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Anecdotally, I agree. When you look at the history of major breakthroughs in physics, mainstream understanding narrows down on some complex analytical theories

Anecdotally, I agree. When you look at the history of major breakthroughs in physics, mainstream understanding narrows down on some complex analytical theories (rotating shells above the earth controlling the movement of the heavenly bodies, crazy complex math) when in reality there was a fork in the road decades prior where mainstream physics took a wrong turn (heliocentric! orbits!). Things like this are obvious in retrospect, but radical for their time.. most of the physics I learned was elegant and well-understood, then particle physics just... didn’t really feel the same way. Tons of gotchas and edge cases, difficulty generalizing problems, and the obvious disconnect between the physics of the small and that of the large... In time we’ll look back at current iterations of the standard model and our understanding of the physics of the small and wonder how those Neanderthals didn’t just realize that xyz was the key to make everything much simpler and work in harmony... that’ll be a fun day!

lurquer 6y ago
> In time we’ll look back at current iterations of the standard model and our understanding of the physics of the small and wonder... I’m not sure about that. Everything we have to analogize to and obtain an intuition about relates to the macro world. There’s no reason the quantum phenomena have any analog to what we experience on a daily basis. That is, all the cosmological models from Ptolemy, epicycles, heliocentric, and even Newton’s derivations were arrived at by analogy to things we already experience. To be sure, Principia Mathematica is dense, but Newton’s derivation of the effects of an inverse-squared force can be followed by, ultimately, grasping Euclid’s Elements (which in turn can be grasped through familiarity with a compass and straightedge.) I recall a Feynman interview where he was asked why magnets repel. And, he explained there is no analogy that can help ones understanding, as the behavior of anything you’d use in your analogy is ultimately governed by the same principles that make magnets repel.

lurquer 6y ago

> In time we’ll look back at current iterations of the standard model and our understanding of the physics of the small and wonder... I’m not sure about that. Everything we have to analogize to and obtain an intuition about relates to the macro world. There’s no reason the quantum phenomena have any analog to what we experience on a daily basis. That is, all the cosmological models from Ptolemy, epicycles, heliocentric, and even Newton’s derivations were arrived at by analogy to things we already experience. To be sure, Principia Mathematica is dense, but Newton’s derivation of the effects of an inverse-squared force can be followed by, ultimately, grasping Euclid’s Elements (which in turn can be grasped through familiarity with a compass and straightedge.) I recall a Feynman interview where he was asked why magnets repel. And, he explained there is no analogy that can help ones understanding, as the behavior of anything you’d use in your analogy is ultimately governed by the same principles that make magnets repel.