Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered?

A Scientific Adventure
Reflections on the Riddle or Relativity

(paperback, 252 pages; ISBN 978-0-9864926-6-2)

Ian McCausland

Description

This book is a description of the author’s studies and publications concerning Einstein’s special relativity theory over a forty-year period starting in 1971. In the early part of that period he collaborated with Professor Herbert Dingle in the latter’s campaign against the special theory, and after Dingle’s death in 1978 he continued to advance this program and to draw attention to the unsatisfactory situation whereby many arguments in favour of relativity are accepted without question by almost all scientists in spite of numerous contradictions. An important feature of the book is the author’s demonstration that appeals to experimental support for the theory are irrelevant as refutations of a claim of an internal inconsistency. The book includes a description of the published debate between the author and Professor Jack Good, an eminent mathematician. Although the debate was left unresolved by the latter’s death in 2009, Good had conceded an error in an important part of his argument and had left his case in an unresolved state. One of Dingle’s criticisms of the special theory is presented in an appendix, with a commentary showing that a published attempt to refute the argument by Professor Good was not sound. Other appendices present some of the author’s published papers on the topics discussed in the book.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

     PART ONE

My Early Studies of Relativity

The Space-Travellers

    PART TWO

Herbert Dingle

Science at the Crossroads

Einstein's Champions

    PART THREE

My Published Criticisms of Relativity

My Debate with Professor Good

    PART FOUR

The Polar and Equatorial Clocks

Einstein or Lorentz?

Experimental Verification of the Special Theory?

Footnotes to Einstein's Paper

    PART FIVE

A Cavendish Professor

Science and Criticism

Censorship in Science

Epilogue

    APPENDICES

Dingle's Argument

Problems in Special Relativity

On Faraday's Ray-Vibrations and the Postulates on the Velocity of Light

An Inconsistency in Special Relativity

Anomalies in the History of Relativity

The Einstein Mystique

A Question of Relativity

Bibliography

Index
 

About the Author

Ian McCausland was born in Lisbellaw, Northern Ireland, in 1929. He was for many years a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering (now the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) at the University of Toronto, and is now Professor Emeritus. He holds B.Sc. (1949) and M.Sc. (1950) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Queen's University of Belfast, Ph.D. (1958) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and Ph.D. (1964) in Control Engineering from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of a textbook Introduction to Optimal Control (Wiley, 1969). After becoming actively involved in the critical study of relativity, he was a supporter of Professor Herbert Dingle for some years before the latter’s death in 1978, and arranged for the posthumous publication of Dingle's last paper.