Bessler - a Fraudster?
Opinions about Bessler vary. The verdict seems to have already been made among German historians and physicists. In their opinion, his “perpetuum mobile” was a cleverly orchestrated fraud. The fact that Landgrave Karl of Hesse-Cassel inspected the mechanism in August 1717 and immediately understood its function apparently does not change this. The doubters are equally unimpressed by the fact that numerous scientists, especially the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, tested the invention and declared it to be functional. According to the doubters and scoffers, Leibniz simply “was taken in” by cunning Bessler.
The term “fraud” is not to be taken literally here, but according to today’s understanding of language it is a synonym for swindles of any kind. Even if such fraud may not have any legal consequences for the “perpetrator”, it usually does not do him any credit . People don't like it when they feel like they're being played for fools. Then, as now, there were people who were of the opinion that Bessler adorned himself with borrowed plumes. It is unanimously agreed that only those who have special abilities or have honestly achieved greater merit deserve admiration. Anyone who wants to gain fame and is convicted of dishonesty is punished with contempt. Just think of the doping cases in today's competitive sports.
In contrast, however, no evidence has ever been provided that Bessler was dishonest. In particular, he was never convicted by a court, but instead the allegations against him were merely suspicions. They were partly based on ignorance, but also on envy and resentment as well as on the fear of “expert authorities” that their own reputation could be damaged if they were suddenly refuted. Their stereotypical statement about Bessler’s wheel: “It’s against the laws of nature!”
A real “law” never contains anything arbitrary. It is always precisely formulated and defines facts that can be reproduced as desired. Therefore, at this point the question must be asked about the exact wording of the natural law that Bessler's wheel supposedly violates. In any case, it is not the law of conservation of energy, as has already been conclusively explained in the relevant article. If the expression “natural laws” only has the function of a elastic clause, then it applies to something that is not allowed, because it just cannot be.
Let's go a little further. Isn't it the case that nature hides many more secrets than she has revealed so far? Our entire civilization is now almost 100% dependent on electricity. Although we know its effects, we have little knowledge of its actual nature. This applies equally to magnetism and especially to gravity. Physics basically knows nothing about gravity. You can't create it, you can't shield it*, and there's not even a consensus about whether gravity is a wave. And yet we “know” that gravity is not suitable as a source of energy because that would violate the laws of nature. Draw your own conclusions from such a claim.
*) Note: There are now tentative scientific approaches to weaken gravity by a few percent in a very localized area. A rapidly rotating and superconducting disk is used. (See Podkletnov.) What happens here is unknown. It is assumed that the gravitational wave is deflected to a small extent by the experimental setup. However, there is still no question of effective shielding or even usability as a drive. Other gravity shielding methods circulating on the Internet have all proven to be ineffective.
At all times there have been self-appointed authorities who felt superior to the rest of society because of their level of knowledge. They defined what was permissible or impermissible, what was right or wrong, what was true or untrue. Anyone who doubted this or even spoke out publicly against it felt their full displeasure. They were ridiculed, economically ruined, imprisoned, declared crazy, etc. So when the German Patent Office rejects the registration of a gravitational drive citing the “laws of nature,” then they are telling the inventor, “Good man, you must have lost your marbles.”
Homo sapiens is characterized, among other things, by his vehement efforts to defend his own reality under all circumstances, because it is his “stable data” that gives him orientation in life. He fears that losing this data would plunge him into deep confusion. To prevent this, people tend to declare other people's deviant realities as crazy and/or criminal. Both are perfect for making someone irrefutably wrong and taking “appropriate” action against them. Without the constitutional protection guaranteed today by the law, such people used to quickly end up in a “madhouse” or prison. The crazier someone is considered, the less you have to deal with their ideas and the more solid your own point of view is. The scientist ‘sGravesande, who traveled on Newton’s behalf and was initially fascinated by Bessler’s invention but was then not allowed to look inside, also succumbed to this pattern of behavior and later described Bessler as “crazy”.
Since numerous people had seen Bessler's invention in action and its functionality had been certified by two expert commissions, the majority nevertheless decided in favor of fraud and thus the “criminal” variant in his case. Instead of using their minds productively and attempting to unravel the secret of Bessler's gravitational drive, many doubters used all their imagination to think of ways in which he could have deceived those around him. It ranged from hidden drive shafts to invisible ropes etc. to the idea that a walking human must have been hidden inside the wheel. The fact that this was completely impossible, for example with the Gera wheel with a diameter of 75 cm and a thickness of only 10 cm, was either ignored or the critics were not even aware of such details. Many did not even begin to bother to read the witness statements or look at existing documents. Contemporary critics continue in this tradition. Their statements are often characterized by spite and biting cynicism. Most of them have only obtained superficial information, but yet have a ready-made and at the same time devastating explanation ready.
In his effort to ward off “dangerous” data, man has since time immemorial devalued, slandered, fought, suppressed, etc. other opinions. When he deemed it necessary, he introduced censorship or banned the printing of newspapers and books entirely. He has criminalized unpleasant expressions of opinion, banned teaching, and regulated or completely eliminated information opportunities. At his instigation, other individuals were executed for their dissenting views, wars were waged, and entire peoples were occasionally exterminated simply to assert one opinion over another. Numerous religious wars that have been waged to this day are a good example of this. In principle, however, any topic is suitable for this if it involves something in which people consider being right to be a question of survival.
But back to the natural sciences. In ancient times, the universe consisted of only four elements. (Earth, Water, Air and Fire). In the Middle Ages, it could cost your head if you publicly doubted that the earth was flat. In modern times, the physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) was ridiculed by his colleagues because he was of the opinion that the puerperal fever that was widespread at the time was caused by the doctors not washing their hands before examining the woman who had recently given birth. Just three examples that are symptomatic of the natural sciences. At all times, many of its representatives have only pretended or imagined that they knew everything about nature. On the other hand, they actually knew little or nothing.
At the beginning of the 3rd millennium, people still don't know what biological life is and have wild ideas about where they should classify themselves. The Western natural sciences, which are deeply rooted in materialism, leave no room for spirituality and therefore hold the opinion that man is interchangeable as beings with their brains. His personality and character arise from the connections between gray cells. In line with this trend, medicine in this country is trying (rather unsuccessfully) to correct mental disorders that occur using chemistry or brain surgery.
Man uses the antediluvian repulsion principle of escaping gases to propel their spacecraft and so far has not even managed to set foot on a neighboring planet. The planet he inhabits has an extremely hot core, but he cannot make any significant use of this energy, known as geothermal energy, due to a lack of suitable technologies. The sun constantly provides him with thousands of times more energy than he needs to survive, but mankind today still talks about an energy crisis and burns up valuable resources. By enriching the atmosphere with carbon dioxide in this way, he destroys his own livelihood in the long term. And to put everything into perspective, our solar system is just a crumb in the Milky Way, and the latter is just one of billions of other galaxies in this universe.
So shouldn't we be a little more modest about what we claim to know or to be able to do? Instead of constantly dramatizing energy scarcity, we should mentally allow ourselves to live in an abundance of energy. Let's be happy that there are people who are researching in the field of alternative energies and that they don't allow themselves to be forced into a corset. Any new use of existing energy is therefore to be welcomed. Especially if it does not interfere with the environment or otherwise endanger human existence.
By repeatedly using their social position to publicly brand new ideas as nonsense, some natural scientists have often slowed down the development of human knowledge or, at times, completely suppressed it. In times past, the Church's influence on such progress has had an even more negative impact. With each new discovery, she apparently feared for the credibility of her theses and ultimately for her own existence. Otherwise, new ideas always meet with bitter resistance when there is already a ready-made explanation for the issue they address, which is taught as irrefutable in schools and universities.
By repeatedly using their social position to publicly brand new ideas as nonsense, some natural scientists have often slowed down the development of human knowledge or, at times, completely suppressed it. In times past, the Church's influence on such progress has had an even more negative impact. With each new discovery, she apparently feared for the credibility of her theses and ultimately for her own existence. Otherwise, new ideas always meet with bitter resistance when there is already a ready-made explanation for the issue they address, which is taught as irrefutable in schools and universities.
Bessler's life's mission was to develop a gravity wheel that could do work. The distrust that his contemporaries showed him was of the same nature as that which is felt today. Because everyone has to deal with the wheel as a rotating thing in many different ways in their daily lives, they believe they are already very familiar with it. In this respect, Bessler's wheel did not and does not have good acceptance conditions. The biggest obstacle to new knowledge is the conviction of already knowing everything about it. This applies to every specialist field. For example, how would a physicist know that Bessler's invention didn't work? He has never seen this wheel himself and has no idea how it was built inside. Such an arrogant attitude deliberately damages the reputation of famous personalities such as Leibniz or ‘sGravesande, both of whom had seen the wheel, experimented with it and definitely ruled out fraud. The phrase that Leibniz “fell for” Bessler is an insolent statement because it implies that this great mathematician and philosopher was simply stupid.
If you look at Bessler's biography and compare the arguments of the skeptics of the time with those of today, you literally get the impression that time has stood still and nothing has changed in the last 300 years. Is this just because people have always remained true to their own thought patterns, or is there some kind of binding postulate that everyone submits to and that prevents any progress in this area? In any case, it is strange that, despite its simplicity noted by Landgrave Karl, no one has yet managed to figure out Bessler's principle. So are there perhaps unconscious influences that keep us away from the right solution?
Assuming that Bessler's invention wasn't a fraud, wouldn't it be as significant as the wheel itself? Anyone who works as an amateur inventor to solve the secret must of course be deeply convinced of the functionality of this gravitational drive and thus of Bessler's integrity. Otherwise he wouldn't have the necessary strength and perseverance. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it will happen one day.