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I doubt a child can articulate the difference between "don't touch the electric socket" and "don't touch the cracks in the pavement or the bears'll get you", but I think they understand one. Most of the time, they'll act on the former rather than the latter, but in their head, all jostle equally for space.
We encourage this with little fables like "Eat your crusts and it'll make your hair curl" and "Father Christmas" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Newton's laws" that aren't exactly true, but we say, and expect to be "believed".
And on the whole it seems to do most people little harm and possibly a lot of good (though there are occasional unfortunate moments).
However, isn't this exactly the way many adults work? People believe "Eskimos have 500 words for snow" and "Aliens visit earth" and "astrology works" and a lot of the time don't put as much weight in them as day-to-day things, but fight vociferously for their right to believe it. And yet this really annoys me (see also the furore on science reporting, eg. in language log).
Is there a fundamental difference? Is it more important that adults know what truth is? Do most people grow out of it? Or is it just normal and I should let them be happy?
We encourage this with little fables like "Eat your crusts and it'll make your hair curl" and "Father Christmas" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Newton's laws" that aren't exactly true, but we say, and expect to be "believed".
And on the whole it seems to do most people little harm and possibly a lot of good (though there are occasional unfortunate moments).
However, isn't this exactly the way many adults work? People believe "Eskimos have 500 words for snow" and "Aliens visit earth" and "astrology works" and a lot of the time don't put as much weight in them as day-to-day things, but fight vociferously for their right to believe it. And yet this really annoys me (see also the furore on science reporting, eg. in language log).
Is there a fundamental difference? Is it more important that adults know what truth is? Do most people grow out of it? Or is it just normal and I should let them be happy?
Re: Newton's Laws
Date: 2006-12-20 11:06 pm (UTC)Re: Newton's Laws
Date: 2006-12-21 08:31 pm (UTC)Re: Newton's Laws
Date: 2006-12-22 01:12 pm (UTC)On the contrary: 4 is by definition what you get if you add 2 and 2, and 2 in turn is by definition what you get if you add the multiplicative identity to itself. It just so happens that in GF(3), 4 is equal to 1 :-)
Indeed, many statements about the universe are explicitly stated to only apply in restricted areas or to particular materials (Ohm's Law being another good example), and are still useful, and it's missing the point to talk about whether they're "true". The thing about Newton's laws in particular, though, is that they were claimed to be universally applicable, and it is that which turned out to be untrue. In particular, they were claimed to be what governed the motion of the planets round the sun, and even that is untrue (Mercury's precession is only explicable by the relativistic correction).