Talk:Le Sage's theory of gravitation

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Reviewed version: November 15, 2007
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Contents

[edit] Background Radiation

I deleted the comment about zero point energy from the Background Radiation section because zero point energy is not any kind of "background radiation", and bears no resemblance to Le Sage's momentum flux streaming rectilinearly through space. In quantum field theory the whole notion of mechanistic entities that can be tracked through space like normal objects is discarded. I simply think it's too much of a stretch to credit Fatio or Le Sage for predicting quantum field theory. To my mind, this is a "novel historical narrative and interpretation" of the kind that does not belong in Wikipedia. I would need to see a reputable source stating that Le Sage theory predicted the zero point energy of quantum field theory.SJC1 23:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your edits and only included some wikilinks (also the headline "background radiation" was doubled before). But I thought it would be worth mentioning, that indeed a "attracting force" like the casimir effect arises from some sort of push process in the vacuum. Of course, it's not exactly a Le Sage type shielding.... --D.H 09:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

I think the POV tag at the beginning of the article should be removed. The entire article is mainly based on primary historical sources. Also the prediction/criticism section reflects mainstream science and therefore is NPOV according to Wikipedia policies. --D.H 09:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No objection was made, so I removed the POV tag. --D.H 17:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major edits

Now, after some months I think that the greatest parts of my edits are over. The historical and thematic parts are fully discussed in the article. (There are only a few changes in the Le Sage and Tommasina section to made....if I can grasp some primary sources). Here is a list of my recent edits:

  1. Minor corrections in the Fatio and Le Sage sections.
  2. Including a description of the wave theory of Keller in the Keller, Leray, Boisbaudran section.
  3. Creation of a new Isenkrahe, Rysanek, Du Bois-Reymond section.
  4. Expanding the Lorentz section.
  5. Shortening the Poincare/Thomson section.
  6. Some edits in the Porosity of Matter section (Including a comment to the electrical constitution of matter).
  7. Rename and rewrite the mass accretion section into Absorbed Energy.
  8. Inserting some links to: Keller, Picart, Du Bois-Reymond, Farr (all primary) and to a new mathpages article (secondary). --D.H 21:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


// I have no sources, but I think that the "Main Theory" paragraph talking about elastic collisions (and the gravitic particles 'necessarily' having not-completely-elastic collisions) is fundamentally flawed. All elastic collisions impart net momentum: The object is technically decelerated to zero velocity, then accelerated to -V velocity, so that 2*M*V momentum is imparted to the thing that was hit. I don't want to change the main article without resources, but can someone with more physics under their belt confirm that elastic collisions with a net direction (the other side of object A being shadowed) impart net force? Clarion2050 20:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[User:clarion2050|clarion2050]]16:18:00, 21 June 2007

[edit] Including the Mainstream - The Silent Majority

I think the recent edits of D.H are pretty good, but I think the article is still lacking any coherent and comprehensive presentation of the mainstream view. What I mean is this: The article contains a lot of non-mainstream assertions along with the associated non-mainstream reasoning... and then it says "Mainstream science disagrees", or "Mainstream scientists don't take this seriously", or words to that effect. The problem is, the article rarely gives the mainstream REASONS for disagreeing or for not taking something seriously. Newton laughs at it, Herschel says it's grotesque, Euler says it's repugnant, Darwin says no man of science agrees with it, Poincare speaks disdainfully of it, Feynman says it doesn't work, and so on... yet the article rarely explains WHY all these scientists held these views. The difficulty here (in Wikipedia) is that the mainstream scientists regard Le Sage as SO self-evidently wrong and childish, that it would be a waste of time to publish anything about it. So almost the only things that have been published about it are things written by people to whom the foolishness of the theory is not self-evident. Hence we never get the mainstream side of the story. At most, we get a handful of popular expository articles that just cite Le Sage as an example of a theory that doesn't work, but never really explaining in scientific detail WHY it doesn't work. The same is true for other discredited theories, such as the theory that gravity is due to all material bodies expanding at an accelerating rate, causing the distances between them to shrink. Now, this is an absurd theory, but the only things published on it are in favor of it, because no serious person would stoop to address it. Le Sage is not quite in that same category, but it's close. So, to try to address this problem in the article, I made some additions to the Energy Absorption section, under Criticisms and Predictions. This isn't chisled in stone, but it indicates the KIND of explanation of the mainstream view that I think is needed in the article.SJC1 23:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think, that the article "rarely gives the mainstream REASONS for disagreeing". In fact, every reason for the overthrow of the theory (thermodynamic, drag, aberration, shielding, infinite energy etc.) ís discussed in detail. And the same arguments against the theory are valid today. BTW: The only "official" discussion between Le Sage gravity proponants and mainstream physisists are the newsgroup discussions of Steve Carlip with Stowe/Mingst or Van Flandern - but newsgroup postings are hardly a reputable source of information....
Maybe the Maxwell section was a little bit unclear, so I added a sentence refering to the handling of the thermodynamic problem in the Poincare section. Also I included a citation of Aronson in the Absorbed Energy section and left your corrections regarding "conversion from hot to cold" unchanged - but I removed the passage of the unexplained absorption capability of the ultramandane corpuscles. The problematic of cohesive forces and the nature of particles is already mentioned in the Bois-Reymond section. Every step beyond that would lead us to some sort of original research, which isn't allowed in Wikipedia (for some very good reasons). --D.H 18:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Du Bois-Reymond Cone-Proof?

I question the value of describing the "du Bois-Reymond cone-proof" in so much detail, because all he is saying is that, according to Le Sage theory, there is gravitational saturation, so it doesn't maintain mass proportionality for masses greater than a certain size. The "cone proof" is just a convoluted and obscure way of saying the same thing. It could be summarized in just a sentence, saying that du Bois cited saturation as an objection to the theory. (Of course, since saturation can be made as small as we like, this isn't really a very strong objection, except that it highlights the lack of falsifiability of Le Sage theory, since it has enough free variables to nullify every prediction.) Much more important is du Bois's comment that even if Le Sage theory was empirically viable, it would not accomplish its intent, which is to eliminate elementary attractive forces at a distance.

So, my suggestion is to delete the image and most of the description of the "cone proof", and just note that du Bois cited saturation and the lack of strict mass proportionality as objections to the theory. Then expand on his comments on the failure of Le Sage gravity to eliminate elementary attractive forces at a distance.SJC1 16:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be some misunderstandings. Bois's argument has nothing to do with saturation or shielding. It is only based on the finite strength of the ultramundane flux, which means that mass proportionality is nicht strictly fulfilled in Le Sage's theory, independent (!) from the question, whether there is some shielding or not (The shielding effect must be computed additionally). --D.H 10:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
No, they are not independent, they are the same thing. In Le Sage theory the force of gravity is essentially equal to the product of the flux intensity and the surface area per gram of mass. To achieve approximate mass proportionality, we need to minimize saturation and shielding, which means we need to make the surface area per gram of mass extremely small, which means the flux intensity must be extremely great. To completely eliminate saturation and internal shielding, it would be necessary to have ZERO surface area per gram, and therefore infinite intensity of flux. But this is not possible. (The force of gravity would then be infinity times zero.) So du Bois was NOT saying anything new. He was simply objecting to the saturation limit implicit in Le Sage theory, expressing it in a different way.
This highlights one of the problems with the existing article: It has section headers like "Later Developments", implying that there have been "developments" in Fatio-Le Sage theory. That isn't accurate. Nothing new has been said about Fatio-Le Sage theory since about 1694. All that has happened since then is that new people have come along to repeat the same things, over and over. The way the article is presently written, it could easily mislead the reader into thinking this is some kind of "active" field of research, when in fact there has been nothing new in over 300 years (and it was anachronitic already in the 1690s!)SJC1 20:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fatio and Le Sage

First of all, I created a Wikisource page, where I placed Plarfair's Notice de la Vie et des Ecrits de George Louis Le Sage (in English).

I think SJC1's recent edits do not provide an accurate historical description.

  1. It isn't necessary, to comment on every single statement Le Sage's, that Fatio hat the same idea before. So I inserted one passage, which present Zehe's statement on this issue. I wrote: Le Sage discussed the theory very detailed, but by comparing it with Fatio's theory, Zehe judged that Le Sage actually contributed nothing essentially new and, although Le Sage was in possession of Fatio's papers, he often didn't reach Fatio's level.
  2. It's not true, that "in none of Le Sage's published works did he acknowledge any of his predecessors". He did in the 1756 paper and in the 1818 paper (published by Prevost). Sometimes he says, Fatio's theory is "perfectly similar" to his own, that he said it is "ill-assured". Therefore I've created an extra section for "Fatio and Le Sage" - including the citations of the letter to Lambert, and his comment in Lucrece Newtonien. The section shows, how contradicting Le Sage's statements were. I think that's sufficient.

PS: In my POV, the reasons of Le Sage's peculiar statements are founded in his mental and physical constitution. We know, that Le Sage had an accident, which left him almost blind. Also his catastrophic memory must be considered as well. But my POV doesn't belong in the article. --D.H 17:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

For aspects of the theory that have already been described by Fatio, there really is no need to repeat them at all in the Le Sage section. I agree it is tedious to have a long list of statements, each prefaced with the words "Like Fatio, Le Sage said...", but the proper way to fix this tedium is to simply delete the statements. Once we have said that Le Sage's theory is essentially identical to Fatio's, what else needs to be said? Fatio's theory has already been described in detail in the previous section.
You are counting Prevosts 1818 publication as one of Le Sage's "four" published works, and this is certainly justifiable for technical content, but since it was prepared for publication by Prevost many years after Le Sage's death, it is obviously not valid testimony of Le Sage's willingness to credit Fatio in his published works. Furthermore, the "crediting" that Fatio receives in Prevost's publication is actually more of an denigration than a credit. It was on the basis of Prevost's account that all subsequent researchers who relied on him believed that Fatio "had really not explained gravity at all", and that Le Sage was very generous to even mention him. But this is all irrelevant, because, as I said, this was Prevost's publication. Of the remaining three "publications", only two actually have the status of real publications, and in neither of those did Le Sage credit his predecessors. So, I think D.H is padding and slanting the history to suit his tastes.
Furthermore, Le Sage's most polished mature presentation, Newtonian Lucretius, does not simply omit mention of his predecessors, it contains a long section in which Le Sage arrogantly berates all previous thinkers for failing to discover "his" theory, which is so simple that HE was able to discover it as a mere child. I think this material is very appropriate for inclusion in this article, as it gives the fullest direct account of what Le Sage claimed regarding his own accomplishment and that of his (unnamed) predecessors. Deleting this primary material from Le Sage's most famous work (as D.H has done) is motivated only by the fact that it doesn't support a particular POV. I think the material should be re-instated, to give an accurate historical account of Le Sage.
As to the actual reasons for why Le Sage wrote what he did in Lucretius, and whether it was a result of blindness or a bad memory, or a preference to believe that he had accomplished something with his life, we obviously aren't in a position to know. All we can do is accurately report what he published. On that basis, by today's standards, the readers can conclude for themselves that Le Sage clearly was either mentally impaired or else he was knowingly claiming undue credit to himself (or perhaps both).SJC1 18:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The current list of references to the article lists only two publications of Le Sage on this theory, so I'm removed the comments about his FOUR published papers until those are cited.SJC1 07:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

  1. I thought the phrase "vague and ill-assured fashion" would be sufficient. But if you want to insert more specific material from Lucrece Newtonien, no problem. BTW: Is the Smithsonian-Lucretius-paper public domain? Than I could place Abbot's translation as a Wikisource page - what about that?
  2. Also the letter to "Mercure de France" is a publication and must be mentioned. And regarding the Physique Mechanique publication: Well, it wasn't published by Le Sage himself. But also the Lucrece-paper wasn't published by Le Sage, but was read by Prevost in Berlin. So at the end, both papers carry the fingerprints of Prevost. The only papers "published" by Le Sage himself were his various letters and his "Essai" (but which was only in possession of a handful people.)
  3. Regarding POV: My edits are mostly based on primary sources, which is the best way to avoid POV. --D.H 09:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

My apparent quibbling about what qualifies as a "publication" is due to the fact that there seems to be a double standard applied to Le Sage and Fatio. The article asserts flatly that Fatio never published anything on the subject, and this is sometimes offered as justification for not crediting him, and yet Fatio actually presented papers to the Royal Society, and circulated drafts, and got prominent fellow scientists to sign them, wrote letters, and even submitted a description of his theory to a Prize contest in Paris (similar to Le Sage's prize entry)... yet none of this counts as publication or "communicating his ideas". Well, okay... but when we then consider Le Sage, is it correct to credit him with essays, letters that circulated among a small number of people, and with contest prize entries, and with things that were actually published by others, especially many years after his death? In my opinion, Fatio and Le Sage were not much different in how much they, themselves, actually "published" in a formal sense. Le Sage was more fortunate to have a friend (Prevost) interested in promoting his ideas, and also in living at a time when formal modern ideas about "publication" were becoming more prevalent.SJC1 20:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a "double standard". In fact, none of the Fatio-material in the article was published in his lifetime, but was published long after his death by Bopp and Gagnebin. Also the Fatio-reception section is only based on letters, which were'n published for a long thim. So under those circumstances, it would be unfair not to include Le Sage's material like the "Phyisque Mechanique" or some of his letters. Of course it's true: The main difference between Fatio and Le Sage was not the number of published works, but the existence of friends like Prevost, Deluc etc., who presented Le Sage's theory in their papers. But none of Fatio's "friends" like Huygens, Bernoulli etc. did something like that. --D.H 13:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point. As I said initially, it's perfectly appropriate to cite posthumous works and letters and anything else for technical information as to their theories. But the question at hand is the proper crediting of the person who originated the theory, and the avoidance of giving posterity a false impression of whose theory it was. For this purpose, we can place very little weight on posthumously published works assembled and edited by other people. We are interested in what the person officially claimed, for the record. And for this we must rely most heavily on any formal publications... which for Le Sage limits us to just two (at most!) documents, namely, the prize essay and Lucretius, in neither of which he credited anyone else, and in fact strongly claimed that he was the first to successfully grasp the theory. On the other hand, the double-standard arises when people say that Le Sage deserves to be credited with the theory, even though he wasn't the first to think of it, because he published it whereas Fatio did not. This is where I see some double standard, because Fatio promoted and publicized his idea as energetically as Le Sage did, and both submitted prize contest entries, and so on.SJC1 20:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "If it is a dream..."

The claim that Lichenberg "supported Le Sage's idea for a long time" is substantiated only by the quotation that begins "If it is a dream, ...". This, in itself, does not really indicate support of a scientific theory, to call it a dream. It should also be noted that this somewhat anachronistic form of "if" expression in English has the meaning "Although it is a dream..." So, I suggest providing some actual reference for the claim that Lichenberg supported Le Sage for a long time. Also, the aspect of Kant's philosophy that compelled him to change his mind, and his final mature considered opinion of Le Sage's theory should be presented.SJC1 07:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I will provide more information. PS: Thanks for the info regarding the word "if". I replaced it with "in case". --D.H 09:38, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The replacement of "if" with "in case" doesn't really address the point. Here's a sentence from one of Fatio's friends for you to parse: "If I have seen further than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". This is a semantical device, considered slightly affectatious, whereby someone explains something without having to actually assert it. It is NOT exactly a conditional if/then statement, as in "IN CASE I have seen further than others, THEN I stood on the shoulders of giants." No, he is saying "Far be it from me to ever claim that I have seen further than others (I am much too modest)... but if I have, it's because I stood on the shoulders of giants." Of course, shorn of the nuanced syntax, his real message is "I have seen further than others because I stood on the shoulders of giants". The "if" is just for being nice. I don't think this kind of "if" formulation is confined to English, because when I read what Lichtenberg said, it strikes me that he was speaking in the same sense. Ultimately the sentence must be placed in context. Trying to do history by isolated "sound bites" is risky... and susceptible to manipulation and distortion.SJC1 00:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Your edits concerning Lichtenberg are not correct. I know the meaning of Lichtenberg's german statement very well, but maybe the way of my description was unclear. The word "although" (which you used) is inappropriate - Lichtenberg made his statement in a time, when he supported Le Sage's model - not afterwards, as your edits suggested. So I tried to make a better one:

In 1790 he expressed his enthusiasm for the theory, because Le Sage's theory embraces all of our knowledge und makes any further dreaming useless. But should Le Sage's theory have been only a dream "it is the greatest and the most magnificent which was ever dreamed".

--D.H 14:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It still sounds fishy to me. Instead of paraphrasing him, could you provide the entire quote in context, and cite the reference?SJC1 20:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Totally Inelastic?

I think there's a problem with the paragraph describing Le Sage's basic concept. It says he postulated totally inelastic colisions, but then it says he talked about reducing the speed of the corpuscles by 2/3. Well, if the colisions are totally inelastic, the speed (relative to the ordinary matter) is reduced to zero, by definition. So the corpuscles just stick to the bars, perhaps slipping off later. The thing about reducing speed by 2/3 must be based on some assumed elasticity. The thing about angles of incidence really doesn't make sense either. This is presumably when Maxwell meant when he said Le Sage's theory of impact was faulty.SJC1 22:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

One other point: The article tries to excuse Le Sage for not realizing that Fatio's theory involved inelastic interactions by saying the section of Fatio's paper where this is explained is difficult to understand. That's not a valid argument, because throughout Fatio's description, in all the sections, he states explicitly several times that the force of gravity is due to the particles having less speed going away than they had when approaching. There is simply no plausible way for any sentient being to "miss" this. You don't have to slog through a difficult sections of his paper, he states it right up front, in just so many words. So, I think the attempted excuse about the difficult sections should be removed from the article.SJC1 22:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding elasticity: The same argument (including absolute hardness, inelasticaty) was made by Isenkrahe - and he derived the same value as Le Sage. The explanation was as follows: Suppose a straight line, and many particles travelling relativ to that line. The particle-velocity after the impact of two particles is zero only in the case, that both particles are travelling on the same straight line and therefore after the impact their kinetic energy if fully destroyed. But if only one particle is travelling on that line, and the other particle is coming from another angle, only the velocity component in the direction of that line is destroyed in the second particle, but the other component remains. Under those assumptions Isenkrahe calculated the resultant mean velocity, and like Le Sage, he came to the conclusion, that the mean velocity of the particles after the collision is 2/3. --D.H 14:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't make sense. According to Le Sage theory, the ultramundane corpuscles are moving so much faster than the greatest speed of motion of ordinary matter that drag is negligible. In other words, from the standpoint of the ultramundane particles, the particles of ordinary matter at all essentially stationary. Now, if Le Sage (and Isenkrahe) want(s) to claim that the particles of ordinary matter are spherical (for example), and the ultramundane particles lose all their motion in the direction normal to the surface of the ordinary matter particle, but none of their motion is lost in the tangential direction, then this should be stated. This isn't really describing perfectly inelastic collisions, it is describing a more complicated kind of scattering interaction. But from what you said, this is not what they had in mind, because you talked about both particles moving in various directions prior to contact, and that is simply not relevant to Le Sage theory. As far as interactions are concerns, the ordinary matter is essentially a stationary target for the incoming corpuscles.SJC1 21:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
A follow-up on this point: A 2/3 factor is easily seen to come from assuming spherical particles of ordinary matter, and assuming the collisions are totally inelastic normal to the surface, and totally elastic tangential to the surface. But three points need to be made about this. First, it is not what you described, regarding the lines of motion of the particles. Second, as Darwin showed, Le Sage's theory does NOT give an inverse square law if you assume the normal elasticity is different from the tangential elasticity. Third, the 2/3 factor applies only to the ultramundane corpuscles that make contact with ordinary matter, which is a negligibly small fraction of all the ultramundane corpuscles, so the whole thing is irrelevant anyway. So, unless we want to present this "2/3 business" as an example of the senseless and misguided thought processes of Le Sage and his adherents, I think it should just be charitably deleted.SJC1 02:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Your description is correct. Isenkrahe first used the example with the "straight line" only ot show the difference between the various forms of collision. Then in the next chapter he calculated the effect of the collision of the gravific particles on a stationary body and he derived the 2/3 factor. Isenkrahe also noted that under this suppositions the inverse square law is only valid on greater distances.

BTW: Le Sage derived the 2/3 factor as well, but he never clearly pointed out why -- maybe the issue should be discussed in the Isenkrahe section, not in the Le Sage section. --D.H 14:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scholared Associates?

The article says Le Sage's ideas attracted little support, except for his "scholared associated Prevost, Bonnet, Deluc and L'Huilier". The word would be scholarly instead of scholared, except that I don't think this is a good characterization. Previously the article called them "close associates", which was better. Basically, Prevost and L'Huilier were Le Sage's students, and Bonnet was his best friend, and Deluc was a Swiss geologist and meteorologist. All four were either very close associates/students/friends, with the possible exception of Deluc (I don't know if he was personally friends with Le Sage or not), but Deluc wasn't a physicist anyway, so the word "scholarly" is misleading anyway. I think it was more accurate the way it was written previously, i.e., his close associates, or maybe identify them as "his students Prevost and L'Huilier, his close friend Bonnet, and the Swiss geologist Deluc". The point is, list his next-door neighbor and his barber and his brother-in-law as scholarly supporters of his theory is kind of silly and POV slanting on the basic fact that his theory essentially attracted no supporters. Sure, a couple of his students and his best friend wrote favorably about it, but that's just silly and POV to list those people without acknowledging how closely they were related to Le Sage (if they are going to be mentioned at all).SJC1 06:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've changed the text, but: To bring scholarly people like Prevost, Bonnet, Deluc and L'Huilier in connection to "barbers", "brothers-in-law" etc. is the only thing, which is "silly and POV". So I please you to tone down your comments. --D.H 16:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] em-waves

I was able to find some historical material on the connection between Le Sage gravity and electromagnetic waves.

  1. The secondary re-radiation mechanism was first developed by Thomson in 1904 in his paper Electricity and Matter. The "matter" article in 1911 was only a renewed version of his 1904-paper. Therefore Poincare was only repeating Thomson's re-radiation argument. So I moved the Thomsons section into the Lorentz-section and finshed the section with as small Tommasina/Brush passage.
  2. Poincare published his criticism on Lesage for the first time in 1908 in his paper La dynamique de l'électron, Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées 19, pp. 386-402. That paper was reprinted in the same year in Science and Methode.
  3. Aronson wrote : "Poincare notes without comment that as late as 1900 the eminent physicist Lorentz was still working on Tommasina's wave formulation of the theory of gravitation." That's wrong. It was Lorentz, who first introduced such a mechanism in 1900 - in that paper Tommasina's name isn't mentioned. But Tommasina published his first explanation of gravitation in 1903 - Tommasina also said in one of his papers, that his theory is "competely different" from that of Loretnz, because Tommasina also introduced long-wavelength radition. But because Poincare first mentioned Tommasina and after him Lorentz, Aronson obviously believed, that Poincare's description was in a historical order. So based on those primary sources I've changed the order of the theories.
  4. I've included a link to Maxwell's "Atom" from Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th edition and created a wikisource-version of Thomson's article "Matter" from Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition. --D.H 17:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shielding

I've shortened the shielding passage and re-inserted the passage in the article on gravitational shielding. --D.H 11:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some edits

I wrote some passages about P.G. Tait, Hendrik Lorentz and Richard Feynman and included links to
Le Sage: Deux traités de physique mécanique
Tait: Lectures on some recent advances in physical science with a special lecture on force
Lorentz: Lectures On Theoretical Physics (pp. 151-155)
Arp: Le Sage gravity
Mathpages: Kinetic Pressure and Tetrode’s Star
Auffray: Preston on E=mc² and Dual origin of E=mc²
--D.H 10:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] F.A.E.

What's F.A.E. stand for? Denis tarasov 18:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. See their paper (online available): Keller, F.A.E & Keller, Ém. (1863), “Mémoire sur la cause de la pesanteur et des effets attribués à l'attraction universelle”, Comptes Rendus 56: 530-533, <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3013s/f530.item>  --D.H 09:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fatio and Le Sage, II

I'm now in possesion of Prevost's Biography on Le Sage, which includes many details on the relation Fatio and Le Sage. So, to make this article more readable, I deleted the "Fatio and Le Sage" section from this article and wrote a more detailed account in the article on Georges-Louis Le Sage. --D.H 18:37, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Lomonosov ??

Since every other person who ever uttered a word about this theory has been included in the article, it seems we should include a few words on Losomonov, or whatever his name was. I think he described the theory in a letter to Euler.SJC1 04:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it was Mikhail Lomonosov, but I wasn't able to find out what exactly he said on this topic. --D.H 14:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I found a paper of Lomonosov in Englisch. See [1]. It's interesting that Lomonosov's theory ist not a Le Sage type model, so I've included a description of Lomonosov's theory in the article mechanical explanations of gravitation and not in Le Sage's theory of gravitation. --D.H 21:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Feynman on Models versus Math

I don't think the concluding quote in the Feynman paragraph (beginning with "Well, you say, it was a good one...") is relevant to this article, for the following reasons: At this point he has concluded his discussion of Le Sage theory (which was just an example), and has gone back to talking very generally about all possible kinds of physics theories, not just Le Sage or even mechanical, but all kinds of physics theories, and he is trying to make a point that no one has ever been able to reduce the inverse-square action-at-a-distance law to primitive and simple local operations. Well, that statement is flatly false, as he knew fell well. General relativity eliminates action-at-a-distance, and everything is the result of local primitive actions. And Feynman's claim is muddled, becuase he also talks about "making the math simpler", whereas the math of Le Sage theory is not simpler than Newton's simple inverse square law. Actually, the math of Le Sage is much MORE complicated, in the aggregate, than Newton's simple instantaneous inverse-square law, and leads to endless complications and difficulties. Now, you may say that Feynman meant that Le Sage was simpler on the microscopic primitive level, where each particle is moving by simple laws locally along its path, and doesn't have to know what is happenning far away... well, that's fine, but by that criteria any field theory is even simpler. General relativity is conceptually extremely simple, and the primitive local operations are trivial, much simpler than (for example) Le Sage collisions. And general relativity has the added advantage of actually being a successful theory, conceptually coherent, and consistent with observation. So this statement of Feynman's doesn't really make sense, but more importantly it's not relevant to the subject of this article. He was talking in the context of a larger discussion about the relation between mathematics and modeling, and the quoted statement, taken out of context, is inconsistent with many things that Feynman said in other places (about the simplicity and logical economy of general relativity, for example), so if this oddball statement is going to be included, it must be acompanied with more context...and it's just not worth the effort. He was just explaining to the audience why nature seems to be mathematical, and no one has ever been able to give a good theory that didn't involve math. But Le Sage theory is not less math-intensive than any other approach. In fact, as you know, Le Sage himself said the math was terrifying, and this is one of the reasons he gave for why no one before himself had been able to handle it. So it just seems dumb and pointless to include the quote from Feynman. In the context of the book (Character of Physical Law) you can understand his point, but in the context of a discussion of LeSage theory it doesn't make much sense. So I think it should either be deleted (preferred) or else I'll need to add a lot more context to accurately convey what he meant... which is just going to be totally off topic.

I agree with your edits. And I don't think it (the reference to mathematics) is going out of topic - many of the "non-mainstream" authors think that a Le Sage type theoy is very simple to create. However, Feynman and others showed that it isn't so. Also the intro looks good to me now. Thanks. --D.H 07:35, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Herapath and Waterston

Not an easy to read article this one so forgive me if I have missed something. There is no mention that the theory motivated both John James Waterston and John Herapath in their development of the kinetic theory of gases. Cutler 12:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

There are many "kinetic theories of gravity" - Le Sage's theory of gravitation is only one of them (see also some other, non-Le-Sage-type-theories in the article mechanical explanations of gravitation). Maybe there is some misunderstanding - for example in this article we find:

Herapath was initially interested in developing an explanation of gravity in terms of the impacts of particles of an ethereal fluid, somewhat along the lines of the "kinetic theory of gravity" proposed by G. S. LeSage and many others.

"Along the lines" doesn't mean (in my POV) that Herapath and Waterston were directly influenced by Le Sage. As far as I know Le Sage, Herapath and Waterston developed different mechanical gravity models which where important to create their own versions of the kinetic theory of gases. BTW: Herapath's model is not an Le Sage type model at all: He proposed the aether is heated up next to the bodies - that's the exact opposite as it is proposed by Le Sage. Also there are a lot of papers by John Herapath in the Annals of Philosophy which are online availabe (see the Herapath article or search Google-Books for more articles) - in none of those papers the name Le Sage is mentioned. Also according to the description of Taylor in the Smithsonian report I see no Connection between the theory of Le Sage and John James Waterston, except the fact that they are all mechanical explanations of gravitation. Or do you have other sources? --D.H 16:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Good answer! I am happy. Cutler 07:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Solution

All problems of this theory can be avoided if we assume that Inertial mass of the gravitational corpuscles not equal to its gravitational mass, because of equivalence principle is not applicable in this case (gravitational particles don't collide with each other, hence don't have gravitational mass). IMHO Denis tarasov 17:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA fail

I hate to fail this article because so many parts of it are so carefully worded and so well thought out. However, overall, I do not think that the article meets the GA criteria.

General comments

  • The lead is not yet a summary of the article per WP:LEAD; I would suggest adding more detail on the theory itself. If readers look only at the lead, something we have to consider, especially if they are following wikilinks, what will they learn?
  • While the writing in the article is generally of high quality, I think that the article could do with a copy edit from a scientifically-educated reader. I tried to fix some sentences as I was reading, but felt hampered by my lack of knowledge.
  • The information about the various Fatio editions belongs in footnotes; it distracts readers from the historical narrative and the scientific information. I think it is more academic than encyclopedic.
  • The "Recent activity" section seems to get short shrift compared to the other sections. I would suggest expanding that section while trying to cut back on some of the other sections.
I think it would be fine to trim down some of the other sections, but expanding the "Recent Activity" section would likely lead to trouble. The only proponents of Le Sage theory today are physics cranks (of the Roy C Keys variety), so any expansion of the "Recent Activity" section would have to be an account of modern physics cranks. I think it would be best to place such a discussion in a separate article on pseudo-science or fringe-science, maybe with a link from this page. SJC1 (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Can you put the page numbers in the footnotes? This combination of Harvard and inline citation styles is confusing.

Some specific comments

  • The theory posits that the force of gravity is the result of tiny particles (corpuscles) or waves moving at high speed in all directions - Particle/wave duality sounds oddly modern - what version of the theory is this?
  • From the things outlined so far, there arises only a force which is proportional to the surface of the bodies. - "things" is a vague word
  • Nicolas Fatio presented the first formulation of his thoughts on gravitation in a letter to Christiaan Huygens in spring 1690.[1] Two days later he read the content of the letter before the Royal Society in London. - Who is the "he" in the second sentence?
  • Fatio pointed out, that by continuing to increase both the velocity and the elasticity of the particles this condensation can get arbitrarily small. - "can get" is vague diction
  • In order to ensure mass proportionality, Fatio assumed that gross matter is extremely permeable for the gravific fluid. - Why is gravity a fluid now?
  • In this chapter Fatio examines the connections between the term "infinity" and its relations to his theory. - Suddenly, the problems are represented as being parts of different "chapters". This is a bit jarring.
  • For example the diameter of the staffs is infinitely smaller than their distance to each other - What are "staffs"?
  • Nevertheless, Fatio's theory remained largely unknown with a few exceptions like Cramer and Le Sage, because he never was able to formally publish his works and he fell under the influence of a group of religious fanatics called the "French prophets" (which belonged to the camisards) and therefore his public reputation was ruined. - More could be said here - intriguing story.
  • In 1731 the Swiss mathematician Gabriel Cramer published a dissertation,[6] at the end of which appeared a sketch of a theory perfectly similar to Fatio's (including net structure of matter, analogy to light, shading...), but without mentioning Fatio's name. - Ellipses instead of words are discouraged - tell readers what you want them to know.
  • Le Sage argued, that in case the matter-particle-collisions are perfectly elastic, no gravitational force would arise. - Something is off about the punctuation or grammar here.
  • Le Sage’s ideas were not well-received during his day, except for some of his friends and associates like Pierre Prévost, Charles Bonnet, Jean-André Deluc and Simon Lhuilier. - Explain who these people are with identifying tags - this is the case throughout the article.
  • He proposed that the excess heat might be absorbed by internal energy modes of the particles themselves, analogous to his proposal of the vortex-nature of matter. - I don't understand the analogy.
  • Feynman bit seems historically irrelevant - was it just a teaching tool?
Yes, Feynman just used it as an example. It wasn't really the subject of his discussion. So I'm inclined to agree that the Feynman section could be omitted from the article. Or perhaps it could be added to the "recent activity" section, noting that Le Sage theory has been used by Feynman as an illustrative example of a failed theory in his lectures. SJC1 (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd also say the Hilbert section could be removed. There's no need to give a section to every famous person who ever made a passing reference to the subject. The article by Cory makes it clear that Hilbert didn't have anything new to say on the subject, and just made an off-hand comment on it. Also, his comment was specifically about the wave version, so if anything, it should be moved up and made part of the Lorentz section. But really Hilbert didn't add anything. If someone wants to mention the Madelung idea, that could be cited separately, but he arrived at an alternately attractive and repulsive force at varying distances between molecules, which doesn't really seem to have much to do with Le Sage's concept of gravity. I suggest removing the Hilbert section altogether. SJC1 (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Regarding Isenkrahe's proposal on the connection between density, temperature and weight: Since his reasoning was based purely on the anticipated effects of changes in material density, and since temperature at a given density can be increased or decreased, Isenkrahe's comments do not imply any fundamental relation between temperature and gravitation. - Full sentences, please.

I hope this review was helpful. Please feel free to ask questions about it on my talk page. Awadewit | talk 03:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be different standards in German and English Wikipedia. In German, the same article is a featured one. But no problem, perhaps I will make some changes in the near future. And thank your very much for your efforts. --D.H 08:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't know much about the German wikipedia, but I have heard that articles that are translated into English often need more sourcing before they can reach GA and FA on the English wikipedia. If you feel this review was in error, you can always appeal it at GA review. You might also think about asking for a scientific peer review. Readers there will more likely be able to offer you informed advice. I'll see if I can scrounge up anyone as well. Awadewit | talk 08:54, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Lead

Awadewit suggested that the lead paragraph of the article could be improved, by saying more about the actual theory, to give a more representative overview of the subject. I agree with that suggestion, because the current lead barely discusses the theory, and spends much time on bibleographic issues. I propose modifying the lead to read somewhat as follows:

Le Sage's theory of gravitation is the most common name for the kinetic theory of gravity originally proposed by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690 and later by Georges-Louis Le Sage in 1748. The theory proposed a mechanical explanation for Newton's gravitational force in terms of streams of tiny unseen particles (which Le Sage called ultra-mundane corpuscles) impacting on all material objects from all directions. According to this model, any two material bodies partially shield each other from the impinging corpuscles, resulting in a net imbalance in the pressure exerted by the impacting corpuscles on the bodies, tending to drive the bodies together. This mechanical explanation for gravity never gained widespread acceptance, although it was ocassionally studied by physicists until the beginning of the twentieth century, by which time it was generally considered to be conclusively discredited.

It might also be good to mention that the theory is usually regarded as an attempt to reconcile Newtonian gravity with the mechanistic philosophy of Descartes, but I'm not sure how to word that.SJC1 (talk) 03:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Your proposal sounds good. As you recommended, I put the Feynman passage into the recent activity section, including the phrase that Feynman used it as an example of a failed theory. And I put a shortened version of the Hilbert passage into the Lorentz section and the Isenkrahe, Rysanek, Reymond passages are shortened as well. --D.H (talk) 07:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1908 Poincare Reference

I've tried unsuccessfully to find the English translation of the 1908 Poincare article (The Dynamics of the Electron) mentioned in Reference 42. (This is where Poincare uses George Darwin's result, and argues against the Le Sage hypothesis.) It's supposed to be in the 2003 Dover edition of his "Science and Method," but Dover tells me that that edition is simply an unabridged reprint of the 1914 version of the book, translated by Francis Maitland, and doesn't contain that translation from the French. I haven't seen the 2003 edition of the book myself, but a careful browsing through earlier versions didn't seem to have the article. Can anyone enlighten me on this? And, if anyone DOES have an English translation of the article, I'd like a photocopy! hkyriazi (talk) 19:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Poincaré's article La dynamique de l'électron is of course reprinted in Science and Method, see for example the French original of the book, online available at Science et Methode. See. Livre III: La mecanique nouvelle. Lesage's theory is discussed in Chapitre III, section III:La theorie de Lesage. For an english discussion of that chapter, see: Historical Assessments of the Fatio-Lesage Theory. --D.H (talk) 08:57, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, D.H. Not sure how I missed it. hkyriazi (talk) 20:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No Condensation?

I'm very interested in this question of how Fatio addressed Huygen's criticism, which he said occupied his mind for three years. I think it needs to be made clearer that some degree of condensation must occur, as, by definition, when the incoming particles "are spaced fruther [sic] apart than are the reflected corpuscles", the corpuscles ARE more concentrated around the material body. I don't have an English translation of his writings, and so I'm not sure how he stated this, but it seems that the only solution would be a dynamic equilibrium, where the density built up to a point where the outward rate of diffusion equaled the inflow rate. Having said that, we can always go far enough away from the material body so that there actually IS a build-up of corpuscle number going on. Since the corpuscles are assumed to come from an infinite distance, there will always be some distance at which the built-up concentration hasn't yet had time to diffuse away to. One can see why he struggled with this problem, and with the notion of infinity. And, of course, we also would have to address the problem of how that build-up of corpuscles doesn't itself slow the incoming corpuscles, resulting in a negation of gravity. I think Le Sage also worried about this, but I'm not sure what he concluded either. hkyriazi (talk) 20:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)