George Francis Gillette and his "Spiral Universe."

	Biographical details on Gillette are scarce beyond the fact
that he was born in 1875, attended the University of Michigan, and has
held engineering posts in several large firms. But his four privately
printed books are lasting monuments to his originality and ingenuity.

	Relativity fares badly in all of Gillette's writings.
"Einstein a scientist?" he asks. "It were difficult to imagine anyone
more contrary to what a scientist should be...As a rational physicist,
Einstein is a fair violinist." Relativity is given such labels as
"moronic brainchild of mental colic," cross-eyed physics," "utterly
mad," "the nadir of pure drivel," and "voodoo nonsense." By 1940, he
predicted (writing in 1929), "the relativity theory will be considered
a joke." "Einstein is already dead and buried, alongside Andersen,
Grimm, and the Mad Hatter."

	Gillette has unbounded admiration for Newton, praising him as
the greatest mental genius who ever lived. The "spiral universe"
theory is, naturally, an improvement on Newton. As Gillette puts it,
it "out-Newton's Newton."  Exactly what is the spiral universe? It is
a little difficult to make out. The ultimate units--indivisible and
unchanging--are called "unimotes." Our universe is a "supraunimote"
and the entire cosmos is the "maximote." There is also an "ultimote"
which is defined as the "Nth sub-universe plane." Here is a sample of
Gillette's exposition:

	Each ultimote is simultaneously an integral part of zillions
of otherplane units and only thus is its infinite allplane velocity
and energy subdivided into zillions of finite planar quotas of
velocity and energy.

	"Bumping" is an important Gillette concept. "All motions ever
strive to go straight--until they bump." In fact, everything in the
cosmos finally reduces to motions bumping one another. "Nothing else
happens at all. That's all there is." "In all the cosmos there is
naught but straight-flying bumping, caroming, and again straight
flying.  Phenomena are but lumps, jumps, and bumps. A mass unit's
career is but lumping, jumping, bumping, rejumping, rebumping, and
finally unlumping."

	One of Gillette's greatest contributions to physics is his
famous "backscrewing theory of gravity." It is difficult to do this
concept justice, but perhaps these quotations will be helpful:
"Gravitation is the kicked back nut of the screwing bolt of
radiation." "Gravitation and backscrewing are synonymous. All mass
units are solar systems...of interscrewed subunits." And finally,
"Gravitation is naught but that reaction in the form of subplanar
solar systems screwing through higher plane masses."

	As might be anticipated, Gillette feels keenly the rejection
of his views by what he calls the "orthodox oxen" of science. There is
"no ox so dumb as the orthodox" he complains. They are the "would be
scientists," the "built up favorites of publishers." They are "the
reverse of true scientists. They are droll." It is all due to "their
being cramped within Homoplania, ignorant of ultimotically related sub
and supraplanias."

	The fact that these "professors" with their "frozen beliefs"
attack his theories he takes as a compliment. "The author would never
have wasted his depleted resources," he admits bitterly, "in printing
at his own expense theories already granted." But he is aware that
working against him are "all the mighty resources of mysticism which
control the press, politics, publishers, colleges, public libraries,
and all such direct avenues..." Like Columbus, Galileo, and
Copernicus, he is persecuted and misunderstood. Yet he bears up under
all of this with good humor. "The truth seeker is never a fanatic. He
has no fantasies to be fanatic about. So he is serene, and humane,
civilized."

	Only one "professor," Gillette writes sadly in one of his
books, has ever offered him encouragement--"a noble brave-minded
Russian. To him, Salute!" To the rest of the scientific world: "Pooh!
...it will soon attain oblivion by its own efforts."

	If the reader has failed to obtain a clear picture of
Gillette's revolutionary cosmology, I refer him to Gillette's
_Rational, Non-Mystical Cosmos_, revised third edition, 1933, in which
he will find it carefully explained in 384 pages. If this proves too
formidable, try the shorter work, _Orthodox Oxen_, 1929. According to
the title page, it is entirely free of "Hi-de-hi mathematics" and is
"bristling with new axioms." Moreover, there are innumerable diagrams
of such impressive structures as "The all cosmos doughnut," and a
"Laminated, solid, solid, solid, solid." In some editions the pictures
are hand-colored by the author.

Source: Martin Gardner's "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science"