Pierre Teilhard de Chardin "(Evolution) is a general postulate to
which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow
and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true.
Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which
all lines of thought must follow — this is what evolution is."
Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the
light of evolution." (actually the title of his essay).
As I mentioned above, these statements are controversial and
debatable, and certainly provocative. I'm not particularly equipped
to judge the merits of those positions.
I am interested to know if a similarly broad and powerful statement
could be proposed for physics, and what kinds of productive
conversations a similarly bold claim might provoke among us:
"Nothing in physics makes sense except in the light of ___________." or
"(______) is a general postulate to which all theories, all
hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must
satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. ________ is a light which
illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must
follow - this is what _____ is."
It might be that we play this game for certain subfields of physics:
"Nothing in thermodynamics makes sense except in the light of
__________" or "Nothing in classical electrodynamics makes sense
except in the light of _________", but I think it would be more fun if
we tried it as broadly as possible. We might also want to play for
mathematics, or chemistry, or astronomy, or what have you.
I hope this might be interesting for some of you. I will wait for a
few responses before introducing my suggestions.
sincerely,
Krishna
Krishna Chowdary
Faculty, Math & Physics
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505