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| birth_place = Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
| birth_place = Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
| death_date = {{death date|2012|03|24|mf=y}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|2012|3|24|1931|1|22}}
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| residence = Swansea, South Wales, United Kingdom
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[[Category:Scientist|Pope Neville]]
[[Category:Scientist|Pope Neville]]
[[Category:Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists]]
[[Category:Philosophy of Science]]
[[Category:Quantum Theory]]
[[Category:Mach's Principle]]

Latest revision as of 16:12, 20 July 2026

Vivian Pope
Vivian Pope
Born(1931-01-22)January 22, 1931
Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
DiedMarch 24, 2012(2012-03-24) (aged 81)
Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
ResidenceSwansea, South Wales, United Kingdom
NationalityWelsh
Alma materUniversity College of North Wales, Bangor
Known forPope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis (POAMS), critiques of relativity, quantum instantaneity, Mach's Principle
Scientific career
FieldsPhilosophy of science, Physics
InstitutionsKeele University

Neville Vivian "Viv" Pope (22 January 1931 – 24 March 2012) was a Welsh telecommunications engineer, teacher and self-described "science-philosopher" who became known for his critical re-examination of the foundations of modern physics. Working outside the scientific mainstream, he developed, in collaboration with the mathematician Dr Anthony D. Osborne of Keele University, the Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis (POAMS), a "non-field" reinterpretation of gravitation and electrostatics in terms of angular momentum. He was a member of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and a regular contributor to the biennial conferences on Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory (PIRT).

Biography

Early life and education

Pope was born in Swansea, South Wales, in 1931. During the Second World War he was evacuated as a child to a Welsh-speaking country school at Gelli Aur ("Golden Grove") in mid-Wales. By his own account an unruly and frequently truant pupil, he twice failed the entrance examination for grammar school but passed a non-academic intelligence test and in 1943 entered the Junior Technical School in Swansea, where he was drawn to workshop practice and to building home-made radios. He recalled boyhood associations with the Swansea district that the poet Dylan Thomas frequented and with the footballer John Charles.

In 1953 he married Mary Thomas, a former pupil of Swansea's Girls' High School; the couple had three daughters and eight grandchildren.

Later in life Pope returned to formal education as a mature student. In 1965, on the recommendation of lecturers at Swansea University, he enrolled at Coleg Harlech in North Wales, and in 1966 he entered the University College of North Wales, Bangor. He graduated in 1969 with honours in the Philosophy of Science, with subsidiary studies in logic, sociology and psychology, and stayed on to gain a teaching certificate in adult education.

Career

Following his father into the telecommunications industry, Pope worked as a telephone engineer for about eighteen years, an interval broken by two years' National Service in the Royal Air Force (1950–1952) as a radio direction-finding and air-traffic-control operator. His father, an amateur astronomer, introduced him to astronomy and, through the Astronomical Society at the Royal Institution of South Wales, to relativity theory, which became the abiding preoccupation of his life.

In 1970 Pope became a lecturer in liberal studies and philosophy at the Burton-on-Trent Technical College in the English Midlands, which served as a centre for the newly founded Open University; there he worked as a tutor, counsellor and study-centre coordinator. He took early retirement to concentrate on his research into the philosophical foundations of physics. From 1982 he was a Research Associate of the Department of Mathematics at Keele University, where his long collaboration with Anthony D. Osborne developed.

Einstein correspondence

Prompted by his father to "ask Einstein" about the so-called clock paradox, Pope wrote as a young man to Albert Einstein and received an encouraging reply. The letter has been exhibited in the media and is held in the West Glamorgan Archives in Swansea. Pope later reported that he had reached, by simple graphical geometry learned as an engineering draughtsman, an alternative route to Einstein's conclusions on the dilation of time with relative motion, a line of argument he discussed in correspondence with the mathematical physicist and astronomer Hermann Bondi.

Scientific contributions

Pope's central aim was to reunite physics with philosophy in the older tradition of natural philosophy, grounding relativity in the relational, observer-based ideas he associated with Einstein's philosophical mentor Ernst Mach. He termed the resulting outlook "Normal Realism" and argued, among other claims, that Einstein's second postulate of a constant velocity of light is logically redundant. From these ideas he developed a concept of "quantum instantaneity", or instantaneous relativistic action-at-a-distance.

His best-known work is the Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis (POAMS), developed with Anthony D. Osborne and first set out in the journal Galilean Electrodynamics in 2003. POAMS proposes that force-free motion is naturally orbital rather than rectilinear, that weight arises from the constraint of a body's angular momentum, and that gravitational and electrostatic behaviour may be re-described in terms of angular momentum rather than field forces. The theory predicts small, spin-dependent variations in measured weight. These proposals lie well outside mainstream physics, and their predicted effects remain experimentally unconfirmed.

Pope presented papers to the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA), of which he served for several years as Secretary and editor of its newsletter, and to the PIRT conferences at Imperial College, London. He visited CERN in 1975 as an editor and reporter for the philosophical periodical phi, interviewing figures including Victor Weisskopf, Tsung-Dao Lee and John Stewart Bell. His 1972 Bangor master's thesis, "A Philosophical Re-Examination of Some Present Physical Concepts", which sought to merge relativistic and quantum physics, was not passed; on referral, Karl Popper is reported to have remarked that it was not the thesis that had failed but its examiners.

Honors

Late in his life, on the recommendation of colleagues associated with the physicist Christian Corda, Pope was appointed an Honorary Professor of Relativistic Quantum Physics and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Institute for Theoretical Physics and Mathematics Einstein-Galilei at Prato, Italy.

Pope died in Swansea in 2012.

Articles:

  1. 1986 'Abstract: Is Relativity Quantized?' Speculations in Science and Technology, Vol. 9, No. 4, p. 242.
  2. 1987 'A New Approach to Special Relativity' (with A.D. Osborne). International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 191-198.
  3. 1987 (April) 'The Overdue Revolution'. MENSA, pp. 28-29.
  4. 1988 'Arts View of Science'. Times Higher Educational Supplement (Letter, November 11th.)
  5. 1988 'Floating Free'. Times Higher Ed. Suppl. (Ltr. Dec. 23rd.)
  6. 1989 'Experiments in God's Eye'. Times Higher Ed. Suppl. (Article, Feb. 2nd.)
  7. 1989 'The New World Synthesis'. Philosophia Mathematica (II) No. 1, Vol. 4, pp. 23-28.
  8. 1989 'Relativity is Kids' Stuff'. School Science Review, Vol. 70 (253) pp. 86-87.
  9. 1990 'Changing Philosophy'. Times Higher Ed. Suppl. (Ltr. May 4th.)
  10. 1990 'The Quantum is Kids' Stuff'. School Sci. Rev. Vol. 71, pp. 105-107.
  11. 1990 School Sci. Rev. (Forum) Vol.72, No. 258, p. 161.
  12. 1990 'Instantaneous Relativistic Action-at-a-Distance' (with A.D. Osborne). Proceedings of the 2nd BSPS conference: Physical Interpretations of Relativity (PIRT) pp. 460-488.
  13. 1992 'Relativity and Realism' (with A.D. Osborne). Proceedings of the 3rd BSPS conference: PIRT, pp. 281-287.
  14. 1992 'The Action-at-a-Distance Spectrum' (with A.D. Osborne). Proceedings of the 3rd BSPS conference: PIRT pp. 253-280.
  15. 1992 'Instantaneous Relativistic Action-at-a-Distance' (with A. D Osborne). Physics Essays, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 409-421.
  16. 1992 'The Sequential Paradigm', Proc. of the 13th Annual International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ANPA), Sept. 1991, pp. 55-65.
  17. 1993 'An Alternative Natural Philosophy', Proc of the 14th Annual International Meeting of ANPA, Sept 1992, pp. 113-130.
  18. 1994 'Normal Realism: A Challenge to Physicists'. Proc. of the 15th Annual International Meeting of ANPA, Sept. 1993, pp. 111-115.
  19. Also 'A Rustic Rediscovery of Relativity', pp. 116-130.
  20. 1994 'A Critical Review of the PIRT Conferences to Date'. Proc. of the 4th BSPS Conference: PIRT, pp 257-272.
  21. 1995 'In Search of the ANPA Philosophy'. ANPA Newsletter No. 15, ISSN 1358-2240, pp. 6-10.
  22. 1995 'Instantaneous Gravitational and Inertial Action-at-a-Distance' (with A.D. Osborne). Physics Essays, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 384-397.
  23. 1995 'The Lingering Death of Western Dualism', Proc. of the 16th Annual International Meeting of ANPA, ISBN 0952621509, pp. 117-121. Also 'The Language of Light Velocity', pp. 122-134.
  24. 1996 'The Two Aspects of Special Relativity', ANPA Newsletter, No. 16, p. 10. Also 'Empiricism and the Quantum', pp. 8-16.
  25. 1996 'Copenhagen, Yes or No?' Apeiron, Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 20-21.
  26. 1996 'A Philosophical Analysis of the Concept of Motion in Relation to Action-at-a-Distance', Apeiron, Special Issue, ed. M. W. Evans. (accepted but did not appear, due to a difference of opinion with editor).
  27. 1996 'A Response' (to M. W. Evans), Apeiron, '@ Issue' section, Vol. 3, No 3-4, pp. 124-125.
  28. 1996 'The Dogma of the Photon', in 'Philosophies', the Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association, pp. 175-188.
  29. 1997, 'A Quantum-Digital Theory of Light', in The Present Status of the Quantum Theory of Light, Eds. Jeffers, Roy, Vigier and Hunter, (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands.)
  30. 1997 'Is ANPA an Altogether Non-Philosophical Association?' Newsletter 17 of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association (ed. N.V. Pope) 12-14.
  31. 1997 'The Gateway to Paradox' and 'The Cinematic Model of Quantum Touching' in Mereologies, the Proceedings of the 18th International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association., 62-66, 134-135.
  32. 1998 'Shedding Light on Light' in Causality and Locality in Modern Physics, Eds. G. Hunter, et al,, Kluwer, Academic Publishers, Dordrecht NL, pp 187-194.
  33. 1998 'A Relativistic Quantum Phenomenology', Proceedings of the 5th International Conference; Problems of Space, Time and Motion, St. Petersburg, Russia. June, 1998.
  34. 1998 'Solving the "c" Conundrum of the Velocity of Light Relative to the Vacuum', Proceedings of the Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory, London, September 1998.
  35. 1999 'Newton is Dead, Long Live Newton', in Instantaneous Action-at-a-Distance in Modern Physics: Pro and Contra, Editors: A. E. Chubykalo, Viv Pope and R. Smirnov-Rueda, published by Nova Science. NY.
  36. 1999. 'The Complete Physics Heresy', Galilean Electrodynamics, ed. C. Kolb-Whitney, Mass. USA.
  37. 2000. 'Too Many Theories, Too Few Syntheses', Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory VII Proceedings, ed. M. C. Duffy.
  38. 2000. 'A Logical Reconciliation of Einstein and Newton or a Synthesis Relativity and Quantum Theory', Journal of New Energy, Ed. Hal Fox, Vol. 5, No. 1.
  39. 2001. 'An Angular Momentum Synthesis of Gravitational and Electrostatic Forces' in Physics as a Science Symposium Proceedings, publ. in Journal of New Energy, Vol. 5, No. 3.
  40. 2001. 'The Tantalising Two-Slit Experiment' in Recent Advances in Relativity Theory, Vol. 2.: Material Interpretations, Es. M. C. Duffy and M. Wegener, Hadronic Press, Florida, USA.
  41. 2001. 'Umbala: a Polemic Against Jargon Addiction in Modern Science', Proceedings of the 22nd annual International Meeting of the Alternative Natural Philosophy Association Ed. Arleta Griffor, publ by ANPA.
  42. Osborne , A. D. and Pope, N. V., 'An Angular Momentum Synthesis of "Gravitational" and "Electrostatic" Forces', Galilean Electrodynamics, Vol. 14, Special Issue 1, Spring 2003, pp. 9-19.
  43. 2008, A Critical Perspective on Modern Physics: a talk delivered at the PIRT Conference, Imperial College, London, UK Sept. 2008. 'NASA's Need of New Physics'.

Books

  • 1999 Instantaneous Action At A Distance in Modern Physics, Pro and Contra, Eds.: Andrew E Chubykalo, Viv Pope and Roman Smirnov-Rueda, Nova Science NY, USA.
  • 2005, Immediate Distant Action and Correlation in Modern Physics: Eds. N. Vivian Pope, Andrew E. Chubykalo and Alan F. T. Winfield, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, USA.
  • 2007, Light-Speed, Gravitation and Quantum Instantaneity, Anthony D. Osborne and N. Vivian Pope, phi Philosophical Enterprises, Swansea, UK. ISBN 0-9503790-6-9.
  • 2010 Wondering in the Wilderness, A. M. and N. V. Pope, phi, Swansea, ISBN 978-0-9505790-7-4.
  • 2010 God's Country, N. Vivian Pope, phi, Swansea, ISBN 978-0-9503790-8-5
  • 2011 A Critical Review of Contemporary Physics and Cosmology, Pope and Osborne, (to appear).
  • 2016 Einstein's Lost Legacy: A Critical Review of Contemporary Physics and Cosmology, N. V. Pope and A D Osborne

Abstracts

  • 2011 - "[[Extraordinary Physics, or Is Modern Theoretical Physics Just a Teetering 'House of Cards'?

]]" (Read in full)

Books

External links

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