when the Gauls seized Rome, and a few geese saved the Capitol. These were the times, and they lasted for ever, when the religion of the Romans was the Republic.

That mood, that faith, was so strong, that it survived the collapse of the Roman government, and transmogrified into faith in what was called the “Christian Republic” (basically an early form of Liberté, égalité, fraternité “liberty, equality, fraternity”.

Actually the original motto of the French Republic was: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Or Death”.

“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: a faith worth dying for. At least so have thought many Western societies in the last 26 centuries.

Liberty Or Death! The death part, which is very Roman Republican (and later, Roman Catholic), was dropped later, because it was too reminiscent of the “terror” of 1793-94… itself an answer to earlier terrors…). (Bibliothèque Nationale de France; republican poster from circa 1793.)

People don’t need “faith” in a superstitious religion as a motivation to rule; the fruits that exploiting others bring, are obvious enough. However, subjugated people do need faith, to justify their own subjugation (Abrahamism and Buddhist like faiths have proven highly suitable)…

That “people need faith, not philosophy”. That was an idea imposed sneakily in the PRINCIPATE period of the Roman empire, which lasted 3 centuries. It became clear when some dead rulers were proclaimed to be gods.

Then faith in superstitious faith was imposed loud and clear by emperor Diocletian with the cult of SOL, around 300 CE. (The Cult of Sol was similar to the Japanese one in some ways… Japan also had a military government, by its own admission, from the middle of the Middle Ages). At that point, the emperor started to be recognized as a living god, although Constantine backed that down to himself being only the 13th Apostle; Theodosius would further back down by recognizing the primacy of the bishop of Milan (Saint Ambrose) over himself (the secular leader, who had to beg public forgiveness to the bishop over some massacre, under the threat of excommunication).

A fully liberated people is emperor of its own realm. The realm is secular. Faith of the superstitious type, irrelevant.

Full democracy means no rulers, but for We The People themselves.

It’s no utopia, but increasingly, as pragmatic, no-nonsense Switzerland is governed. Athens, at her best, was governed that way.

***

Faith In Tyranny Is Requested By Tyrants:

Instead what we have nowadays, increasingly is structures like the Eurogroup, the government of the Euro Zone. The Eurogroup, made of finance ministers of the Euro Zone, has huge powers. However, its unelected, uncontrolled, and not even formally acknowledged by the European Constitution.

Common people are supposed to have faith in their in their European masters. So we see that faith in masters replaces democracy, people-power.

That was excusable to some extent in societies such as the Late Greco-Roman empire, where most of the country folks didn’t know how to read and write, whereas the aristocrats and top urban types did. At least this is what some will say.  

However, when people have power, and thus take the decisions, faith in masters is replaced by attention to detail.

Thus, and conversely, throughout history, the greatest rulers tended to be contributors to top intellectual debate. Darius, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Constantine, Saint Augustine, Clovis, even Genghis Khan, Saint Louis or Louis XIV have contributed heavily to the history of thought. They all understood that having faith in what they viewed as philosophy was at the core of their essence, as rulers.

***

To Rule Best, One Has To Be Ruled By The Highest Faiths

Education had been front and center with the Franks, for centuries, causing a strident conflict with the Papacy (for which knowing god was enough). Weirdly, Charlemagne’s father had not given a full literary education to his two sons. However, when he became ruler of what was in many ways, the most advanced empire, Charlemagne was fully aware of the necessity of knowledge. He was an admirable speaker in Frankish and Latin, his mother tongues, and also knew Greek. He surrounded himself with some of Europe’s top philosophers, making the British thinker Alcuin his Prime Minister. Charles spent hours in study to improve his writing.

Charlemagne had faith in knowledge. He knew that Augustus’ will to leave a undefendable frontier in Germany was absurd. So the last tribe had to be reduced into submission, the Saxons. He fought them for 32 years, including 18 main battles. Charlemagne had faith that this last corner in north-east Germany had to be civilized. His faith bore fruit: 150 years later, the Saxons had become the main force of the Renovated Roman empire.

We need faith in knowledge too. And faith in ourselves as we confront cannibalistic thermonuclear punks (Kim and his allies).

The higher faiths are grounded in the highest philosophy.

Proof?

Look at physics:

***

New Physics, New Philosophy:

Buridan proposed the heliocentric system around 1350 CE, from his new mechanics (the completion of which is now called “Newtonian Mechanics”). He observed that one didn’t have experimental means to make sure heliocentrism was true, directly (those would appear in the Seventeenth Century, a careful observation of the phases of Venus, the way the Sun was illuminating Sol). However Buridan ruefully scoffed that one may as well believe in geocentrism, because “Scripture” said so.

In 1350 CE, physics was thus philosophically decided. Should one believe the Bible, something written by some exiled Jews in Babylon, 19 centuries prior, or should one believe that the little, presumably less massive thing (the Earth) rotated around the giant thing (the Sun)? A philosophical choice said Buridan (and it was clear that the most rational thing was not to follow “Scripture”).

In the Twentieth Century, Einstein made a big deal that one should incorporate as fundamental laws in a theory only what one observed. Einstein was actually parroting Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l’Hypothèse) a book by French philosopher, physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré, first published in 1902. When Quantum Mechanics, Copenhagen version, arose, a few years after De Broglie’s thesis, an incensed, hyper famous Einstein confronted the junior Werner Heisenberg about the craziness of Bohr-Heisenberg Quantum Mechanics. Calmly, Heisenberg replied he was just applying the philosophical insights Einstein himself had defended, and that he, Heisenberg, had learned by reading Einstein…

For example,  Poincaré had observed that light was always observed to be going at speed c, thus that had got to be a fundamental law. Bohr and Heisenberg similarly put in their theory of reality only ingredients which were observed (or, more exactly, observable). (Einstein chomping at the bit, tried for years to ruin the notion of reality of the Copenhagen school; ultimately, after a wise debate with the philosopher Popper, Einstein came out, in 1935, with the famous EPR paper revealing that Quantum mechanics was nonlocal… Amazingly nobody, aside from yours truly, seems to have noticed that this showed that a crucial part of Einstein 1905 Photoelectric Effect paper is nonsensical… This is an error which led to the absurd “Multiverse” Theory…)

Any significant, fundamental advance in physics, the nature of nature, is always accompanied with trusting new elements of reality, and less so, previous ones. As we change physics, we change faith.

Any cognition entails faith. We know, because we trust.

Patrice Ayme’