Well put Babayada.

What do you make of heisenbergs uncertainty principle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

And, additionally, what do you make of the the fact that the Ideal Gas Law was derived from statistical mechanics which assumed no interaction between particles?



These are just two of my favorite "out there" things about physics.

And how about this idea:

The universe is so overwhelmingly complex that we cannot even come close to describing it with any amount of objective accuracy. And when I say universe, I don't mean some black hole eight kazillion light eons away, I mean the short walk between your computer and your local convenience store.
All we can do is use models to approximate some sort of understandable cause and effect relationships in the things that we see. And all of these, by definition, are fantasies. The only reason quantum physics seems so otherworldly is because we don't see it happen every day, like we see gravity and sunlight and electricty. We still have no clue how or why these work. All we have are fantasies to describe our best approximation of how and why they work. To the extent that these fantasies are measurable and repeatable, we hang on to them, label them, and put them in science books.



One of my favorite examples is from solid state and quantum physics (I think the solid state guys stole the idea from the quantum physics guys). Anyways, a bunch of dudes in labcoats were trying to describe the mathematics of a bunch of particles that each had all kinds of particle properties, like mass, charge, spin, charm, strangeness etc. because there were so many particles with so many properties, the mathematics became insanely complicated. So one guy comes up with the idea: "Hey, why don't we treat the whole system as a small number of 'holes', that is, particles with no mass, no charge, no other wierd properties." Was the math a lot simpler? yes. Did it accurately describe the system? yes. Did this fantasy work better than reality to describe the situation? yes. Were there REALLY a bunch of holes moving around?


Yes, some believe and teach that the world actually "changes" to match your thinking, others are more pragmatic in teaching that there are so many "dreams walking in broad daylight" (to quote the talking heads) that all you have to do is learn to see what is already there.

Whatever floats your boat.

George