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To: JRandomFreeper
Yeah, I have misgivings about this kind of thing, because after all it is presented as revealed knowledge, rather than simple understanding.

I was greatly impressed years ago by an essay of Victor Weisskopf's, Of Atoms, Mountains, and Stars: A study in Qualitative Physics. It's pretty technical actually, but the gist of it was to emphasize the way that quantum laws present themselves to us in the way they shape the qualities of our everyday world, which qualities we are prone to accept as "givens" without questioning their origin. For example, he explores the question, "Why can we see objects?"

There's stuff that I remembered being in there that I don't see, looking at it now. Perhaps these were my own interpolations. For example, the quantum nature of substances, e.g. water. Water has very particular and exact properties everywhere we find it. This is alluded to where he says, "Specific shapes had no justification in the classical physics of particles; quantum mechanics introduced this morphic trait, which is connected with the existence of quantum states with well-defined properties." Yes, I think that's what I remember.

As I said, I was greatly impressed with all this, and I always think of it as a counterpoint to the "exalted stardust" rhetoric. Consider ye well aluminum foil!

7 posted on 05/27/2012 10:36:34 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: dr_lew
Present something to my grandsons as 'revealed knowlege' and expect to be field stripped and hanged out to dry.

It was a cute vid, and useful for the 3 to 5 Y.O. crowd that needs that kind of hip stuff.

/johnny

15 posted on 05/27/2012 11:14:31 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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