Don Briddell
Don Briddell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | June 1, 1944 Crisfield, Maryland, United States |
| Residence | Mt. Airy, MD, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Known for | Field Structure Theory, Structural Skew Topology, Nuclear Structure, cosmology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Structure Theorist, Design Scientist, Sculptor, Artist |
C. Don Briddell (born 1944) is an American sculptor, industrial designer, and independent theorist. Professionally he is known as a wildfowl carver and sculptor, but he is best known in alternative-science circles as the originator of Field Structure Theory (FST), a self-developed structural interpretation of physics that models particles, fields, mass, and energy as configurations of loops, twists, and knots. He is the founder and director of the Field Structure Institute in Mt. Airy, Maryland.
Biography
Early life and education
Briddell was born in 1944 in Crisfield, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore, where he grew up and learned wildfowl carving and painting under the informal instruction of the noted decoy makers Lem and Steve Ward. He became interested in science as a child and read widely in physics throughout his life.
He studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, earning a degree in industrial design in 1966. There he studied form and structure theory under Professor William Katavolos and made an independent study of the work of Buckminster Fuller and Kenneth Snelson. His senior thesis was titled "Form and Structure Theory." He was accepted into a master's program at the Illinois Institute of Technology but instead entered the United States Peace Corps, serving as a small-industry and arts-and-crafts developer in Ecuador from 1966 to 1969. In 1970 he studied at the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy at the Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India, receiving an Acharya degree.
Career
Briddell worked in South Africa in the early 1970s developing portable architecture, and in 1972 received an industrial design award from the Industrial Designers Association of South Africa. He returned to the United States in 1973 and settled permanently in Mt. Airy, Maryland. Since 1975 he has made his living principally in the arts, property, and finance, while pursuing physics privately as a citizen scientist. His wildfowl sculptures are held in collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and he is also the author of the novel The Republic of Crisfield (2010).
Beginning in 2004, Briddell presented his structural ideas publicly, first to followers of Buckminster Fuller at a meeting of the Synergetics group in Washington, D.C. From 2005 onward he presented roughly twenty papers at conferences of the Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA) and the Alternative Natural Philosophy Alliance (ANPA), among other venues, and published in their proceedings.
Work
Field Structure Theory grew out of Briddell's college study of form and structure. He describes discovering a way to give three-dimensional forms (polyhedra) structural integrity through pure torsion, using elements he calls "Structors," and a related family of three-dimensional knotted forms he calls "fieldstructures." From these he developed a geometric system he named Structural Skew Topology (SST), governed by a set of axioms intended to restrict allowable forms to those he considers found in nature.
Applying this framework to physics, Briddell proposes that particles, waves, mass, energy, and charge can be modeled as loops and twists, and that the mass and energy values of particles can be generated by counting loops and twists arranged according to a Sierpinski-triangle fractal hierarchy. Related ideas in his writing include a "Particle Hierarchy Chart," a background aether he calls the "Plenum," a principle he terms "Multiple Certainties" offered as a deterministic alternative to the uncertainty principle, and an analytic method he calls "Tometry." He presents these as an alternative to the Standard Model and quantum mechanics. These proposals are outside mainstream physics and have been developed and published largely within the dissident-science community rather than in peer-reviewed physics journals.
Books
- The Republic of Crisfield (2010)
- The Particle Hierarchy Paradigm: According to Field Structure Theory (2021)
Abstracts
- 2013 - "The Structure of Energy and Motion" (Read in full)
- 2012 - "Multiple Certainties" (Read in full)
- 2011 - "The Neutron: Modeled as a Fieldstructure" (Read in full)
- 2010 - "[[Building Particles and Atoms: With Loops, Twists, and Knots
The Field Structure Theory (FST) of How Nature Does It ]]"
- 2010 - "[[The Meaning of Structure: The Structural Approach to Understanding Nature
]]" (Read in full)
- 2009 - "Application of Field Structure Theory to Fundamental Physics"
- 2009 - "The New Science of Structure "
- 2008 - "Structural Skew Topology and Field Structure Theory: Part One"
- 2008 - "Structural Skew Topology and Field Structure Theory: Part Two"
- 2007 - "Field Structure Theory, Part 1: The Particle Hierarchy Chart "
- 2007 - "Field Structure Theory, Part 2: Skew Geometry "
- 2006 - "Field Structure Theory" (Read in full)
- 2005 - "Field Structure Theory (FST)"
Media
- 2012 - [1] (Video Lecture)
- 2010 - Structures Group Meeting 2 (Video Demonstration)
- 2009 - Structures Group Meeting I (Video Group Meeting)