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“It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0– Thomas Kuhn<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n It used to be used as a joke<\/a>, but a well\u00a0established\u00a0string theorist<\/a>, Erik Verlinde<\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0is challenging the existence of gravity<\/a><\/strong>, calling it an “illusion” (no word as to whether he is willing to step out of a 95th floor window to test his hypothesis):<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/em> (Dennis Overbye)<\/strong> – A Scientist Takes On Gravity<\/a><\/p>\n It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams. <\/strong><\/p>\n But what if it’s all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality? <\/strong><\/p>\n So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or at least among those who profess to understand it. Reversing the logic of 300 years of science, he argued in a recent paper, titled “<\/strong>On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,”<\/strong><\/a> that gravity is a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of heat and gases. <\/strong><\/p>\n “For me gravity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself. Not that he can’t fall down, but Dr. Verlinde is among a number of physicists who say that science has been looking at gravity the wrong way and that there is something more basic, from which gravity “emerges,” the way stock markets emerge from the collective behavior of individual investors or that elasticity emerges from the mechanics of atoms. <\/strong><\/p>\n Looking at gravity from this angle, they say, could shed light on some of the vexing cosmic issues of the day, like the <\/strong>dark energy<\/strong><\/a>, a kind of anti-gravity that seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, or the <\/strong>dark matter<\/strong><\/a> that is supposedly needed to hold galaxies together. <\/strong><\/p>\n ….It goes something like this: your hair frizzles in the heat and humidity, because there are more ways for your hair to be curled than to be straight, and nature likes options. So it takes a force to pull hair straight and eliminate nature’s options. Forget curved space or the spooky attraction at a distance described by <\/strong>Isaac Newton<\/strong><\/a>‘s equations well enough to let us navigate the rings of Saturn, the force we call gravity is simply a byproduct of nature’s propensity to maximize disorder. <\/strong><\/p>\n Some of the best physicists in the world say they don’t understand Dr. Verlinde’s paper, and many are outright skeptical. But some of those very same physicists say he has provided a fresh perspective on some of the deepest questions in science, namely why space, time and gravity exist at all – even if he has not yet answered them. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr. Verlinde goes into greater detail about his ideas on\u00a0The Reference Frame<\/strong><\/a>, the\u00a0blog of Czech string theory\u00a0physicist Lubo\u0161 Motl<\/strong>. It seems from the comment section that Dr. Motl\u00a0 is not buying it at all and is politely saying that Verlinde’s\u00a0hypothesis is complete nonsense ( or, conversely, if true, is so revolutionary that\u00a0Verlinde upends not only everything we know about physics, but also logic). Here is another expert commentary<\/a>. Here I cordially invite some of my scientist readers, Shane<\/a><\/strong>, Dr. Von<\/a><\/strong> and Cheryl<\/a><\/strong> to weigh in as well.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, what Verlinde is doing, challenging the unchallenged paradigm,\u00a0is intellectually very useful.<\/p>\n Sir Isaac Newton<\/strong> who explained gravity’s action did not know what\u00a0gravity was. We still don’t know what it is even though physicists today have a much wider perspective than did Newton, whose discoveries were the bedrock of not just modern science, but modernity itself. When concepts are accepted blindly we tend to stop thinking of them very deeply. Not everyone, Stephen Hawking<\/strong> has spent a great deal of time pondering gravity as did Albert Einstein<\/strong> in his later years when he groped hopelessly for a unified field theory<\/a>. Richard Feynman<\/strong> too, was a deep thinker on gravity<\/a>:<\/p>\n