February 21, 1984
Henry A. Hoff
7410 Brookdale, Apt. 111
Darien, IL 60559
THE DIMENSIONS OF MOTION
To The Editor of Kronos:
In the preface to The Neglected Facts of Science, Dewey B. Larson explains that his book is purely factual rather than purely theoretical, which was the case in his earlier books on motion. As such he is not obliged to demonstrate where concepts such as multi-dimensional scalar motion come from. To the reader working through chapter two, it is not intuitively obvious why any one of the three dimensions of scalar motion can have three local reference frame, Euclidean dimensions whenever a fixed reference frame is in use. A footnote to the appropriate page of Nothing But Motion would have sufficed.
Larson has written Neglected Facts more from his point of view than from the readers. The reader looks through conventional geometric “eyes” and tries to envision what Larson is talking about. To the geometrician, the idea of multi-dimensional scalar motion seems ad hoc because scalar motion seems ad hoc. That most galaxies demonstrate a red shift does not prove either Larson’s contention that scalar motion exists, that these galaxies are all receding or that we are observing “tired” light because of the great distances involved. Astronomical observations cannot establish any theoretical concept; however, theoretical concepts can be used to explain astronomical observations and even predict new phenomena so as to lend credibility to the theory.
The point Larson makes in his letter that the dimensions of scalar motion are purely mathematical is an important one. By theorizing that scalar motions have a potential of nine degrees of freedom (three scalar dimensions) from which, for any conventional physical reference frame, any three (one scalar dimension) can be operating, he allows ample mathematical freedom to describe observations recorded in the conventional physical frame. This added mathematical freedom coupled to a commutative algebra has apparently allowed him to unify the previously nonunifiable “fields” or forces of physics.
Yours sincerely,
Henry A. Hoff
7410 Brookdale, Apt. 111
Darien, IL 60559