The recovery of George Berkeley's objective science of 1710 and its implications for traditional science

TL;DR

This paper revisits George Berkeley's 1710 insights on sightlines and the 4-d past, proposing a data-defined language for objective science that contrasts with traditional idea-based space-time models, and discusses its implications.

Contribution

It recovers Berkeley's objective science of the 4-d past and advocates for a data-defined language approach over traditional space-time concepts.

Findings

Berkeley's sightline tilt reveals the 4-d past of material objects.

Data-defined language provides a simple, complete description of relativistic effects.

Traditional space-time science neglects Berkeley's insights, which can offer a more objective understanding.

Abstract

In 1710, George Berkeley, philospher and scientist, discovered that the directions in which we see (sightlines) are tilted 45 degrees towards the past from the directions in which we look. Looking north from the 3-d present we see to the north-past and so see the 4-d past. The past only contains images of the material objects in the present, so the world we see contains no material objects. We do not see a tree; we see an image of the tree, or, with two mirrors, an infinite stream of images of the tree receding into the 4-d past. The science of the 4-d past described with data-defined language is objective. When the Relativistic Doppler Effect is so described, it is simple and complete, unlike Einstein's space and time version in his 1905 theory of relativity. Scientists still use space and time science though so Berkeley's discoveries have been neglected and lost. Their recovery in this paper reinststes the choice between a data-defined language description of the observed 4-d past and an idea-based language description of idea-based (3+1)-d space and time.