Since ?1967?, William Charles Lucas has been developing advanced concepts in electrodynamics with the intention of correcting for [simplifications, approximations, assumptions, incompleteness] that are inherent to the foundations of 20th century fundamental theoretical physics.  

Bill Lucas's book "The Universal Force, Volume I" revamps the theoretical basis of physics, starting with a re-formulation of electrodynamics that is built on concepts from [Newton, Maxwell, Barnes, Assiz,??], and a host of anomalous experimental data.  Assuming that it is correct, the Universal Force avoids the [errors, inconsistencies, incompleteness] introduced by Maxwell's theorems, and immediately and simply eliminates any need for Lorentz-Poicare's theory of relativity or Einstein's later versions of Special and General relativity.  It avoids the inherent [failures, mathematical contortions, complexity, contradictions] of relativity concepts, which can be viewed as a small subset of the Universal Force implications.  Whole ecosystems of theories required to support and complete those theories also disappear, greatly reducing physics to a more complete "Natural Philosophy", and ensuring that concepts are "Theories should be made as simple as possible, but no more", to quote Einstein, and to also add that they should also work as more than band-aids and crutches.  The volume also leads into structural physics, albeit leaving for a later volume a full description of how the Universal Force also replaces quantum mechanics.  

But is Lucas's work correct?  To me, the old adage by ?name? "All theories are wrong, but some are useful" is a starting point, to which I add "While the most successful theories initially drive an explosion of [excitement, creativity, progress], they ultimately pass from science fashion, to science cult, to science religion, at which point mainstream scientists attack the dissidents [personally, professionally], and these mainstream concepts become the most important obstacle to our progress."  So I prefer not to believe in belief nor absolute truth, and I do prefer to retain and compare "multiple conflicting hypothesis".  In that light, Lucas easily passes the mark, to the extent that I have more confidence in his concepts than the mainstream.  I am possibly helped in that perception by being too aware of the dark and ghastly details of the "past and present" of mainstream concepts and their bands of scientists and instituions.  

I delve into "correctness and proof" in more detail in my detailed review of Lucas's theoretical derivations.  But at this stage my review ONLY addresses the correctness and consitency of his formula derivations, which to me is the starting point for having confidence in any deductive theory.  The greater issue of agreement with data (and of the integretity and correctness of the data!) is not covered in my review, but for some points Lucas shows that key principles of mainstream science automatically fall out of the Universal Force, but that the latter is far richer and more powerful in going beyond mainstream concepts, both in specifics and for the unification of concepts.

While at this interim stage my review is incomplete, and I do have remining questions about a coupel of important points that I am working on, it does give me great confidence in the thinking and work of Bill Lucas.  Other priorities force me to put this aside for perhaps a year or two, even though there isn't much work left to complete the basic proofs of his derivations.  

If correct (or at least better), his work may :

1. extend and continue in the axiomatic manner established by Isaac Netwon, correct and extend James Clerk Maxwells work

2. simply erase the concepts of Max Planc and Albert Einstein.  Of course, many of the well-researched and proven formulae will still remain, sometimes in improved form, as those are supported by data.  

3. As Lucas shows in his book, one can often get to the correct formulae even if ones concept is incorrect. That gem is of great interest to me for my main priority outside of the area of Computational Intelligence (mostly neural networks) : to understand why and how the overwhelming mainstream scientific consensus and scientists fail so routinely, over [decades, hundreds, thousands] of years.


My review of Lucas's core concepts is split among several documents : 

1. "Howell - math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf" 
	which goes step-by-step through Lucas's equations, providing "baby steps" to allow a careful  verification of his results.

2. "Howell - Background math for Lucas Universal Force, Chapter 4.odt"
	This file contains my own derivations of background math related to Chapter 4 of Charles W. Lucas's book "The Universal Force, Volume 1".

3. "Howell - Background math, summary listing of Chapter 4 formulae.odt"
	provides a summary listing of comparisons between my pown "background math", and Lucas's versions of formulae as per his Chapter 4 equations.  A short listing of serious discrepancies and issues is also provided. 

4. Make a summary of serious discrepancies betweeen my reulsts and those of Lucas."

5. "Howell - Old math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf"
	Provides earlier verification attempts that went awry for several equations.  In direct violation to the addage "It is better to remain silence and to have others think you a fool, ...", I make it very clear how foolish I can be.  

6. "Howell - Verifications of Lucas Universal Force, summary listing  <date, time>.txt"
	This shows a quick summary listing of verification results for equations.   All equations have much longer comments that can be seen in    "Howell - math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf".

7. "Howell - Verifications of Lucas Universal Force, full listing  <date, time>.txt"
	This shows a more detailed summary listing of verification results for equations.   All equations have much longer comments that can be seen in    "Howell - math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf".

8. "Howell - Symbols for Bill Lucas, Universal Force.pdf"
	Beyond a listing of Lucas's "variable symbols and notations", which was a great reminder for me during my verification pRocess, this document also provides a description of my own non-standard format for [equations, array & vector notations, basic operations like integration & differentiation].  This will probably be essential for readers of "Howell - math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf"

9. "Howell - Review of Lucas, Universal Force.pdf"
	Peer-review style comments on the contents of the book and its concepts, including my perceptions of its strengths, weaknesses, and questions that I have.

10. "Howell - Meta-Level Lucas Universal Force
	speculative [context, comments, questions] - random, scattered blah, blah from yours truly.  (unwritten as of 24Sep2015)

11. "Howell - the twin brothers [Science, Religion] and their disciples"
	There is an uncany resemblance between groups that often see themselves as polar opposites.  Comments of a science fiend but non-believer of either.  (unwritten as of 24Sep2015)

This document provides my own verifications of Lucas's equations as described in an older version of his book "The Universal Force: Volume 1" (Lucas2013?). References for this verification are provided the section "REFERENCES" below.  My work here serves primarily to force myself to look closely at his work, to better form my opinions on its veracity and potential.   My own background is highly mixed, involving varying degrees of Engineering,  Research management, marketing, business development etc.  I am certainly  NOT an expert in physics, and this is a learning experience for me even  if some of it is a repaeat of long-forgotten [math, physics, engineering] courses.

I have followed Lucas's basic formulations, even though some of his expressions for  key relationships do not seem to agree with standard literature expressions, such as : 
     (4-1) Generalised Amperes Law
     (4-5) Lenzs Induction Law
     (4-6) Lorentzs Force Law
17May2016  HOWEVER, I still have to go through Appendix A for the Generalized Amperes Law.

Comments on approach :  As I worked through Lucas's equations, at times I obtained somewhat different results.  However, in going to the next step, in general (not always) I used his version of the result.  I have a high degree  of confidence in his knowledge and work now, more than my own limited grasp  of the area, even if I still feel there is a chance of occasional errors or  differences of inter´retations that may ultimately arise with his theories. This approach also makes it possible to "skip to" different ewquations out  of sequence, even though I have not done so with Chapter 4.  

My [style, approach] in this math review has developed.over.the years for  doing my peer reviews of papers (mostly nerial network related) that present new mathematical theorems anbd proofs.  My standard comment inmy reviews  also applies to the current document : 
	"...   As a reviewer, I find that a step-by-step re-typing of a part of the paper  as I have done below forces me to pay attention to details that I might  otherwise skim over.  Even though this is perhaps too time intensive to apply  to the full paper, by doing so.over.part of the authors work, it gives me  far grater confidence in the rest of the paper, which is read, but not  analysed step-by-step. It also gives the authors a better idea of the  weaknesses of the reviewer!   ..."

One thing different about the current review is that I have saved  "older versions" of my attempts to verify Lucas's in a separate  file "Howell - Old math of Lucas Universal Force.ndf" where I have  deliberately left in my mistakes, wrong turns, dead ends etc,  rather than clean it all up. No doubt this will be of great annoyance  to the reader of that file, but its very  important to me, as it highlights my own weaknesses, and serves as a  reminder that things dont always flow as smoothly as I would like.   Others who wish to criticise my work and weaknesses will also find it useful, and Im all for criticism. Further more, some of the dead ends have  lessons to teach.  Im a big fan of "Multiple Conflicting Hypothesis"  and "Multiple Independent Pathways" to get to an answer, almost in  a Category Theoretical sense (no - Im no good at Category Theory,  but I find it very intriguing).  

This file is written so that it is suitable to be loaded directly by  the QNial programming language.  Most of the content is commented out  (text without empty lines following the character # when it is the  first character in a line).  For now this facilitates providing up-to-date  summaries of results for each equation, and checking of any  numerical calaculations.  Some degree of symbolic processing is also  possible, but not necessary as of 07Sep2015.  Most of my symbolic  processing code is for formulas subject to array computations, where the formulae are processed, not numbers.  However, Lucas's book does not get  into tensor notations and processing - but this may become important at a later stage when going through standard General Relativity work.


 www.BillHowell.ca   10Sep2015