Having read your defense of Oyibo,the point of yours I identify with is that we should locate what is genuine in Oyibo's claims to achievement in cosmology.
We are in the process of doing so.Ogonna,the other day,presented a review by a Nigerian mathematician,Animalu, of a book by Oyibo.Animalu states that the book provides a viable framework for a Unified Theory..Ogonna argues that the term "viable framework" is equal to developing a successful framework.I dont think that argument is tenable.
The manner in which Oyibo is carrying out his quest for recognition suggests to me that he does not expect to get such recognition from the scientific community and is working on the gullibility of Nigerians emerging from the generally low level of understanding about science in the country,along with the hunger for heroes,as Emeagwali does.
I am of this view beceause the central plank of Oyibo's method of communicating his ideas are non-scientific fora,not fora where scientists qualified to assess his work will do so,and henceforth educate the general public.
Having done a search of his publications I can see one in a scientific publication that addresses his ideas in scientific cosmology. The others in scientific publications address other subjects,different from the fields of the discoveries he claims. The other publication of his in terms of his self described discoveries seems to be a book publication by a non-academic press.That is problematic beceause of the problem of quality control.The value of an academic press is that scholars in the relevant field examine the work and decide if it is fit for publication in terms of contributing to knowledge in the field.
Even if Oyibo did publish in scholarly channels,does his work achieve the goal of creating a Theory of Everything as he claims it does?
Why is his work not reviewed by other scientists, particularly in fora where it can be examined by his peers in the scientific community? Does he submit the work to journals for publication and the book for review by academic journals? If he has published in scientific fora anything relevant to his claims to discoveries beyond that paper I saw it is certainly not easy to find.That would be odd for a person who is so sure of his achievement.
I have read that he claims that prominent scientists have examined his discoveries and given their accreditation.I am yet to see any review,anywhere,apart from that by Animalu,which, tellingly enough, as far as I remember, is on a website on Black scientists at the University of Buffalo,,a website that takes pains to describe Oyibo's claims as fraudulent.
I am of the view that Oyibo is not likely to be telling the truth about those reviews by scientists.I would be happy to be proved wrong. I could be proved wrong in my near conviction that no reviews by those scientists exist. I would be pleased to be proved wrong in my conviction that even if they exist,they do not agree that Oyibo has developed a successful Theory of Everything.
If such accreditation had been achieved these arguments would be unnecessary. The claim that racism is behind Oyibo's not being celebrated by the global scientific community will not hold.
Oyibo has made enough noise for his case to have achieved positive attention from his peers,if he has a case. I am curious to know in terms of what scenario Oyibo could have achieved all he claims and yet receive no acclaim from his peers and resorts to focusing his claims of achievement on his website,the media and Youtube.
Having addressed the question of Oyibo's relationship to the scientific community in the context of his self described cosmological discoveries,I want to address his focus on the media.
I have read a quote purportedly from Oyibo claiming that the Nigerian papers need to bring his work to the limelight the way the New York Times did for Einstein,claiming that as a central method by which scientific works come to light. That is only partly true and is a distortion of the story of Einstein whose work achieved prominence well before his fame in the US.
I will not dwell on Oyibo's use of Youtube because it has its value.The bottom line,though,is that the best assessors of the work of scientist is not the general public but other scientists.
Along those lines,I think your use of the stories of Einstein and Newton in your essay is misleading. You use those examples to support your claim that the Oyibo case is comparable to that of those men.I think the way you use those examples,without your knowing it,throws up considerations that highlight Oyibo's weaknesses and the sense of unseriousness in his approach to presenting his self described discoveries.
First, Newton.Yes, Newton engaged in religious,philosophical,occult and scientific cosmological exploration and understood his scientific, religious and philosophical cosmology as unified.Even then,his work in scientific cosmology takes pains to work strictly in terms of the quantitative tools of scientific cosmology.His magnum opus, the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, is instructive in this regard. Almost all the work operates in terms of rigorous quantitative analysis. At the conclusion,the General Scholium, he expounds the philosophical and religious conclusions he draws in relation to the scientific work, but does not argue that he can prove those ideas they way he is able to prove such concepts in physical cosmology as the laws of gravity and of motion.
He describes the intellectual techniques of observation,induction and generalization,in relation to mathematics, through which he has developed his physical cosmology. He concludes the work by describing his vision of an ultimate unity between celestial mechanics and motion in the human body,but concludes that having reached the limits of his scientific abilities he cannot prove the factuality of this vision "we are not furnished with such a sufficiency of experiments...." or lines almost identical to those.
If Oyibo has discovered a method for being able to prove religious and philosophical conceptions through the quantitative methods of mathematics,or through a unity between quantitative and qualitative methods,or through the development of new epistemic categories, is he spelling out his methods or engaging in using ideas that uncritically conflate fields of knowledge so as to dazzle the uniformed or does he lack the philosophical and methodological sophistication to explain what he claims to be doing so as to make clear its terms of reference?
Einstein.You mention that Einstein was championed by Sir Arthur Eddington and Oyibo could do well with a champion. Note that Einstein worked always within the channels of formal science.His early three ground breaking articles were published in Annanel der Physique,Annals of Physics,I think,a prestigious scientific journal, and critiqued by his peers.Eddington's support came later through an experimental verification of Einstein's ideas,thereby complementing the theoretical analysis by the scientific community.Oyibo,on the other hand,does not seem to be working within the framework of the scientific establishment and its rigorous rules of assessment.He seems to be the central scientific assessor of his self acclaimed work.
Is he arguing, like Grigory Perelman,the Russian scientist awarded the $1,000 dollar Fields Medal but who turned it down,that he is opposed to the scientific establishment and is going it on his own? Is he arguing that the establishment is too narrow in its perceptions to appreciate the revolutionary scope of his work?
I dont seem to see such a principled and revolutionary claim in reports by and of him.He seems to be arguing that other scientists have given credence to his claims of achievement.I am yet to see any evidence of that.
Yes,he has published lot of standard mathematical work.The claim to fame he evokes,however,is not for that but for the theory which is proving so nebulous to substantiate.
The fact that the Nigerian government could have put on their postage stamp two scientists,Oyibo and Emeagwali, whose work cannot be verified in terms of the achievements they claim, says much about the level of underdevelopment in the country at that time, particularly in terms of understanding of the culture of science and technology.
Thanks
Toyin
On 19 November 2010 11:31, Dare Afolabi <afolabi.dare@gmail.com> wrote:
On a related note, I've responded to critics of Professor Gabriel
Oyibo in an article on Nigeria Village Square,
<http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/guest-articles/give-
gabriel-oyibo-a-break.html>.
Dare Afolabi.
On Nov 18, 7:32 pm, toyin adepoju <toyin.adep...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
> A misconception is passing the rounds of Nigerian centred fora that
> Professor Toyin Falola is spearheading the recent critiques of Philip
> Emeagwali, a Nigerian scientist accused of making false claims about his
> achievements.Sakhos Silas Ejiofor even titled his essay on the Emeagwali
> affair in the Nigerian Village Square site a
> rejoinder<http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/guest-articles/another-l...>to
> a Sahara Reporters article written by Toyin Falola.
>
> Please note:
>
> Professor Toyin Falola has not written a word on the Emeagwali saga.The
> only connection Toyin Falola has with those critiques is that he hosts the
> listerve USAAfrica,where a debate on the subject took place some time ago.A
> broad range of subjects are discussed on USAAfrica spanning various
> aspects of Africana existence.
>
> Thanks
> Toyin Adepoju
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