August 17th, 1930 issue of The New York Times
To the Editor of The New York Times:
Since the publication in the TIMES of my statement that modern science is without a foundation and needs a major surgical operation to put it in line for a logical cosmogenetic synthesis, I have been bombarded by telephone and by letters questioning this statement and others made in my book The Russell Genera-Radiative Concept, recently published.
May I tell those people who think I have a superficial, metaphysical concept which I am trying to inject into practical science for its reformation that I am as thoroughly prepared to carry out my program with dynamic answers, not metaphysical ones, as Copernicus was when he upset an equally obstinate world of thoroughly satisfied Ptolemyites? Also I am as thoroughly aware of the difficulties of uprooting established ideas as he was.
I am also thoroughly conversant not only with every experiment that has given science its present unstable state, but also with the wrongful deductions which have resulted from those experiments.
I am as familiar with the experiments and observations of Newton and Kepler as I am of those of Faraday, Cavendish, Rutherford, Bohr or Millikan, and I also am as familiar with the things which these great men did not see in their own experiments as those which they did see, and even then misinterpreted.
An observation of an effect of Nature is equal to an experiment and a proper deduction from either is more important than either.
Newton, for example, would have solved the other half of the gravitational problem if he had found out how that apple and the tree upon which It grew got up in the air before the apple fell.
I challenge the world of science to correctly and completely answer that question. Let your readers qualify for the right to subject me to their criticism as an impractical visionary by first giving a dynamic answer to this by no means simple question.
Therefore I say to all my critics who wonder why I do not go into the laboratory and "perform experiments" that I do perform experiments in physical laboratories and make profound observations in Nature's vast laboratory that have fitted me to make new and logical deductions from old experiments which have no inconsistencies and no exceptions.
To illustrate: Suppose a man experimented with the moon running behind the trees as he ran, then set down his conclusions from the "facts", as he saw them, such as the correspondence of acceleration and deceleration to his speed, we could easily point out the error of such a deduction because we are familiar with the illusions of perspective.
Science has never considered the fact that in the universe of motion all effects of motion are illusions. Illusions are not limited to perspective but to every electrical, chemical and astronomical relation.
Nature is the supreme deceiver, the champion "poker bluffer", who, with a simple hand, makes you think she has much.
Nature is simple. She has but one force (which she divides into two), one form (which she divides into many), and seven patterns (which she complexes by repeating them in such marvelous systems of wave periodicities that it needs imagination, rather than eyesight, to coordinate them).
Nature can be beautifully described by that child's toy of hexagonal mirrors which makes the most exquisite and complex patterns in color and form out of a bit of feather, some chips of colored glass, a toothpick and other odds and ends.
Everyone knows how those simple things are not only complexed but glorified by such a treatment.
My humble contribution to science is to point out these simple principles of Nature which would, if known, have prevented one untruth to pile up on top of another until, even with the aid of experimentation, a theory which can survive five years is exceptional.
I will warrant that the dinner coat which Sir Oliver Lodge wore in New York when he delivered his lecture on energy and atomic structure is still presentable, but Sir Oliver himself would under no consideration repeat that lecture today.
The entire modern theory of atomic structure is so utterly without parallel or precedent in Nature that fantasy only mildly expresses it. It is to be regretted that the profound thinking of profound men is thus being wasted on conclusions which cannot possibly endure.
Scientists ignore Nature when they choose, or when mathematical formulae work out in accordance with preconceived premises. Scientists then become inventors and work out wonders which Nature never thought of. I can cite hundreds of such inventions born of supposedly observed facts of experiment.
Mathematics are useless if the premises they start with are wrong. La Place, the greatest mathematician of his day, "proved" many things which have since been disproved. He even went so far as to prove that the outer edges of his rings moved faster than their inner surfaces, and his contemporaries accepted that impossibility as Niels Bohr's “jumping electron” was accepted by his contemporaries.
Nature hasn't one separate series of laws for big mass and another series for small mass. She has one law for both, but science unhesitatingly invents a series of laws for little mass that outdoes the reliance of the Arthurian sages upon a credulous public.
The moons of Jupiter and the planets of the sun pursue their courses around their primaries in an orderly periodic fashion in strict obedience to the two forces which command and control them from two foci.
It would be the most astounding claim imaginable to state that this earth could suddenly jump to the orbit of Mars without consuming one-millionth of a second of time, yet that invention is the utterly fantastic and completely unfounded belief of modern science regarding the planets of the atom.
I could write volumes based upon modern electrical experimental data to prove that such a happening is not in Nature's scheme.
Science attributes this deduction to a "brilliant young Dane, Niels Bohr", who, working under Rutherford, proved it by experiment, backed by Rydburg's constant, Coulomb's law, mathematics and the evidence of the spectroscope.
Of what use is Bohr's mathematical equation regarding the hydrogen spectrum, for example, if the four admittedly assumed premises upon which it is based are not in accord with Nature's plan of motion?
Of what value also is the spectroscopic evidence if the presumption that band-spectra are caused by molecules and line spectra by atoms is found to be a wrong one? In respect to this I am prepared to offer consistent reasons why band and line spectra have another and more logical cause.
I can cite wrong premise after wrong premise which has caused science to form wrong basic conclusions, such as that there are separate negative and positive charges instead of doubly charged masses, also that positive and negative "charges" attract each other when the evidence in its favor is the simplest of Nature's illusions and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence against such a law. Take only one for example: How does science explain the fact that in all decomposing compounds like charges seek like charges and repel all others? If this law were true the universe which we know could not hold itself together, for all similar substances and atoms of substances would be explosive, and a pound of anyone substance would be impossible.
WALTER RUSSELL
New York, Aug. 12, 1930
See Also
Jackson to NYT - 1930 November 4
Russell to NYT - 1930 July 28
Russell to NYT - 1930 November 2
Walter Russell