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Preface

Preface

Nearly twenty years have passed since the first edition of this work was
published. As I pointed out in the preface of that first edition, my
findings indicate the necessity for a drastic change in the accepted
concept of the fundamental relationship that underlies the whole
structure of physical theory: the relation between space and time. The
physical universe, I find, is not a universe of matter existing in a
framework provided by space and time, as seen by conventional science,
but a universe of motion, in which space and time are simply the two
reciprocal aspects of motion, and have no other significance. What I
have done, in brief, is to determine the properties that space and time
must necessarily possess in a universe /composed entirely of motion,/
and to express them in the form of a set of postulates. I have then
shown that development of the consequences of these postulates by
logical and mathematical processes, without making any further
assumptions or introducing anything from experience, defines, in detail,
a complete theoretical universe that coincides in all respects with the
observed physical universe.

Nothing of this nature has ever been developed before. No previous
theory has come anywhere near covering the full range of phenomena
accessible to observation with existing facilities, to say nothing of
dealing with the currently inaccessible, and as yet observationally
unknown, phenomena that must also come within the scope of a complete
theory of the universe. Conventional scientific theories accept certain
features of the observed physical universe as given, and then make
assumptions on which to base conclusions as to the properties of these
observed phenomena: The new theoretical system, on the other hand, has
no empirical content. It bases all of its conclusions solely on the
postulated properties /of space and time./ The theoretical deductions
from these postulates provide for the /existence/ of the various
physical entities and phenomena—matter, radiation, electrical and
magnetic phenomena, gravitation, etc., as well as establishing the /
relations/ between these entities. Since all conclusions are derived
from the same premises, the theoretical system is a completely
integrated structure, contrasting sharply with the currently accepted
body of physical theory, which, as described by Richard Feynman, is “a
multitude of different parts and pieces that do not fit together very well.”

The last twenty years have added a time dimension to this already unique
situation. The acid test of any theory is whether it is still tenable
after the empirical knowledge of the subject is enlarged by new
discoveries. As Harlow Shapley once pointed out, facts are the principle
enemies of theories. Few theories that attempt to cover any more than a
severely limited field are able to survive the relentless march of
discovery for very long without major changes or complete
reconstruction. But no substantive changes have been made in the
postulates of this new system of theory in the nearly twenty years since
the original publication, years in which tremendous strides have been
made in the enlargement of empirical knowledge in many physical areas.
Because the postulates and whatever can be derived from them by logical
and mathematical processes, without introducing anything from
observation or other external sources, constitute the /entire/ system of
theory, this absence of substantive change in the postulates means that
there has been no change anywhere in the theoretical structure.

It has been necessary, of course, /to extend/ the theory by developing
more of the details, in order to account for some of the new
discoveries, but in most cases the nature of the required extension was
practically obvious as soon as the new phenomena or relationships were
identified. Indeed, some of the new discoveries, such as the existence
of exploding galaxies and the general nature of the products thereof,
were actually anticipated in the first published description of the
theory, along with many phenomena and relations that are still awaiting
empirical verification. Thus the new theoretical system is /ahead of/
observation and experiment in a number of significant respects.

The scientific community is naturally reluctant to change its views to
the degree required by my findings, or even to open its journals to
discussion of such a departure from orthodox thought. It has been a slow
and difficult task to get a significant count of consideration of the
new structure of theory. However, those who do examine this new
theoretical structure carefully can hardly avoid being impressed by the
logical and consistent nature of the theoretical development. As a
consequence, many of the individuals who have made an effort to
understand and evaluate the new system have not only recognized it as a
major addition to scientific knowledge, but have developed an active
personal interest in helping to bring it to the attention of others. In
order to facilitate this task an organization was formed some years ago
with the specific objective of promoting understanding and eventual
acceptance of the new theoretical system, the Reciprocal System of
physical theory, as we are calling it. Through the efforts of this
organization, the New Science Advocates, Inc., and its individual
members, lectures on the new theory have been given at colleges and
universities throughout the United States and Canada. The NSA also
publishes a newsletter, and has been instrumental in making publication
of this present volume possible.

At the annual conference of this organization at the University of
Mississippi in August 1977 I gave an account of the origin and
early, development of the Reciprocal System of theory. It has been
suggested by some of those who heard this, presentation that certain
parts of it ought to be included in this present volume in order to
bring out the fact that the central idea of the new system of
theory, the general reciprocal relation between space and time, is
not a product of a fertile imagination, but a conclusion reached as
the result of an exhaustive and detailed analysis of the available
empirical data in a number of the most basic physical fields. The
validity of such a relation is determined by its consequences,
rather than by its antecedents, but many persons may be more
inclined to take the time to examine those consequences if they are
assured that the relation in question is the product of a systematic
inductive process, rather than something extracted out of thin air.
The following paragraphs from my conference address should serve
this purpose.

Many of those who come in contact with this system of theory are
surprised to find us talking of “progress in connection with it.
Some evidently look upon the theory as a construction, which should
be complete before it is offered for inspection. Others apparently
believe that it originated as some kind of a revelation, and that
all I had to do was to write it down. Before I undertake to discuss
the progress that has been made in the past twenty years, it is
therefore appropriate to explain just what kind of a thing the
theory actually is, and why progress is essential. Perhaps the best
way of doing this will be to tell you something about how it originated.

I have always been very much interested in the theoretical aspect of
scientific research, and quite early in life I developed a habit of
spending much of my spare time on theoretical investigations of one
kind or another. Eventually I concluded that these efforts would be
more likely to be productive if I directed most of them toward some
specific goal, and I decided to undertake the task of devising a
method whereby the magnitudes of certain physical properties could
be calculated from their chemical composition. Many investigators
had tackled this problem previously, but the most that had ever been
accomplished was to devise some mathematical expressions whereby the
effect of temperature and pressure on these properties can be
evaluated if certain arbitrary “constants” are assigned to each of
the various substances. The goal of a purely theoretical derivation,
one which requires no arbitrary assignment of numerical constants,
has eluded all of these efforts.

It may have been somewhat presumptuous on my part to select such an
objective, but, after all, if anyone wants to try to accomplish ;
something new, he must aim at something that others have not done.
Furthermore, I did have one significant advantage over my
predecessors, in that I was not a professional physicist or chemist.
Most people would probably consider this a serious disadvantage, if
not a definite disqualification. But those who have studied the
subject in depth are agreed that revolutionary new discoveries in
science seldom come from the professionals in the particular fields
involved. They are almost always the work of individuals who might
be considered amateurs, although they are more accurately described
by Dr. James B. Conant as uncommitted investigators.” The
uncommitted investigator, says Dr. Conant, is one who does the
investigation entirely on his own initiative, without any direction
by or responsibility to anyone else, and free from any requirement
that the work must produce results.

Research is, in some respects, like fishing. If you make your living
as a fisherman, you must fish where you know that there are fish,
even though you also know that those fish are only small ones. No
one but the amateur can take the risk of going into completely
unknown areas in search of a big prize. Similarly, the professional
scientist cannot afford to spend twenty or thirty of the productive
years of his life in pursuit of some goal that involves a break with
the accepted thought of his profession. But we uncommitted
investigators are primarily interested in the fishing, and while we
like to make a catch, this is merely an extra dividend. It is not
essential as it is for those who depend on the catch for their
livelihood. We are the only ones who can afford to take the risks of
fishing in unknown waters. As Dr. Conant puts it,

Few will deny that it is relatively easy in science to fill in
the details of a new area, once the frontier has been crossed.
The crucial event is turning the unexpected corner. This is not
given to most of us to do… By definition the unexpected corner
cannot be turned by any operation that is planned… If you want
advances in the basic theories of physics and chemistry in the
future comparable to those of the last two centuries, then it
would seem essential that there continue to be people in a
position to turn unexpected corners. Such a man I have ventured
to call the uncommitted investigator.

As might be expected, the task that I had undertaken was a long and
difficult one, but after about twenty years I had arrived at some
interesting mathematical expressions in several areas, one of the
most intriguing of which was an expression for the inter-atomic
distance in the solid state in terms of three variables clearly
related to the properties portrayed by the periodic table of the
elements. But a mathematical expression, however accurate it may be,
has only a limited value in itself. Before we can make full use of
the relationship that it expresses, we must know something as to its
/meaning./ So my next objective was to find out why the mathematics
took this particular form. I studied these expressions from all
angles, analyzing the different terms, and investigating all of the
hypotheses as to their origin that I could think of. This was a
rather discouraging phase of the project, as for a long time I
seemed to be merely spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. On
several occasions I decided to abandon the entire project, but in
each case, after several months of inactivity I thought of some
other possibility that seemed worth investigating, and I returned to
the task. Eventually it occurred to me that, when expressed in one
particular form, the mathematical relation that I had formulated for
the inter-atomic distance would have a simple and logical
explanation if I merely assumed that there is a general reciprocal
relation between space and time.

My first reaction to this thought was the same as that of a great
many others. The idea of the reciprocal of space, I said to myself,
is absurd. One might as well talk of the reciprocal of a pail of
water, or the reciprocal of a fencepost. But on further
consideration I could see that the idea is not so absurd after all.
The only relation between space and time of which we have any actual
knowledge is motion, and in motion space and time do have a
reciprocal relation. If one airplane travels twice as fast as
another, it makes no difference whether we say that it travels twice
as far in the same time, or that it travels the same distance in
half the time. This is not necessarily /a general/ reciprocal
relation, but the fact that it is a reciprocal relation gives the
idea of a general relation a considerable degree of plausibility.

So I took the next step, and started considering what the
consequences of a reciprocal relation of this nature might be. Much
to my surprise, it was immediately obvious that such a relation
leads directly to simple and logical answers to no less than a half
dozen problems of long standing in widely separated physical fields.
Those of you who have never had occasion to study the foundations of
physical theory in depth probably do not realize what an
extraordinary result this actually is. Every theory of present-day
physical science has been formulated to apply specifically to some
one physical field, and not a single one of these theories can
provide answers to major questions in any other field. They may
/help/ to provide these answers but in no case can any of them
arrive at such an answer unassisted. Yet here in the reciprocal
postulate we find a theory of the relation between space and time
that leads directly, without any assistance from any other
theoretical assumptions or from empirical facts, to simple and
logical answers /to many/ different problems /in many/ different
fields. This is something completely unprecedented. A theory based
on the reciprocal relation accomplishes on a wholesale scale what no
other theory can do at all.

To illustrate what I am talking about, let us consider the recession
of the distant galaxies. As most of you know, astronomical
observations indicate that the most distant galaxies are receding
from the earth at speeds which approach the speed of light. No
conventiona1 physical theory can explain this recession. Indeed,
even if you put all of the theories of conventional physics
together, you still have no explanation of this phenomenon. In order
to arrive at any such explanation the astronomers have to make some
assumption, or assumptions, specifically applicable to the recession
itself. The current favorite, the Big Bang theory, assumes a
gigantic explosion at some hypothetical singular point in the past
in which the entire contents of the universe were thrown out into
space at their present high speeds. The rival Steady State theory
assumes the continual creation of new matter, which in some
unspecified way creates a pressure that pushes the galaxies apart at
the speeds now observed. But the reciprocal postulate, an assumption
that was made to account for the magnitudes of the inter-atomic
distances in the solid state, gives us an explanation of the
galactic recession without the necessity of making any assumptions
about that recession or about the that are receding. It is not even
necessary to arrive at any c as to what a galaxy is. Obviously it
must be something—or its existence could not be recognized—and as
long as it is something, the reciprocal relation tells us that it
must be moving outward away from our location at the speed of light,
because the /location/ which it occupies is so moving. On the basis
of this relation, the spatial separation between any two physical
locations, the “elapsed distance,” as we may call it, is increasing
at the same rate as the elapsed time.
Of course, any new answer to a major question that is provided by a
new theory leaves some subsidiary questions that require further
consideration, but the road to the resolution of these subsidiary
issues is clear once the primary problem is overcome. The
explanation of the recession, the reason why the most distant
galaxies recede with the speed of light, leaves us with the question
as to why the closer galaxies have lower recession speeds, but the
answer to this question is obvious, since we know that gravitation
exerts a retarding effect which is greater at the shorter distances.

Another example of the many major issues of long standing that are
resolved almost automatically by the reciprocal postulate is the
mechanism of the propagation of electromagnetic radiation. Here,
again, no conventional physical theory is able to give us an
explanation. As in the case of the galactic recession, it is
necessary to make some assumption about the radiation itself before
any kind of a theory can be formulated, and in this instance
conventional thinking has not even been able to produce an
acceptable hypothesis. Newton’s assumption of light corpuscles
traveling in the manner of bullets from a gun, and the rival
hypothesis of waves in a hypothetical ether, were both eventually
rejected. There is a rather general impression that Einstein
supplied an explanation, but Einstein himself makes no such claim.
In one of his books he points out what a difficult problem this
actually is, and he concludes with this statement:

Our only way out seems to be to take for granted the fact that
space has the physical property of transmitting electromagnetic
waves, and not to bother too much about the meaning of this
statement.

So, as matters now stand, conventional science has no explanation at
all for this fundamental physical phenomenon. But here, too, the
reciprocal postulate gives us a simple and logical explanation. It
is, in fact, the /same/ explanation that accounts for the recession
of the distant galaxies. Here, again, there is no need to make any
assumption about the photon itself. It is not even necessary to know
what a photon is. As long as it is something, it is carried outward
at the speed of light by the motion of the spatial location which it
occupies.

No more than a minimum amount of consideration was required in order
to see that the answers to a number of other physical problems of
long standing similarly emerged easily and naturally on application
of the reciprocal postulate. This was clearly something that had to
be followed up. No investigator who arrived at this point could stop
without going on to see just how far the consequences of the
reciprocal relation would extend. The results of that further
investigation constitute what we now know as the Reciprocal System
of theory. As I have already said, it is not a construction, and not
a revelation. Now you can see just what it is. It is nothing more
nor less than the total of the consequences that result if there is
a general reciprocal relation between space and time. As matters now
stand, the details of the new theoretical system, so far as they
have been developed, can be found only in my publications and those
of my associates, but the system of theory is not coextensive with
what has thus far been written about it. In reality, it consists of
any and all of the consequences that follow when we adopt the
hypothesis of a general reciprocal relation between space and time.
A general recognition of this point would go a long way toward
meeting some of our communication problems. Certainly no one should
have any objection to an investigation of the consequences of such a
hypothesis. Indeed, anyone who is genuinely interested in the
advancement of science, and who realizes the unprecedented scope of
these consequences, can hardly avoid wanting to find out just how
far they actually extend. As a German reviewer expressed it.

Only a careful investigation of all of the author’s
deliberations can show whether or not he is right. The official
schools of natural philosophy should not shun this
(considerable, to be sure) effort. After all, we are concerned
here with questions of fundamental significance.

Yet, as all of you undoubtedly know, the scientific community,
particularly that segment of the community that we are accustomed to
call the Establishment, is very reluctant to permit general
discussion of the theory in the journals and in scientific meetings.
They are not contending that the conclusions we have reached are
wrong; they are simply trying to ignore them, and hope that they
will eventually go away. This is, of course, a thoroughly
unscientific attitude, but since it exists we have to deal with it,
and for this purpose it will be helpful to have some idea of the
thinking that underlies the opposition. There are some individuals
who simply do not want their thinking disturbed, and are not open to
any kind of an argument. William James, in one of his books, reports
a conversation that he had with a prominent scientist concerning
what we now call ESP. This man, says James, contended that even if
ESP is a reality, scientists should band together to keep that fact
from becoming known, since the existence of any such thing would
cause havoc in the fundamental thought of science. Some individuals
no doubt feel the same way about the Reciprocal System, and so far
as these persons are concerned there is not much that we can do.
There is no argument that can counter an arbitrary refusal to
consider what we have to offer.

In most cases, however, the opposition is based on a
misunderstanding of our position. The issue between the supporters
of rival scientific theories normally is: Which is the /better/
theory? The basic question involved is which theory agrees more
closely with the observations and measurements in the physical areas
to which the theories apply, but since all such theories are
specifically constructed to it the observations, the decision
usually has to rest to a large degree on preferences and prejudices
of a philosophical or other non-scientific nature. Most of those who
encounter the Reciprocal System of theory for the first time take it
for granted that we are simply raising another issue, or several
issues, of the same kind. The astronomers, for instance, are under
the impression that we are contending that the outward progression
of the natural reference system is a /better/ explanation of the
recession of the distant galaxies than the Big Bang. But this is not
our contention at all. We have found that we need to postulate a
general reciprocal relation between space and time in order to
explain certain fundamental physical phenomena that cannot be
explained by any conventional physical theory. But once we have
postulated this relationship it supplies simple and logical answers
for the major problems that arise in all physical areas. Thus our
contention is not that we have a better assortment of theories to
replace the Big Ban and other specialized theories of limited scope,
but that we have a/ general/ theory that applies to all physical
fields. These theories of limited applicability are therefore
totally unnecessary.

While this present volume is described as the first unit of a “revised
and enlarged” edition, the /revisions/ are actually few and far between.
As stated earlier, there have been no substantive changes in the
postulates since they were originally formulated. Inasmuch as the entire
structure o g theory has been derived from these postulates by deducing
their logical and mathematical consequences, the development of theory
in this new edition is essentially y significant difference b the same
as in the original, the only significant difference being ina few places
where points that were originally somewhat vague have been clarified, or
where more direct lines of development have been substituted for the
earlier derivations. However, many problems are encountered in getting
an unconventional work of this kind into print, and in order to make the
original publication possible at all it was necessary to limit the scope
of the work, both as to the number of subjects covered and as to the
extent to which the details of each subject were developed. For this
reason the purpose of this new edition is not only to bring the
theoretical structure up to date by incorporating all of the advances
that have been made in the last twenty years, but also to present the
portions of the original results—approximately half of the total—that
had to be omitted from the first edition.

Because of this large increase in the size of the work, the new edition
will be issued in several volumes. This first volume is self contained.
It develops the basic laws and principles applicable to physical
phenomena in general, and defines the entire chain of deductions leading
from the fundamental postulates to each of the conclusions that are
reached in the various physical areas that are covered. The subsequent
volumes will apply the same basic laws and principles to a variety of
other physical phenomena. It has seemed advisable to change the order of
presentation to some extent, and as a result a substantial amount of the
material omitted from the first edition has been included in this
volume, whereas some subjects, such as electric and magnetic phenomena,
that were discussed rather early in the first edition have been deferred
to the later volumes.

For the benefit of those who do not have access to the first edition
(which is out of print) and wish to examine what the Reciprocal System
of theory has to say about these deferred items before the subsequent
volumes are published, I will say that brief discussions of some of
these subjects are contained in my 1965 publication, / New Light on
Space and Time </books/nlosat>,/ and some further astronomical
information, with particular reference to the recently discovered
compact astronomical objects, can be found in /Quasars and Pulsars
</books/qp>,/ published in 1971.

It will not be feasible to acknowledge all of the many individual
contributions that have been made toward developing the details of thc
theoretical system and bringing it to the attention of the scientific
community. However, I will say that I am particularly indebted to the
founders of the New Science Advocates, Dr. Douglas S. Cramer, Dr. Paul
F. de Lespinasse, and Dr. George W. Hancock; to Dr. Frank A, Anderson,
the current President of the NSA, who did the copy editing for this
volume, along with his many other contributions; and to the past and
present members of the NSA Executive Board: Steven Berline, RonaId F.
Blackburn, Frances Boldereff, James N. Brown, Jr., Lawrence Denslow,
Donald T. Elkins, Rainer Huck, Todd Kelso, Richard L. Long, Frank H.
Meyer, William J. Mitchell, Harold Norris, Carla Rueckert, Ronald W.
Satz, George Windolph, and Hans F. Wuenscher.

D. B. Larson