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Old 07-07-2008   #5 (permalink)
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paigetheoracle
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Re: Claims by Schauberger, claims about him, fringe science and conspiracy theories

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Originally Posted by CraigD View Post
The great difficulty in looking for a means of negating the force of gravity – to be precise, a way to change the attractive force experienced by two bodies due to gravity F= frac{G m_1 m_2}{d^2}, without changing the mass m_1, m_2 or the distance between them d- is that there is no experimentally validated scientific theory suggesting it is possible, no empirical observation that it occurs. There is also no theory or evidence suggesting that the mass of a body can be decreased other than by the usual means of removing some of its matter.

There is no theory or experimental evidence that this change in force or mass, commonly termed antigravity, more precisely described as a difference between inertial and gravitational mass, ever occurs, or can occur.

Although differences between inertial and gravitational mass is not known to be consistent with any physical theory, physicists, engineers, and futurists have speculated at length about the consequences of a body with negative gravitational and inertial mass, which is not inconsistent with theory. However, to the best of my knowledge, no theory suggest the existence of such matter, even though some quantum mechanical effects suggest that a more general form of “exotic matter” may be possible, put could not be used to lift objects (see: Exotic matter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

In short, Paige is proposing that people look for an effect that all scientific theory and evidence indicates does not and cannot exist. Such a search would surely be difficult, almost surely unsuccessful, and worse, likely to result in the searcher, our of frustration with the difficulty of finding such an effect using legitimate scientific methods, accepting ideas unsupported by experimental evidence, or worse, ideas promoted by intentional deception and unintentionally individual and group self-deception. Although such a pursuit can lead to enjoyable social interaction with fellow searchers, I don’t think its ultimately psychologically healthy, nor useful to science of humankind.This claim implies that engineers have available to them design alternatives to build more efficient machines than they do, but chose not to because doing so would insult their sense of masculinity. Ignore than over 13% of aerospace engineers are female (source: “Employed persons by detailed occupation and sex, 2006 annual averages”, US Dept of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics), I don’t believe this has ever occurred in the field of aerospace engineering. This discipline has always sought the greatest possible mechanical efficiency, driven by such factors as the need for tactical superiority in wars and low transportation cost in business. Aircraft are actually surprisingly efficient: for example, a Boeing 747-8I has distance-payload/fuel mass of about 18000 kg, vs. about 12000 for a 2008 Toyota Prius, at 8 times the speed, and with the ability to cross oceans!As the many websites and publications dedicated to Viktor Schauberger listed in the his wikipedia article show, so do many people. However, there is no scientific support for the belief. No one, even Schauberger in the fourteen years after some claim he built an antigravity device, reproduced or even appears to have seriously worked on such a device. It appears uncertain if Schauberger ever stated that he believed his “Repulsin discoid motors” were other than air pumps – his claims appear to focus not on some non-aerodynamic explanation for their propulsion, but that they were “over unity” (AKA perpetual motion) machines, doing more mechanical work than the work put into them by their motors. His only publication appears to be a 1933 philosophical work, "Our Senseless Toil (‘Unsere Sinnlose Arbeit’) - The Cause of the World Crisis". The major theme of his life works appear to be that explosion is ultimately bad for living things, implosion good. His training appears to be in hunting and forestry – despite recent (1990+) claims to the contrary, I find no evidence of any mathematical or scientific studies or writing by Schauberger, or evidence that he had much knowledge of math, science, or engineering. There’s evidence that Schauberger was mentally ill, having been confined to a mental hospital for some time in 1941, although it’s claimed that this was the result of “An intrigue caused by the Viennese Association of Engineers”, or possibly the Nazi SS, not a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis.

According to many sources, just before his death, Schauberger was coerced by US and Canadian companies into revealing his secrets and surrendering his patents for aircraft and power-generating machines.

In short, Schauberger appears to be a fringe cult figure. Even though he left many drawings of the devices he and others claimed could generate free power, improve human and plant health, and propel air and water craft to incredible speeds with nearly no power input, no device created from these drawings has supported these claims. Though this provides interesting insights into the psychology and sociology of fringe science, conspiracy theories, and related social movements, I don’t think Shauberger contributed anything of scientific or technological value.
Firstly, what percentage of women are there on the planet? Secondly what percentage are scientists? Thirdly, what percentage worked on the original German rocket research, during WWII? Next, watching comedy films in which sex is parodied - what item is repeatedly used to symbolize the male sexual organ?

With regards to Schauberger being committed - I can only indicate what happened to Russian dissidents under communism as not all were sent to labour camps but some were sent to mental asylums because it was considered insane to buck the system (He may have been genuinely insane but I'm putting forward the benefit of the doubt).

Discoveries are not made by followers of fashion but rebels who buck the system and make new finds. As I found to my cost, despite the lies they told, Scientology was a closed system that tried to give the opposite impression. How does this fit in? Simply put, the only thing they ever allowed and encouraged, despite implying the opposite, was rehashed ideas based on previous work by the founder or those closely associated with the early days of the cult. I have not found this society any better. I am on the fringe too but that doesn't invalidate my work or my belief in it, only that others have no faith in it as I do. In 'theory' others in the educational field won't look at it because there is no 'experimental fact' behind it. So if I don't have qualifications in the field, no-one will use it, even if it turns out to be valid, when someone with qualifications stumbles upon the same ideas as they are bound to.

There is a TV program called 'Dragons Den' in the UK that has turned down several ideas that have later turned out to be profitable and deemed useful by the public. There are writers like James Herriot and George Bernard Shaw, whose work were turned down by countless publishers. Then there were the pundits of the day who said trains couldn't travel faster than ten miles an hour without suffocating the passengers (Second class in cattle trucks behind the engines maybe) or that Man would never fly or get into space. Then of course there's Gallileo and the Inquisition, and Mary Anning and the fossils. As Charles Fort would say 'The list of The Damned goes on and on...', including meteors, which he championed and a leading French scientist of the day said couldn't be from space and the peasants were mistaken in what they had witnessed (I've seen a daylight UFO and it was no swamp gas, venus, the moon or a conventional plane). Always there are people who say that something is 'inconceivable' or ''theoretically impossible'
but it doesn't make it so.

All society does (and Scientology's attitude only confirmed it) is refine the crudity of previous work and sometimes steals it (Schaubergers included?). To confirm this what is happening in Iraq with its oil resources and why did China invade Tibet - in neither case was it to help the people or why leave Mugabe in charge of Zimbabwe? Even the Nazi's claimed to be liberators as did the Japanese and did we really need to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, let alone one? (And what about the experimental bombs dropped on Iraq and the depleted uranium shells?). Society's and individuals get stuck in consciousness prisons and in their addiction they can see no way out or indeed other way of living - hence the need for philosophers to point this out and religious messiah's to lead a prison break (How do you know you're addicted? You can't give up your addiction. You rationalize your position but still hang onto it for dear life (subject or object)). Why do you think banks will only lend you money if you don't need it? Because addicts don't take risks. ('If' by Rudyard Kipling).


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Author of 'Empty Thoughts from an Empty Head' and other trivia including 'Logic Lists English, the cure for illiteracy (allegedly)'.
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