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Volume 14: Pages 76-81, 2001

Do Incompatible Views Exist Among the Giants of Physics?

V. Arunasalam

50 Windsor Drive, Princeton Junction, New Jersey 08550 U.S.A.

Since laws of physics are meant to be a true and honest description or representation of the actual behavior of nature, they are unique, universally valid statements of the predictable, unvarying order of events. Hence, regarding these physical laws, one does not expect contradictory and incompatible views to exist among the giants of physics. Here, we present three cases of Nobel‐prize caliber, where the views expressed by one set of giants of physics are in sharp contrast to and incompatible with the views expressed by another set of giants of physics on the same fundamental problem. These contradictions are of fundamental significance and have huge implications for the foundations of physics.

Keywords: incompatible views among the giants of physics, contradictory and conflicting views in physics, covariance versus invariance, Einstein and Minkowski versus Dirac and Wigner, canonical versus mechanical angular momentum, Bloch versus Feynman, relativistic versus nonrelativistic electron theories, Dirac versus Pauli

Received: March 8, 2001; Published online: December 15, 2008