Scholastic PageRank
Published by admin November 7th, 2007 in Authority, Physics, Doctors of PhilosophyThe currency1 of the web is links.2 And authority is proportional to links:
Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
Authority is proportional to links, so,
A :: L
Therefore,
A = G L.
where G = 1 Google is the standard defining the authority between two unit pages separated by unit link.
I wrote about the Scholastic PageRank before:
. . . scholastic points are computed according to the rules of the oldest PageRank in existence. Much like Google’s PageRank the inner workings of the Scholastic PageRank is secret and it is known only to the practitioners.
When a string theorist publishes a commentary and links it to Witten, Witten’s Scholastic PageRank and therefore his authority increase. That’s why writing commentary, a vehicle whose sole purpose is to create links,3 has been, and still is, the main activity of scholastic doctors of philosophy.
Scholastic physics and the web have the same architecture. Doctors of physics build a network whose nods are called papers instead of web pages. The more links a Doctor garners the more authority she has. This process defines scholastic physics, aka, academic physics.4 The content of scholastic physics is defined by link baiting that doctors must practice in order to advance in the hierarchy.
In physics Search Engine Optimization is called Search Committee Optimization. Doctors try to optimize quality links to their papers to increase their chances of being noticed by search committees of hiring universities. So there is a one to one correspondence between scholastic system and the web. Scholasticism and the Web have the same Li.
Scholasticism is the oldest knowledge system and it is the same as the newest knowledge system. But scholasticism is closed and hermetic and only scholastic doctors can link to papers by other doctors. On the web anyone can publish and link to any other page.
Another thing I observe is that in scholasticism this linking method is a constraint and it is an obstacle to free flow of knowledge. Scholasticism is the oldest walled garden. Linking on the web facilitates free flow of information.
Also note that doctors based their system on authority gained through links. This makes physics an authority based legal system. As long as the currency of physics is authority physics will remain outside of science. Doctors of physics refuse to admit that they are nothing more than practitioners and enforcers of authority gained through linking to each other’s commentary. Instead they claim to be in the research business. Since they enjoy hereditary authority to define science they defined link baiting to be science.
As I commented here the social structure of scholastic physics defines the content of physics. If the first and only priority of a doctor of physics is to increase her Scholastic PageRank then her career progress is her priority not scientific progress.
The complete analogy between these two systems of organizing and distributing knowledge once again emphasizes the unity of all things. For people indoctrinated with Newtonian atomic materialism it is much harder to see analogies between systems that they cannot reduce to atomic particles.
Scholastic system of organizing knowledge that was invented to hide knowledge from non-doctors turns out to be the same as organizing knowledge for free distribution.
9 Responses to “Scholastic PageRank”
- 1 Pingback on Nov 18th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
- 2 Pingback on Nov 20th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
- 3 Pingback on Mar 5th, 2008 at 7:21 am
This is a brilliant and insightful post! Keep it up!
And be sure and tell me when you get a copy of Gravity’s Shadow. I think you will enjoy it immensely.
I bought the book mostly because I was taught general relativity by the primary subject of the book.
Heh, you’re not on my Physics blogroll, but I made a special link to your blog on my sidebar, along with the other political links.
Thanks. I really appreciate the encouragement. I couldn’t find the book in the two bookstores that I usually go to. I’ll try to find it this weekend. Do you mean Joseph Weber?
Thank you for the nice special link.
That’s right, “Joe Weber”. When you get to my age, you don’t necessarily remember things like names right away. Weber was quite a guy. He had a lot of admirers (for his character) among the grad students, who also were convinced that he was wrong. The fight over gravity waves will teach a lot about how physics decides what is wrong and what is right.
You can get the book cheaper if you order a used copy on Amazon, I bet.
Carl,
My memory is not better than yours, but in the age of google who needs memory. I vaguely knew that I studied Weber’s work long time ago. If I remember correctly he had a short but beautiful book about gravitational waves or general relativity.
I searched my sites with my custom search engine and it pulled an item for Weber from my book (scroll down to page 48). I remember that I liked his research but in the book I make some claims that probably you would be in a better position to evaluate. I wrote that Weber claimed to induce and observe dynamical gravitational field but what he measured was the induced electromagnetic field, not gravitational field. Does this sound right to you?
I vaguely remember that he was actually chastised by physics community for his gravitational wave work. But I may be wrong. His experiments with aluminum bars were interesting even if they had nothing to do with gravitational waves.
The fight over gravity waves will teach a lot about how physics decides what is wrong and what is right.
My opinion on this is that the media decides what is right and what is wrong. But what is important is that however decisions are made they cannot contradict previous physics. Physicists are powerless to change the system.
I checked the library but they didn’t have Gravity’s Shadow. They have it in ebay for about $30.