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cuttothechase a day ago

Our understanding evolves, course corrects, spins off etc., we can use some static value as purported from the dark ages or by newtonian or later einstenian points of view. They all are measurably correct for the problems that they are trying to solve for the people who lived during those times. A million years from now would these values still be relevant or be considered as having the same value of importance or will they be replaced by even more finer and precise and contextually different values that could be more precise and more accurate etc.,

arghwhat 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed. Say, maybe a civilization didn't start out with trying to build the world of particles of progressively finer size, but started directly with a model of fields, waves and charges and therefore never had a concept of a discrete elemental particle, and in turn a system built around that to categorize elements.

Or to them, an atom is as large an arbitrary macro structure as proteins are to us, and so they would never consider two empty circles with a single line to represent something so big and chaotic. Or maybe they had the crazy idea of building everything of vibrating strings!

Who knows what the abstractions and approximations would be when the foundation of it all isn't "getting hit on the head by an apple".