When traveling through the Internet, one often encounters crackpot physics, and after some familiarity with the genus, one begins to organize the specimens into species. I often find myself remarking upon a particular characteristic of pseudo-physics: the use of verbal instead of mathematical arguments. Instead of positing a premise and doing the math to deduce consequences of that premise, we get a whole pile of jargon, pulled from different sources and decorated with equations to disguise the fact that the “arguments” are essentially plays on words, with the whole thing bent towards bolstering some pre-established conclusion. What do you do in order to debunk this kind of nonsense? One option is to focus on a few highlights and show that they lack validity; however, addressing all the points may balloon out into a full physics course of its own.

This problem is accentuated when a single piece of crankery indulges in misunderstandings of quantum mechanics, special relativity, general relativity and other fields, all together in a single vessel of fractured ceramic. The anti-Einstein polemic recently unearthed by PZ Myers is a good example of such a “target-rich environment,” as was biocentrism woo. Another example, currently unfolding before our cybernetic eyes, is Salvador Cordova’s ongoing misunderstanding of quantum mechanics (commentary here, here, here, here, here and now at Tyler’s new place too — and we’ve hardly gotten started).

When I have an idle moment, I might pull the thoughts I’ve scattered around my fellow skeptics’ blog threads into a unified post, but for now, I’ll just refer the Interested Reader to the links provided above.

From Dirk J. Struick’s A Concise History of Mathematics (1967), quoted by Shallit:

There exists a widely quoted story about Diderot and Euler according to which Euler, in a public debate in St. Petersburg, succeeded in embarrassing the freethinking Diderot by claiming to possess an algebraic demonstration of the existence of God: “Sir, (a+b^n)/n = x; hence God exists, answer please!” This is a good example of a bad historical anecdote, since the value of an anecdote about an historical person lies in its faculty to illustrate certain aspects of his character; this particular anecdote serves to obscure both the character of Diderot and of Euler, Diderot knew his mathematics and had written on involutes and probability, and no reason exists to think that the thoughtful Euler would have behaved in the asinine way indicated. The story seems to have been made up by the English mathematician De Morgan (1806-1871). See L. G. Krakeur and R. L. Krueger, Isis, Vol. 31 (1940), pp. 431-32; also Vol. 33 (1941), pp. 219-31. It is true that there was in the eighteenth century occasional talk about the probability of an algebraic demonstration of the existence of God; Maupertuis indulged in one, see Voltaire’s Diatribe, Oeuvres, Vol. 41 (1821 ed.), pp. 19, 30. See also B. Brown, Amer. Math. Monthly, Vol. 49 (1944).

Krakeur and Krueger state that his investigations into mathematics “dominated Diderot’s youthful activities and represent an important phase of his universal interests.” They speculate that a lack of mathematical background among scholars who studied the man impaired those scholars’ ability to address this part of Diderot’s life.