I was watching a programme on BBC 4 recently, about the atom. It quickly resolved into the contest between acolytes of Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr to accurately describe the atom.
The above physicists are known generally as the champions of relativity and quantum physics. Their contest was characterised (very roughly) as equivalent to the ancient struggle between materialists and idealists. The presenter also frequently referred to Einstein as an old guard, conservative and Bohr a revolutionary.
The presenter/physicist declared Nils Bohr the winner. The atom cannot be meaningfully described through visual representation but only approached through mathematical equations. There have been some exceptionally useful observations made through quantum physics.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states at the smallest level what we observe we distort (“no fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it”). Social sciences have had to cope with this fact for years. Nonetheless the idea that something can be understood without being experienced is absurd and offensive to the Marxist mind.
However, it is considered today that theories of relativity rule over large scale theory. This suggests a future fusion and superseding of each theory.
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