To Donald E. Simanek, Emeritus Prof. of Physics, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dear Sir,
Allow me to say just a few words concerning your article The Keely Motor Company. You are revealing СKeelyТs obvious deceptions, which were correctly guessed by more perceptive and skeptical observersТ and enthusiastically lynching all his Сvague and incomprehensible invented pseudoscientific theoriesТ in it. And the pamphlet is made in such a way as well as web site itself that a common reader is always being convinced in your truly wishing to purify science from swindler and Сcharlatan such as KeelyТ. So, everything seems right except maybe one thing ≠ such an erudite and educated person (Ph.D. in Physics, Dec. 1983, The Pennsylvania State University; M.S. in Physics, 1962, The University of Iowa; B.A. in Liberal Arts/Physics, 1959, The University of Iowa; High School graduation, 1955, Valedictorian; Elementary and Secondary: Walker Consolidated School, Walker, Iowa) uses such unscientific methods.
It is known that collecting of a priori material always precedes the beginning of any scientific work, and the quality of it strictly depends on that of sources. Thus, plenty of such СscientificТ sources as the gutter press, which is widely used by you, can only reduce an article to the rank of a common rag brief, unless you want to become famous in the eye of a crowed, slandering all over the world.
Surly, a priori collecting has been made (quotations, photos, schemes etc.), but why the materials has been used so prejudicially? Dear Sir, tell us, please, why mentioning Mrs. Clara S. J. Bloomfield-Moore, an American lady of wealth and position, whose incessant efforts in the pursuit of truth can never be too highly appreciated, you describe only one doubtful episode with a piece of wire, without any reference, but say nothing (?), for example, about her paper on "Psychic Force and Etheric Force" in which she states that Mr. Keely, as a philosopher, "is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, and sublime enough in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the world."
And again she writes: УShould Keely do no more than lead scientists from the dreary realms where they are groping into the open field of elemental force, where gravity and cohesion are disturbed in their haunts and diverted to use; where, from unity of origin, emanates infinite energy in diversified forms, he will achieve immortal fame. Should he demonstrate, to the destruction of materialism, that the universe is animated by a mysterious principle to which matter, however perfectly organized, is absolutely subservient, he will be a greater spiritual benefactor to our race than the modern world has yet found in any man.Ф
Maybe these dreary realms are the very things which you defend with fervor in your site, and you dread that Mr. Keely can destroy and reduce materialism with all its dogmas to atoms in the space of a few seconds as easily as he reduced a dead ox to the same condition (the fact which left unmentioned in the pamphlet, maybe because of the lack of abilities Сto correctly guessedТ it)? However, man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true, Francis Bacon said.
As one of the main points of the СevidenceТ that the Keely Motor does not work you describe your personal trial to start it. Of course, Сthis machine could never have run on its own, without assistance from hidden power sourcesТ, but not compressed air, farther of which the mind of Philistines from science cannot go, but from force called СetherТ by Keely. This force under different names is broadly being investigated in the world by progressive scientists (for instance look through works of professors A. E. Akimov and G. I. Shipov from Russia on physical vacuum or the Theory of torsion fields, Photographing after the Kirlians etc.) and is unnoted by only stiff academic consciousnesses.
And who are you, Mr. Simanek to criticize seekers of the Truth and the Common Good, such as Keely and others who make many mistakes, striving to abroad the horizon of mankindТs thinking while you, yourself, is only busy with collecting your endless titles, degrees, awards and others СЕsТ which you boast about on your own site.
Please, Sir, count all your personal achievements:
Title: Professor of Physics at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, Lock Haven, PA, 17745. (1964-1998)
Highest degree: Ph.D. in physics from The Pennsylvania State University (1983).
Interests: Optics, history of science, the science/pseudoscience interface, 3d photography, teaching critical thinking; physics laboratory instruction and physics demonstrations, skepticism; visual illusions, Meccano and Erector designs.
Education:Ph.D. in Physics, Dec. 1983, The Pennsylvania State University. M.S. in Physics, 1962, The University of Iowa. B.A. in Liberal Arts/Physics, 1959, The University of Iowa. High School graduation, 1955, Valedictorian. Elementary and Secondary: Walker Consolidated School, Walker, Iowa.
Honors and Awards: Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society (Penn State Univ.) 1972. Van Allen Physics Scholarship (Univ. of Iowa) 1958-59. Phi Eta Sigma national honorary fraternity (Univ. of Iowa), 1956-57. University of Iowa Merit Scholarship, 1955-56 and 1956-57.
and tell the Truth to your Self what did you really make for the Earth and benefit of mankind.
Sinserly yours,
Dmitry Ediment, The philosophical club СThe LotusТ,
Zaporozhye, Ukraine
Dmitry,
My, my, I seem to have offended you.
The overriding theme of my website is to provide "the other side" to counter all the dreary books and websites on these subjects that promote uncritical acceptance of unfounded claims. I have no obligation to "present both sides", when one side has no merit whatsoever.
Clara Bloomfield Moore's book (reprint) sits on my bookshelf. I have read it, and some of her other materials (and also I have read the mountain of material on Keelynet web site). She knew nothing of science, and it shows. Keely knew only enough about science to mimic its jargon, without understanding a bit of it.
Keely's own papers show that he was "making it all up". His references to etheric energy, and quadrupole harmonics made no sense on any level in his own time (and even less in our time). They were invented out of pure moonshine, for he had no experiments or data to back up any of it.
Keely appeals to a certain group of gullible people who are "miracle seekers", who have little or no understanding of science and who think if you tinker with things long enough, something wonderful may happen. Science doesn't work that way, and science demands verifiable knowledge that works reliably even if you don't believe it, and even if you don't like it.
These miracle seekers make outrageous claims about Nikola Tesla, and Orffyreus, they suppose that the ancients possessed great scientific knowledge and wisdom that is now lost. Every week I get emails from several folks who think they have invented a new perpetual motion machine, or a new ether theory, or a way to trisect an angle, duplicate the cube or square the circle. I even get emails from folks who are convinced that fairies (little people with wings) and gnomes really exist, for they have seen them. There are a lot of loonies and crackpots out there, and a lot of other people who buy what they say.
There will always be swindlers and charlatans. Science will not be harmed by them, for scientists mostly ignore them. But such con-artists posing as scientists can separate a lot of ordinary fools from their money. I have not intended to "purify" science from such folks, for they are not part of science and are not scientists. They are already outside of science. But I am concerned about the dismal quality of science education, which has produced a vast population of non-scientists whose understanding of science is virtually zero, who can't tell the difference between science and humbug, and who are suckers for every pseudoscientist that comes along promising miracles.
If a snake oil salesman peddles a worthless cancer cure, our government will seek to prosecute that person. That's appropriate. Some states even will try to take legal action against such swindlers as Dennis Lee who is selling franchises for his perpetual motion engines, but never delivers any that work. But our government does nothing to prosecute other frauds, like acupuncturists, chiropracters, practioners of therapeutic touch, physic readers, astrologers and peddlers of homeopathic medicines. They all should be prosecuted, fined and thrown into jail, for they prey on the ignorant and gullible.
Donald
Dear Donald,
Perhaps it seems like you offended me, but I did not mean any emotion at all and I did not to hurt your feelings. Just every soul (which is strongly being negated by your extremely earthly version of science) or consciousness, as you wish, have the right to hear the Truth, and this is his/her own choice what to do with It.
You say you have read the mountain of material on Keely, but hitherto are calling his Motor СperpetualТ, while John Worrell Keely himself never did so:
УIn the conception of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a circuit is formed that actually has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory ether, and, while under operation by said substance, is really a machine that is virtually independent of the mass (or globe), and it is the wonderful velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed with the vibratory ether to make it an independent motor...Ф
As well expressed by his great patroness and defender, Mrs. Bloomfield-Moore, "the two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and the phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each other."
One was generated and acted upon by and through himself. No one, who should have repeated the thing done by himself, could have produced the same results. It was "Keely's ether" that acted truly, while "Smith's or Brown's" (SimanekТs) ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely's difficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and regulate the "force" without the intervention of any "will power" or personal influence, whether conscious or unconscious of the operator. In this he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for no one but himself could operate on his "machines." That Keely's organism is directly connected with the production of the marvellous results is proven by the following statement emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately:
УAt one time the shareholders of the "Keely Motor Co." put a man in his workshop for the express purpose of discovering his secret. After six months of close watching, he said to J. W. Keely one day: "I know how it is done, now." They had been setting up a machine together, and Keely was manipulating the stop-cock which turned the force on and off. "Try it, then," was the answer. The man turned the cock, and nothing came. "Let me see you do it again," the man said to Keely. The latter complied, and the machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but without success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to try once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous production of the current.Ф
The fact that many inventors and seekers such as Keely Сknew nothing of scienceТ only shows that ways of academic science are so prejudicially impassable for fresh ideas that Life chooses other ones. There is no one to blame for this, except doctors and professors of academic sciences, who led it to such result.
When you are mentioning heroes of science - Nikola Tesla and Orffyreus, why are you not other authorities acknowledged by official scientists. They are Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein and so on. They were taken for charlatans and swindlers at their times. Pythagoras for His philosophy of the music of the Heavens and the Teaching of the Great Divine Presence, expressed in the theory of Unity in the Plurality, by the way He told He remembered His last four embodiments (?!); Newton for His doubts about the Nature of Force and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were then called.
So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in the night of research. He warns his readers, in the Revolution du Globe, about the doubtful nature of the so-called Forces, saying that "it is not so sure whether those agents were not Spiritual Powers after all (des agents spirituels). At the outset of his "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton took the greatest care to impress upon his school that he did not use the word "attraction" with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a physical sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception involving no consideration of real and primary physical causes. In one of the passages of his "Principia" (Defin. 8, B. I. Prop. 69, "Scholium"), he tells us plainly that, physically considered, attractions are rather impulses. In section XI. (Introduction) he expresses the opinion that "there is some subtle spirit by the force and action of which all movements of matter are determined" (see Mod. Mater., by Rev. W. F. Wilkinson); and in his third Letter to Bentley he says:
"It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it... That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else by and through which their action may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers."
Let me finish with some quotations on this matter.
"Legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is truer than what we call History." (Augustin Thierry)
УThere are a lot of loonies and crackpots out thereФ, says Donald Simanek and УBy opening so freely their lunatic asylums to their supposed madmen, men only seek to assure each other that they are not themselves madФ, answers Montesquieu.
УThe few elevated minds who interrogate nature instead of prescribing laws for her guidance; who do not limit her possibilities by the imperfections of their own powers; and who only disbelieve because they do not know, we would remind of that apothegm of Narada, the ancient Hindu philosopher:
"Never utter these words: 'I do not know this -- therefore it is false."
"One must study to know, know to understand, understand to judge.Ф (Helena Blavatsky)
The Plato said, УWe know the names of Pericles, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and Phidias, but not the names of the judges who condemned them. We remember the statues by Phidias, but not those who wanted to destroy them. We might hope that this shame of humanity has taken place for the last time in history, but I fear that such a hope is only a dream.Ф
Best wishes,
Dmitry
Dmitry, see comments below.
You say you have read the mountain of material on Keely, but hitherto are calling his Motor СperpetualТ, while John Worrell Keely himself never did so:
УIn the conception of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion; but a circuit is formed that actually has a neutral centre, which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory ether, and, while under operation by said substance, is really a machine that is virtually independent of the mass (or globe), and it is the wonderful velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so. Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed with the vibratory ether to make it an independent motor...Ф
To this charge I plead "not guilty". I just checked my document and the only occurrences of the word "perpetual" are in excerpts from newspapers and from the Scientific American. In my own text I do not use the word except in an endnote where I explain:
Though the press classed Keely's claims with "perpetual motion", Keely himself never claimed that any of his inventions violated physical laws. He very cleverly couched his claims to be consonant with speculative science of his day. He exercised eloquent embellishment of these ideas, and coined marvelous scientific-sounding words, but without ever carefully defining them. He was so good at this that his followers today can point to obscure things Keely said and ingeniously interpret them as anticipating modern atomic theory.
So you see, I am not calling his engine "perpetual motion". You would do well to read more carefully before making accusations.
My "Museum of Unworkable Devices" is not merely a collection of failed perpetual motion devices, but also includes other devices that don't work, and can't work.
The fact that many inventors and seekers such as Keely Сknew nothing of scienceТ only shows that ways of academic science are so prejudicially impassable for fresh ideas that Life chooses other ones. There is no one to blame for this, except doctors and professors of academic sciences, who led it to such result.
When you are mentioning heroes of science - Nikola Tesla and Orffyreus, why are you not other authorities acknowledged by official scientists.
Orffyreus was not a "hero of science" he was a clever charlatan, in my opinion. But the case is so "cold" and the evidence so murky that we cannot say with certainly just what was inside his wheels. Tesla was an engineer, and a well-trained one, too, having been educated in Paris. But in his later years he got carried away with speculation, and was making unfounded claims.
They are Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein and so on. They were taken for charlatans and swindlers at their times. Pythagoras for His philosophy of the music of the Heavens and the Teaching of the Great Divine Presence, expressed in the theory of Unity in the Plurality, by the way He told He remembered His last four embodiments (?!); Newton for His doubts about the Nature of Force and the corporeality of the "Agents," as they were then called.
Let's take these one at a time. The Pythagorean brotherhood was a group of mathematical mystics, and though their ideas were mostly philosophical kookiness, they did do some correct mathematics. However, I suppose you are aware that the Pythagorean theorem was known worldwide in many cultures. However, only the Greeks (so far as I know) took the step of figuring out how to derive it from axioms of geometry, i.e., how to prove it.
Newton was a believer and experimenter in Alchemy, and while that is a brand of kooky philosophy, Newton wasn't the only practitioner of it in his day. Robert Boyle, and Gottfried Leibnitz also accepted some ideas of alchemy. Indeed, in the first edition of Newton's Principia his "laws" included a statement of the transmutation of matter. He removed it from later editions. He spent 30 years doing alchemical experiments, and wrote many words on biblical numerology, thinking it would be the work for which he'd be remembered by posterity. Quite the opposite. His alchemy and numerology are mostly forgotten (and forgiven) as minor eccentricities compared to his monumental work on physics. I think it noteworthy that in the later editions of the Principia, Newton never alluded to religious ideas, or numerology, or alchemy. I think he realized that the work stood on its own, and those ideas were unnecessary to its unity and near-completeness.
Thanks for sharing the interesting quotes. I have often said that in every great mind there's a soft spot, a pocket of mysticism and irrationality on some particular subject. These quotes demonstrate that. However, these folks must be forgiven, for some were so early in the history of science that they should not be blamed for sharing the world-view of their culture. Human beings haven't gotten smarter over the ages, but we have learned from the mistakes of those of the past. Well, we should have learned from their mistakes, but some folks today continue to perpetuate the same mistakes.
Her statement "Never utter these words: 'I do not know this -- therefore it is false" is not of much weight as a criticism of skeptics or of science. Scientists do not dismiss things just because they are unknown. But when we learn how the world works, we are also learning how it doesn't work. For example, is it possible to have a perfectly flat triangle with perfectly equal length sides and unequal angles? Of course you can't. It's impossible. Of course, if you relax the conditions and allow the triangle on a non-flat surface, you can. Or you might redefine the meaning of "triangle". Or you can imagine a non-existent triangle in your mind which violates all restrictions of the real world. Reality has limitations. Nature simply does not allow certain things, and it is a wise person who admits this and refuses to waste time chasing chimeras and living in invented dream worlds.
The Blavatsky quote reminded me of the research I did on the history of spiritualism some years ago. I recall her book "Occult Chemistry" which had color plates of the auras of atoms. She was a very clever and brazen fraud. There are several good biographies of her incredible life.
BTW, in your earlier email you said (if I recall correctly) that I picked easy targets in my web pages. Perhaps you meant the "unworkable devices". I chose the examples most often discussed in books and websites. Over the years I have received probably over 100 others, but most are uninteresting "re-inventions of the square wheel" and unworthy of web space. All are easily shown to have misused well-known mechanical and physical principles in their claims. But isn't it funny that the only perpetual motion machines, over-unity devices, and other things that supposedly violate physical laws only work on paper. The only ones that have been built, and which have been made available for complete examination and testing, do not work as claimed. I have volunteered to be on the testing committee of the Stoern device in Dublin, but there's no guarantee of being selected for it. However, I predict right now that this device probably won't ever be made available for independent testing. (Darn, I'd have loved that all-expense-paid trip to Dublin.) It is some sort of hoax or scam, but it is interesting because it is being promoted in a rather unusual way. They have revealed no important details, but it is apparently some sort of magnet motor, and those are "dime-a-dozen", even though some have been patented. And they never work as claimed.
Some of these folks say "this isn't perpetual motion, it is just over-unity". What a crock! If a machine claims 150% efficiency (well over-unity) then 50% of its output could be used to drive the input. Friction and dissipative forces are seldom so large as 50% in a well-engineered device, so this thing could easily drive itself--forever. That is, if its efficiency claims were true, which they never are. Over-unity machines (if they existed) could be configured as perpetual motion machines easily.
Most of these folks don't know physics, as I said, so their "theory" ends up being meaningless. And, since they don't know physics, they don't know how to properly test and evaluate their devices, so they get ridiculous claims of efficiency, and then think they have achieved "over-unity" performance.
Donald
