Yes, provided that they will follow the standard paradigm of modern Physics, they can join a Big Project and live in prosperity.

Otherwise, at least they will be classified in the set of 'crackpots'.

Yes, provided that they will follow the standard paradigm of modern Physics, they can join a Big Project and live in prosperity.

Otherwise, at least they will be classified in the set of 'crackpots'.

Thanks Demetris, but then "... they become exposed to the detrimental effects of the commercial influence on physics" - which is your point! Perhaps I should re-phrase the question? I want to keep the younger students in the "crackpots" department until they are old enough and have the experience to change things themselves.

Hi All, I remember one interview of one director of one very famous russian research center here in Russia. He has said that at that time he was a student one professor has said him that it is not important what You do in Physics  but it is important who is Your superviser. He has said that his supervisor was a famous researcher and therefore, he has achievements at his supervisions and as a result, he is the director of the research center. Indeed, it is very important for young researchers to do some research with famous researchers. For instance, Newton was a lecturer and many students have attended his lectures, However, he has said that he has no students. But many student who have attended his lectures have said that they are his students, three of them are very famous: Taylor (the Taylor series), MacLaurin (the MacLaurin series), and de Moivre (the very important de Moivre formula). Newton even has recommended one of them for a professor position at a university. 

About me: I am a self-maker researcher who has discovered ~ 200 new waves and I have recently developed a theory for acoustic wave propagation coupled with the electrical, magnetic, gravitational, and cogravitational potentials. In several weeks I will add here on the RG my new published paper concerning the interfacial acoustic 4P-SH-wave propagation. Note that Newton has looking for a connection between the gravitation and the electromagnetism but it was unsuccessful. In my theory, they are coupled and it was estimated that the resulting four-potential waves can propagate in a vacuum with a speed that is from ten to twenty orders faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Note that the gravitational waves also propagate with the speed of light in a vacuum (CL): the Nobel prize in Physics for this year!  The four-potential waves (they are nonacoustic in a vacuum, of course) propagating in a vacuum with (10^10)CL are already suitable for new communication era based on some gravitational phenomena. It is possible to instantly communicate with the other planets and even galaxies, see some discussion in my attached file.

So dear Alan, my answer is just negative.

Can you find an alternative funding for those who care to examine Physics from scratch?

If so, that would be a good point!

A few years ago I took a QM class.  I do not need to make a living out of the material, I was just curious.  The professor stated very clearly that no questions on fundamentals of physics would be allowed.  He proceeded to teach various methods of integration and math manipulation without a shred of understanding on the part of the students (I talked with them about it).  When I jokingly said he was teaching "quantum engineering" instead of physics, he became outraged.  I still don't understand why, as he clearly said in similar words that was what he would be doing.

I researched several of my own questions and successfully published papers on the pedagogy of de Broglie waves, and some other stuff.  He was remarkably un-pleased that his student showed such interest in the material, and as far as I can tell didn't get past the 2nd page of the paper.  Part of his trouble is that he had no concept of relativity, only QM, so when I wanted to solve a double slit problem other than in the frame of the slits, he came unglued.  It turned out to be somewhat difficult (see link below), and I have no doubt he was angry that he couldn't do it, but it had not been my intent to embarrass him, and if he'd have just said he didn't know how that would have been fine.

This was in the physics department at UHCL.  The professor was much younger than I am, and works for the same government institution.  You would think he would have been collegial.  Unless you count my engineering comment, I never criticized him (until now).  I was told that the class was also taught in the chemistry department, where there was even less treatment of "fundamentals."  I guess the goal is just to make some new kind of commercial plastic.  Reminds me of a 1960s movie.

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/physri/2015/895134/

I will be reading your paper in more detail which at first glance looks very interesting. Many thanks for the contribution.

Yes in clubs and projects.

Thank you Jerry - Can you add anything about the clubs and projects that help university students and physicists to get involved in theoretical physics & the fundamentals of physics? Or can others add to this idea of clubs and projects helping? I am looking for opportunities that support the theme: Let’s return to the traditional domain of original ideas and rigorous arguments of theoretical physics - “Physics with an ideas- and imagination-based ‘art’ where we’re dreaming, imagining and creating …”

Of course, there are fundamental physics that is suitable for universities to study. For instance, the unification of gravity and electromagnetism conjectured by Einstein is now ready to have a broad investigation.  Since repulsive gravitation has been discovered and E = mc2 is not generally valid, there are many experiments to be performed. Moreover, since the existence of a five-dimensional space is supported by experimental evidence, the development f a complete five-dimensional theory is urgently needed.

The supervisor is important because whatever you do in physics, he can only appreciate and praise what is below his level. That's just a petty human factor, but an essential one in practice. In the current very controlled scientific community, where everybody evaluate everybody and conversely, and the opinion of the crowd has more weight than the one of any however talented individual, there is an unavoidable gradual decrease in level. There is indeed an "engineerisation" of science, but which is dating back from Voltaire. The capitalist system has gathered so much steam that today the situation have become dramatic. For the students, it is not sensible to chose a scientific career, while the one of an engineer is very similar, with the only exception of the height of the salary. Anyway in theoretical and fundamental physics there is only the string theory left, which is more mathematical technology than a natural science.

So my conclusion is that the students should be made aware of the many still existing different approaches and research endeavours, and that entails a lengthy literature scan in the search of some rare originality.

Thank you Claude for your contribution. The way in which students could "be made aware of the many still existing different approaches ..." needs some thought. With this question I had hoped to find some existing facilities that encourage university students and physicists to get involved in theoretical physics & the fundamentals of physics - but so far there are no positive replies. Demetris Christopoulos made the point that young physicists need funds, which is why I am looking more to the stage before their first jobs where university students under supervision could "be made aware of the many still existing different approaches ...". Are there any forward looking professors who encourage their students to keep an open mind and to get involved in theoretical physics & the fundamentals of physics and to critically review the popular paradigms of physics?

Thank you Thierry for your contribution which will hopefully interest many others giving thought to this question. Your comments, following on from the summary of issues, offer good advice to the modern student & physicist. An enlightened professor could offer a useful course in theoretical physics based on your "task" paragraphs. Taken at face value, no-one can really object to considering "proven science by direct observational facts, tested over and over from different point of views and angles, and to provisionally exclude all the other theories". Any objection can only be connected to a fear of exposing the monopoly of commercialized mainstream science! So where are the enlightened professors to be found?

I know only that the whole organization of modern science serves as a scheme to discourage from theoretical physics. 

As usual in modern science, you have to care all the time about getting yet another grant, simply to survive in science.  That means, you have to care about publications, and about publications in directions which have to offer a lot of grants. That means, if you want to do reasonable science, you have to do something in well-established parts of science, where it is not harmful to follow the mainstream fads, because the mainstream is really established, good science.  

If you, instead, choose fundamental physics, you risk that the established mainstream fads are empty speculation.  Which, in fact, they are.  As string theory, as LQG have been nice ideas worth to be tried by some people 20 years ago, but failed to deliver.  They survive because they have grants.  http://ilja-schmelzer.de/papers/independenceOfScience.pdf

So, if one wants to do theoretical fundamental physics, one has only one choice: A job in something experimental or well-established like condensed matter theory, and fundamental physics in your free time.  

To add some positive program:  Those who decide to do theoretical physics, and are able to get, say, a PhD, are sufficiently intelligent to do physics and also sufficiently motivated - else they would make money in the banking sector or so.  So, the very idea that competition of jobs has some useful influence is nonsense.  At least if the state gives money, the jobs should be automatically tenured, permanent jobs.  They should not be high paid - higher wages may be connected with some success - but they should be safe, so that a young scientist can risk to invest his own career into some strange idea and work it out, even if it takes 20 years without publications. 

Independence of science depends on this - it is impossible without job security, for the same obvious reasons as we want job security for judges if we want independent justice.   

Thank you IIja Schmelzer for your comments and I understood your second contribution much better after I read the paper at the link in your first contribution -  https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Filja-schmelzer.de%2Fpapers%2FindependenceOfScience.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Filja-schmelzer.de%2Fpapers%2FindependenceOfScience.pdf

There is a false belief that reward favour creativity. That has been erected to a fundamental management principle, but experiments in psychology have proven that it is the contrary, reward only urges to seek safe solutions, that is, already known and time honoured ones. Without resorting to conspiracy theory, that could fully explain the string theory craze.

Dear Claude Pierre and Thierry,

I fully agree with you.

All past front line discoverers in fundamental physics were loners who were not looking for grants, a living from this trade  or prizes.

They were looking for knowledge, irrespective of current trends in research. They published and that's it. At some point, others understood their work and a step forward was made in this new direction.

It always was like this and my view is that this will not change in the future.

Dear Claude Pierre, Thierry and André, your comments are valid from my point of view and encompass various issues effecting the advance of theoretical physics. With my question I was trying to investigate the options open to younger physicists not yet influenced by the commercial aspects of science. All of us have worked on our own ideas of physics, yet we all probably had an element of security from other income, as did Einstein from his job at the patent office. I for one certainly couldn’t have even started my 15+ years of research when I was younger.

Thierry writes "… I question scientific monopolies … the indirect observation, the creation of a story, and the selection of data to feed the story …"  and if you leave out “scientific” then his statement fits so many aspects of our lives today ... in politics, business, fake news,  etc. The issue is one of monopolies, their strength and influence. André writes “All past front line discoverers in fundamental physics were loners who were not looking for grants, a living from this trade or prizes. … It always was like this and my view is that this will not change in the future.” This is perhaps right, but reflects a devastating state of affairs in physics. Thus Thierry’s opening comment … “One cannot enough insist on the severity of the situation.” …

The question remains: How can we get young physicists to “return to the traditional domain of original ideas and rigorous arguments of theoretical physics - Physics with an ideas- and imagination-based ‘art’ where we’re dreaming, imagining and creating …” (Physics: No longer a vocation? by Anita Mehta, vol 61 no. 6 Physics Today June 2008)

Dear Alan,

I quote your fundamental question:

"How can we get young physicists to “return to the traditional domain of original ideas and rigorous arguments of theoretical physics - Physics with an ideas- and imagination-based ‘art’ where we’re dreaming, imagining and creating …” (Physics: No longer a vocation? by Anita Mehta, vol 61 no. 6 Physics Today June 2008)"

From my analysis, there seldom was in history periods during which original ideas and rigorous arguments of theoretical physics were really welcomed by the community.

I found that such periods were a rare commodity in history.

From the clues I have gathered, there was one such period during the ancient Greek era when philosophy and logic were explored to levels still to be paralleled.

 A second case that drew my attention occurred when the British Royal Society was founded in 1662, a short period of time when under the patronage of the king, a group of former Oxford comrades established the Royal Society in London. Their stated aim was to encourage progress in philosophy through the study of systems, history and experiments pertaining to "natural things, mathematics and mechanics".

Source: Isaac Newton. DE LA GRAVITATION, et, DU MOUVEMENT DES CORPS,  France, Gallimard, 1995. Presented and commented by François De Gandt, page 86.

Even then, it was only at the insistence of Robert Hooke, its first curator, that Newton accepted to publish his theory.

Every few weeks, anyone who had something to propose was invited to present his ideas, which led to various qualities of presentations, which brought comments such as in a letter to Christiaan Huygens, July 24, 1687, Fatio de Duillier wrote: "I have already been three times to the Royal Society, where I heard proposed sometimes rather good things, sometimes rather mediochre things."

After a few decades, the feeble quality of most papers submitted led to the usual preventive peer-review that automatically drifts to accepting only papers in agreement with the current paradigm.

The price to pay for giving people with original ideas and rigorous arguments on theoretical physics a chance to dream and develop theories in new directions is to not preventively dismiss ideas that at first glance do not seem to coherently connect with established paradigms, which is what the default peer-review process systematically leads to.

There was a third short period that I know of when the original spirit of the Royal Society was re-established letting all ideas be aired without preventive peer-review, it was the sequence of Congresses carried out every 2 years at the St Petersburg State University in St-Petersburg, Russia, for about a decade, starting in 1996, if I remember correctly. Then the Congress ceased to be held.

I observed with what patience and open-mindedness president Smirnov and vice president Klyushin listened during Congress-2000 to the great variety of presentations of more than 200 participants, speeches during which sometimes transpired the pent up frustration of some of them, who had been forced to silence for too long by the orthodox scientific establishment, and who could at long last freely express their personal viewpoint on aspects of fundamental research that had become important to them.

There is currently one free access online journal that allows all ideas to be aired, whatever quality they may have, so that researchers whose possibly valuable work is prevented from being published by peer-reviewed journals can be made publicly available among possibly less valuable works, until such time as they get attention, because who knows what brilliant idea might hide even in possibly unskilfully presented papers.

It is the General Science Journal, established by Walter Babin shortly after the St Petersburg U congresses stopped being held, and  of which Thierry de Mees is a welcoming editor:

http://www.gsjournal.net/

Dear Alan, we unfortunately know of no other way to " return to the traditional domain of original ideas and rigorous arguments of theoretical physics - Physics with an ideas- and imagination-based ‘art’ where we’re dreaming, imagining and creating …”  

I take it that the younger generation has some kind of yearning to set out

on their own with new styles or directions. This is normal and even desirable.

After all in terms of creativity, a younger age helps, right after one has absorbs enough

to move on.

The difficulty is the lack of a revolutionary period, only a period of consolidation right now. (would like to check what others think)..... This is citing the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, in sructure of scientific revolutions.

Would not like the younger to be only after the cash, or only current ideas.

I feel sorry for the present state of physics. It has become arthritic and sclerotic and "ruled" by people suffering from the same "diseases". Both Newton and Einstein would be put into the "crackpot" category today. Newton discovered the law of gravity when he was 23 years old and yet he had to teach Aristotelian physics at the university. it must have been a schizophrenic experience for him, being forced to teach something that he knew is wrong. thanks to Edmond Haley who realized what Newton had accomplished that he published the Principia using his own funds, since the Royal society, ruled by the "dictator" Robert Hooke, who did not like Newton, refused to publish the greatest work in history. Newton was 46 years old when Principia was published, i.e. 23 years after Newtons discoveries! 

As a rather older physicist, I tend to be cautious about motivating young physicists to be more “revolutionary”. Why?

Young researchers may find their own ways. They do not need appeals for becoming (scientific) revolutionists by “old fogeys” like me. My generation of physicists often stresses the ideal of “the individual genius thinker and researcher” - like Newton, Maxwell, Einstein etc. There are several examples – even on Research Gate – where individual physicists, engineers, philosophers, etc. assert that they invented a brand-new theory (on their own) that should replace all other contemporary and established physical theories, which – of course – are all obviously wrong but defended “by orthodoxy”. (Which has never convinced me.)

My experience with young researchers is different. They are often not revolutionary in my way of thinking. But they may be revolutionary in their own way. Even the way of working is different in many cases. The way of building teams and working together is different from the working styles that I became familiar with during my student days. Such teams of young researchers for instance manage to perform calculations and simulations together that are much more sophisticated than everything that I ever did (on an individual ticket). They often have less problems to understand contemporary physics and to deal with it in a quite natural way.

To cut a long story short: Certainly, it is good to encourage young researchers in following their own way of thinking and researching. However, one should be aware that “their own way” may be rather different from what one expects from them (which is good, I think).

Anyone who claims that he/she have discovered a theory that proves all the current ones wrong is in my opinion has made a huge mistake. Granted that the current theories may be incomplete, in that there may be new phenomenon that cannot be explained using them, but to say that they are all wrong is a sign that the person does not understand how science works. Each new theory is an extension of the previous one to explain the phenomenon that the older theory cannot. I get a chuckle when people say that Einstein proved Newton wrong with his GTR. This is far from the truth. Einstein showed the limits of Newton's theory on gravity. In our daily life we the Newtonian theories are still valid and sufficient. We use Newton's law for gravitation to send our space ships. It is only in the extreme situations where the gravity is very strong that the GTR supersedes Newton's law for gravitation. Newton himself said it the best: "if i have seen farther than others it is because i stood on the shoulders of giants". thanks.  

I dont really think real loners count that much. When something new comes along, there is a previous buz in the community, and almost always several researchers come out 

with very similar ideas, at almost the same time.

It is not enough for someone to think something, social consensus is also needed.

Some times it is more of a fad or fashion (chaos theory), other times more real and lasting.

Physical reality doesn't care about social consensus.

We just need to understand it better. Social consensus has nothing to do with it.

Well,when people understand there is more consensus.

In terms of interest for students, the graduate programs in usa are always looking

for fresh blood, offering assistantships. They usually get a lot of foreign students, not

enough local sudents.  Of course what is taught is always the standard stuff.

Now, when you get out, no one garantees a job, you have to look. There are interesting programs say in medical physics technology.

The problem with foreign students is that they come from an educational environment which promotes rote memorization, following the establishment and not creativity. they are good lab assistants but lack creativity and challenging the status quo. this has been my observation. For example, we see foreign students trying to disprove Einstein's STR. They do not seem to realize that physically it is correct and experiments have proven it. The formulation needs to be revised, but any theory that will replace it must agree with STR physically. 

Mustafa, even GR does not agree with SR physically, but makes different predictions, say, that light rays are curved by gravity.  Trying to disprove SR is, therefore, quite legitimate.  They will not succeed, of course.  But in itself, there is nothing wrong with this. Experiments can corroborate theories, but never prove them.  

Theories with strong enough empirical support will survive their replacement by better theories as approximations.  But in the strong, mathematical sense an approximation, even if reasonable, accurate enough, and appropriate, is nonetheless wrong.  

Note also that there is nothing wrong with rote memorization. One needs also something else, but knowing what is already known is important and useful for scientists. Challenging the status quo is not in itself a value - sometimes it is the right thing to do, sometimes not.  So, it is quite bad if pupils, instead of learning orthography, start to challenge it. 

With respect to the original question - the paper “Developing new perspectives of physics” www.researchgate.net/publication/320331692_Developing_new_perspectives_of_physics is my attempt to outline the difficulties of addressing the development of new perspectives of physics and to emphasise the responsibility of authors to ensure their work builds on and advances the current fundamentals of physics, i.e. to ensure that we “don't throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

Physicists young and old should be encouraged to work on new perspectives of theoretical physics over a wide range of fields and start a renaissance of physics, away from the highly specialised narrow fields of today.

A method of evaluating new perspectives of physics is required and perhaps the future project work of university physics students could sometimes be based on taking new theories and getting the students, with the aid of their professor, to analyse the advances claimed and their effect on the fundamentals of physics. The author of the theory could on occasions participate on-site, reviewing objections face-to-face with the students. This would get students involved with the critical assessment of new perspectives of physics and encourage them to develop their own ideas about the fundamentals of physics.

Younger physicists should also be encouraged to play a significant role in looking after and protecting our physics knowledge before they become exposed to the detrimental effects of the commercial influence on physics.

Physicists, professional or amateur, have to return to physically objective and experimentally proven theories, so that with time the various perspectives merge with the fundamentals of physics to become a more unified theory of physics.