Theory Of Direct Action Research Articles

Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings

Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings

The Crisis of the Humanities and the Viability of Direct Action

Humanities advocates focus on demonstrating the humanities’ value to encourage participation. This advocacy is largely done through institutional means, and rarely taken directly to the public. This article argues that by reframing the theory of Direct Action, humanities advocates can effectively engage the public. The article begins by exploring three different understandings of the humanities: that they develop good citizenship, that they develop understanding, and that they develop critical thought. The article then discusses what Direct Action is and how it works. The article concludes by describing how to reframe Direct Action to suit the needs of the humanities, including potential actions that will achieve those ends. Humanities Direct Action must be seen as a debate and will focus on increasing critical thinking.

Antimatter in the Direct-Action Theory of Fields

One of Feynman's greatest contributions to physics was the interpretation of negative energies as antimatter in quantum field theory. A key component of this interpretation is the Feynman propagator, which seeks to describe the behavior of antimatter at the virtual particle level. Ironically, it turns out that one can dispense with the Feynman propagator in a direct-action theory of fields, while still retaining the interpretation of negative energy solutions as antiparticles. Quanta 2016; 5: 12–18.

Generalised direct action and absorber theory of radiation

It is known that corresponding to a field theory of a tensor of arbitrary rank, there exists a direct-action theory under certain conditions. An attempt is therefore made to construct an explicit direct-action theory for a tensor field of rankN in such a form that the absorber theory of radiation may be worked out using the methods made so well known by Wheeler-Feynman and Hoyle-Narlikar. It is possible to recover the familiar electromagnetic theory corresponding to the case ofN = 1.

M. Poincaré and Maxwell

IN his recent treatise on “Electricite et Optique,” M. Poincare professes to give a description of Maxwell's theories of electromagnetic actions. M. Poincare appears to think that Mossotti's theory is consistent with and differs but little from Maxwell's. On this Maxwell says (§62):—“The theory of direct action at a distance is mathematically identical with that of action by means of a medium… provided suitable hypotheses be introduced when any difficulty occurs. Thus Mossotti has deduced the mathematical theory of dielectrics from the ordinary theory of attraction.” Maxwell anyway repudiated Mossotti's theory. M. Poincare introduces a “fluide inducteur” as the name of a thing displaced in the dielectric, when what Maxwell calls electric displacement occurs. This is all very well. It is anyway not inconsistent with Maxwell, even though Maxwell says distinctly that he does not know what the change of structure is like which he calls electric displacement. It might be a bending or twisting or lots of things, but M. Poincare is partially justified in fixing the idea thus. He calls this “fluide inducteur” elastic, though at the same time he calls it incompressible. It is not quite clear what “fluide” means here. M. Poincare certainly observes that the elasticity of the “fluide inducteur” is quite different from that of material bodies, and in fact acknowledges that it is such as can hardly be fairly attributed to an incompressible fluid. Indeed, how can an incompressible fluid be elastic at all? There must be something besides the fluid; there must be some structure fixed in space which offers an elastic reaction to the fluid when driven past it, or else there must be the two liquids he objects to that are driven past one another. It is hardly a fair representation to talk of an elastic incompressible fluid, and then to invent difficulties, when the phenomena could not confessedly be represented by any such thing, but only by a fluid with some other mechanism superadded.