See www.emmynoether.com where they say about the need to get stuff that is post-graduate physics, in front of high school students: because everything simplifies with the symmetries of cutting-edge physics.

"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku shows graphically how physics simplifies when you incude higher dimensions.

They also admit that the major breakthroughs in physics are expressible in very brief English sentences.

They talk of "a 2 inch equation" that they expect will explain everything.

They are actively pursuing simplicity. "QED The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter" by Richard Feynman: he writes that 10 years before he would have had to talk of 400 particles; now he only need talk of about 20.

Looking at the trend: one can predict that they do not see the answer; because it is so simple they are blind to it. I think there are plenty of indicators that this is how it will go.

Another one: a math book openly acknowledges that mathematicians are like climbers on hillsides looking at a valley covered in fog. They find pi keeps turning up on the hill-tops; they sense beneath that fog there is something that ties it all together; but it eludes them what it is.

An example of blindness: if I try to tell people that the failure to recall infancy is logically a very serious phenomenon; and no wonder the human race is lost when people forget how they got personally into their current state; it seems my statement is so simple and true that it just does not compute with people.

-Alan

• Simple physics not our experience - yanniru - December 23, 2001 - 20:07 UTC
  • Brain wave experiment detected future - dolphin - December 24, 2001 - 03:55 UTC