It is hard to say whether the speculation over the so-called Perry-Dean Shift will be exacerbated or alleviated by the results presented by Professor Ilan Goethe (the great poet's nephew) in a recent issue of Zeitschrift fur Physik. At face value they provide an explanation for the anomalies that do not invoke Interventionism. On the other hand, they demand that the Universe be far stranger than we had imagined. If nothing else, Professor Goethe's analysis provides welcome clarification of the point at issue. Much of the story has now been well rehearsed in our newspapers, albeit not without confusion. We all know how the work of Professor Einstein at Berne, building on that of Professors Planck and Lorentz, initiated a reconsideration of the foundations of physical science. He proposed a breakdown of Newtonian mechanics at both the smallest and the largest scales.
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