Much of what the “scientific” (being indeed pseudo-scientific in many ways) textbooks that we see from the young age present as fact are what is merely metapho

Much of what the “scientific” (being indeed pseudo-scientific in many ways) textbooks that we see from the young age present as fact are what is merely metaphors used in current physical models or predictions of those models—not at all statements of some absolute ground truth, yet presented as such. Of course, there is more than one model, all of them evolve all the time, none of them are perfect (the map is never the territory), and none of them concern themselves with philosophy (a.k.a. unfalsifiable statements about what is “real reality” and the like). This misrepresentation leads to all sorts of confusion (the quintessential example being light as waves vs. particles), physicalism-by-default (along with illusionism and determinism) as mainstream philosophical worldview among the STEM crowd, and perhaps even distrust to natural sciences among some others. I blame it on the age-old patriarchal desire to appear a knowledgeable, reputable and indisputable authority to young students, and I’d wager that such people self-select for the job of writing and vetting textbooks.