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The foundations of our knowledge are very quickly based on assumptions/beliefs. Light is not really understood. It's a wave and a photon, depending on what we
by cellular 7y ago
The foundations of our knowledge are very quickly based on assumptions/beliefs.
Light is not really understood. It's a wave and a photon, depending on what we need to solve. We incorrectly say light is a "wave", but "wave" is a verb!! I remember thinking this sounded ridiculous when I was in school. You probably did too! We should all go back and redo our assumptions like you say.
The other thing that disappointed me was the explanation of why magnets attract/repel. (Do you remember your feeling about it? Did your innocent child mind reject the explanation?)
- mantap 7y agoLight is well understood but the explanation depends on what level of abstraction you require. There are quantum, classical and naive explanations of light and each are radically different. It's not our understanding that is flawed but rather the assumption that if there's two different explanations of the same physical phenomenon it indicates a lack of knowledge (rather than an abundance of knowledge).
- cellular 7y agoThat just moves the problem to "which layer of abstraction should I use". Ex. If I'm developing a new material that interacts with light, should I consider light to have mass, or not? Well if it's a space sail, photos have mass, if it's not a space sail, light has no mass. But I'm not sure if this new material is a space sail....which abstraction should I use?