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> I wonder if schoolchildren in 100 years from now will find quantum mechanics and instantaneous transportation similarly rudimentary and easy to understand. T
by Florin_Andrei 14y ago
> I wonder if schoolchildren in 100 years from now will find quantum mechanics and instantaneous transportation similarly rudimentary and easy to understand.
They will. And, to some extent, they will be wrong. There's nothing rudimentary about a nuclear reactor, yet indeed the basic concepts are now available for a bright primary school student to grasp.
I think we just got better at creating a more accessible mythology that stands in place of rigorous math for the laypeople.
- IanDrake 14y agoGuilty as charged.
- doctoboggan 14y agoI would not call it mythology, instead I would use the term analogy.
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoRight. Well, what I had in mind was the huge pile of sterile discussions on topics such as black holes, speed of light, quantum mechanics, etc, that one could see all the time on... well... just about any forum online. And most of the comments during such a discussion are... I would not even call them "wrong", you'd need at least some relation to reality to earn this badge. They're more like pure fantasy, unhinged. For those people, modern science has replaced mythology. But I agree with you. Pop science, correctly done, is heavily indebted to analogy.