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Have any of you ever heard of the Flying Car Publishing Company? This set of books is so amazingly brilliant that Flying Car doesn't even feel the need to publish any other books whatsoever!

> And who is Robert Louis Kemp anyway?

You can find his autobio at http://www.superprincipia.com/About_The_Author.htm

> Where is his PhD from?

He doesn't have any. As he says:

"I know that there are some readers that would ask, why does Kemp not have a PhD? The truth is reader, I did not want to waste years trying to convince others of my ideas, or doing research for someone else, when my own personal research required that same enormous time."

According to his autobio, he has a Masters in electronics from Tuskegee University and he had all sorts of jobs at all sorts of companies from radar systems designer at Raytheon to webdesigner at Disney. The company list is impressive, NASA JPL, Hughes, Northrop.

This book must be the culmination of this process:

"Then, in the fall of 1989, I was led by the Holy Spirit within, to drop out of school for six months; thus I locked myself in a room and studied only physics and the Bible. And for a total of two years all I did was study physics and the Bible."

I am not a scientist, have not read the 3 volumes, can not speak for the validity of the material, I have no affiliation with any one involved with the book, and agree the original "review" may not be completely sincere...

But having others being critical of it without having read the book is in my mind just wrong. That's whats wrong with the world now a days..people make knee jerk responses without having the whole story.

For those questioning the religious aspects...His blog comment indicates "I don’t know about God using me in the last days? But I can see his handiwork in the universe through the math and physics; and would like to share that vision with others. However, the Super Principia Mathematica is not a religious treatise. There is nothing religious in the Super Principia, except for the Prologue.". I suspect anything beyond that and he is trying to leverage off of Hawking's recent publication.

The book site has excerpts available. The material seems to have some relevant references from history for foundation as well as bleeding edge science as well. Programs I've seen on the Science Channel seems to have similar topics that he covers. So there may be some merit there.

He worked on the Moller Flying Car and at JPL. I would hope that gets him a little credit.

I am not a scientist, have not read the 3 volumes, can not speak for the validity of the material, I have no affiliation with any one involved with the book, and agree the original "review" may not be completely sincere...

But having others being critical of it without having read the book is in my mind just wrong. That's whats wrong with the world now a days..people make knee jerk responses without having the whole story.

For those questioning the religious aspects...His blog comment indicates "I don’t know about God using me in the last days? But I can see his handiwork in the universe through the math and physics; and would like to share that vision with others. However, the Super Principia Mathematica is not a religious treatise. There is nothing religious in the Super Principia, except for the Prologue.". I suspect anything beyond that and he is trying to leverage off of Hawking's recent publication.

The book site has excerpts available. The material seems to have some relevant references from history for foundation as well as bleeding edge science as well. Programs I've seen on the Science Channel seems to have similar topics that he covers. So there may be some merit there.

He worked on the Moller Flying Car and at JPL. I would hope that gets him a little credit.

In the year 2001 I stopped working on physics, because I was tired of working on physics and working three jobs. (Engineer, Teacher, Physics Writer). When I stopped studying physics instead of resting, I started studying software and web site design. A year later in the year 2002 I left Raytheon to work for the Disney Corporation as a software computer programmer in web site design; however, I got in on the tail end of the Dot Com “Bang”; and experienced the Dot Com “Bust.”

As another aside, what is it with crackpot "engineers"? Someone passed me a link to this guy back in the day - his "Foreclosure Solution Patent" is the stuff of legends.

Actually, I think one look at his website is enough to score very highly indeed. Why is it that all internet crackpots seem to have websites that look like that? There must be some web developer who specialises in table layouts with low quality pictures of astronomical phenomena especially for people like this.

Super Principia Mathematica
The Rage to Master Conceptual & Mathematical Physics

This book is dedicated with sincere gratitude and admonishing [sic] to the all wise (Omniscience)[sic], Omnipotent, and Omnipresent God the Father of us all; God the Son (Jesus) the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit for providing the wisdom, strength, and insight, and for being the author and finisher of my faith, making this work possible.
...

This paragraph is from the Acknowledgment.
http://www.superprincipia.com/First_Law_Of_Motion.htm/ Click Look inside, on page v.

After seeing the samples at
http://www.superprincipia.com/my_FLOM_EBook/Vol_1_FLOM_e_Book.html
I retract my statement containing the word "pleasant".

Haven't read the book, but the website looks like the work of a crank...

The "About the Author" section mentions the author was born during a full moon. Exactly why is this relevant?

During which lunar cycle were Einstein, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus born?

Inquiring minds want to know!

There is no equally-named Kemp on arxiv.org (there is a "R.Kemp", where "R." seems to stand for "Roger" in two solid-state chemistry/physics papers), and there are no google hits with his name and +site:.edu.

On http://www.superprincipia.com/About_The_Author.htm is the author's CV, he is essentially a radar engineer (probably a good one given the companies he worked at), and worked as a math teacher at some time. In the autumn of 1989 he suffered an attack of Holy Spirit and seems not to have recovered yet.

Unfortunately the website gives no sample chapters for download. I'd expect the book to be a stylistically pleasant reading, but I cannot tell if the hard core physics stuff is correct (and free from esoteric stuff). When in doubt, I'd stick with Penrose (his two-volume book with Rindler is great, his popular stuff as well (except when he tries to push his unorthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics)).

The wensite says the book requires "basic understanding into algebra, geometry, differential calculus, and integral calculus". Since that little math is not even sufficient to understand the currently generally accepted theories of physics (one needs at least differential geometry, algebraic topology, functional analysis and Lie groups for even the simplest things), I have some doubts whether the book really *explains* physics or just tells a story *about* physics.

The fact that he has no PhD should not matter (he seems not to want one), and even Einstein got PhD his only a year after Special Relativity.
His paper about photons is mostly prose with very few equations in between, and sounds strange (to say it mildly), which has already been mentioned by other commenters here.

Meta-question: Why is "Post anonymously" next to the checkbox written in white on white background? Buggy CSS or broken browser?

Here's a preview.

book 1
book 2
book 3

Sadly, we cannot follow all the wisdom to the fullest end, as some pages are left out, to make us hungrier still

his blog (a bit barren as yet)

Apparently he does NOT have a PhD

Here's a preview.

book 1
book 2
book 3

Sadly, we cannot follow all the wisdom to the fullest end, as some pages are left out, to make us hungrier still

his blog (a bit barren as yet)

Apparently he does NOT have a PhD

Here's a preview.

book 1
book 2
book 3

Sadly, we cannot follow all the wisdom to the fullest end, as some pages are left out, to make us hungrier still

his blog (a bit barren as yet)

Apparently he does NOT have a PhD

Uh huh. A thinly veiled appeal to creationism, another attempt to spin intelligent design as an actual, workable theory. You have to read through the crank's website to catch it, but then there it is, way down at the bottom of the site, an invocation of "the diety". Go suck a dick, Kemp.

I suppose because the reviewer has an incorrect belief that science and religion are, in his words, "diametrically opposing." The author mentions his faith quite a bit. Add those together and you get a surprised reviewer with a conflict to resolve citing the religious person as wiser than the rest of us heathen scientists.

There's nothing shocking to scientists about colleagues having faith in a higher power. We can't prove that all sorts of gods being worshiped don't actually exist. At the time we don't care because these gods don't seem to have a hand in how the universe works, as we've been finding perfect alternative and testable explanations to our questions. (And our curiosity isn't sated by "god did it", because that just makes us ask "well how did He do it?", which is especially frustrating).

The controversy only arises when literal religious nuts think they know better about fields like biology, geology and astronomy than proven science. That's ok as long as it's in their own minds and churches, but the line is when they start forcing everyone to conform to their beliefs, by teaching religion in public science class. Secular and non-Christian scientists aren't crazy about our kids learning that the Earth is only 6000 years old, or that the story of Noah's Ark is even remotely plausible.

Ya, for being so smart you wouldn't expect him to have the worst website ever either.

Awww, come on: "worst... ever"??

It is at least on a par with http://www.coasttocoastam.com/ (Art Bell's former show now hosted by George Noory)

The press release brags about Intelligent Design and how the book is a counter to Hawking's, "There is no God theory". Yuck. http://www.superprincipia.com/Press_Release_2.pdf

God (since that was mentioned in the review more than anything else, and I would imagine with a higher frequency than in the actual book)?

A quick search found what looks like the book's official website...complete with the author's autobiography which seems to indicate that God could well be a prominent theme throughout the book.

Amongst other things he apparently spent 2 years locked in a room doing nothing but studying the bible + physics and worked on flying cars, but didn't bother with a PhD because he didn't want to waste time trying to convince other people of his ideas...

Actually, "Principia Mathematica" was the title of Newton's magnum opus, long before Russell and Whitehead. That seems to be what the title is referencing.

However, the guy makes it abundantly clear on his website that he is an incorrigible crank:
http://www.superprincipia.com/About_The_Author.htm

Ya, for being so smart you wouldn't expect him to have the worst website ever either.