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Word Gems 

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Quantum Mechanics

The pre-socratics, Democritus and Leucippus, 2450 years ago, taught that the world is made of "atoms" and "the void."

 

 

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c.460 - c.370 BC

 

Let’s say you have a piece of gold - or anything. If you cut it in half, then cut it again, and keep on doing this, eventually, you’ll reach a very tiny particle of gold which cannot be cut or be made smaller.

 

chopping things into smaller and smaller bits, until you can't cut or divide anymore

When you get to that last bit that can’t be cut down any smaller, now you’ve reached what Democritus called an “atom” – which, in Greek, means “uncuttable” or “indivisible.

He and his teacher Leucippus saw the world composed of tiny little specs of uncuttable stuff. Not bad, really, for 440 BC.

These atoms, Democritus believed, joined mechanically with other atoms to make things. For example, iron was made of very hard little specks, and they had little hooks and holes, allowing them to link up with other iron atoms. Water atoms, he thought, were soft and slippery, and salt atoms had little spikes on them, which made them taste "sharp".

Well, it was a good start. The universe, they said, was a giant machine of atoms and space (“the void”) between them. A pretty good theory for 2450 years ago.

the smart-and-popular money didn't like it at all

But Plato, later, really hated all this, considered it misinformation, and wanted to burn any parchment referring to Democritus’ ideas. Aristotle, too, totally disagreed and offered his own theory of the four basic elements: wind, fire, earth, and water.

Aristotle’s view caught on and was the accepted and “approved” concept for the next two thousand years or more, while Democritus’ idea was thought to be nonsense. It happened this way, probably, because of Aristotle’s popularity as a teacher, and so the halo-effect enshrined error and set progress back for a very long time.

Editor’s note: Today we live in a world of Orwellian “Ministry Of Truth” wherein self-appointed infallible Dear Leaders attempt to tell the rest of us what to believe as fact or “misinformation.”

 

 

Editor's last word:

Whenever you hear a high-and-mighty one pontificating about “misinformation” just realize that you’re listening to an arrogant totalitarian, attempting to shut down debate, for the purposes of gaining more power-and-control over people. 

Everyone should be allowed to speak, no one, no self-appointed Infallible Dear Leader of Truth, has the right to censor any opinion. Only thinking minds in dialectic dynamic, only in the purging fires of a rigorous induction, might we come closer to, and discover, "what is" - but never by a heavy-handed process of inquisition.

John Stuart Mill on the censorship of "misinformation": 

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

 “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”

 “...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”