Fun article. As soon as I saw it I was reminded of the book you mentioned and was glad you referenced it.
I would like to point out 2 things:
- Have you watched the TED Talk on being wrong. It’s all about how being wrong doesn’t have to be the bad thing that society has taught us it. I would say it’s a nice follow up to your article where not only should we realize that we’re wrong more often than not both individually AND collectively, but we can capitalize on it. She also wrote a book but the TED sums it up really well. Check it out here: https://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong?language=en&utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
2. I’m going to quibble here about semantics and I’m going to qualify this next statement that by no means am I an expert but I would disagree with the premise that Newton wasn’t invalidated by Einstein. In fact I would argue that the question is not really did Einstein prove Newton wrong but rather did quantum mechanics prove Newton wrong. The answer being that yes it did — Newton was unequivocally wrong and his downfall came with the discovery of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics was a field developed by a hoard of scientists and although Einstein was involved in the development of quantum theory he did not single-handedly prove Newton wrong. It was the entire field. The key is that on a day to day basis Newton’s approximate theories work just fine and Newtonian physics is applicable to most of our day to day life so we can accept it as being correct when in fact it’s not correct at all.
There’s a great book on this called The Quantum Enigma which (like your article points out) showed me that pretty much everything I had been taught about physics in middle school and high school was WRONG. It’s a great introduction to quantum theory and just how wrong Newton was. To be clear I still don’t understand quantum theory…I mean I do in principle but like gravity and magnetism…we still have no clue what we are talking about….just how to apply.
Anyway, I enjoyed your article!
