> * I'd like to move the cursor backwards and forwards in long commands easier, maybe even with the mouse (!). Use case is, say, a long curl command and I press up-arrow to repeat it, but want to tweak something. So I press and hold left arrow and wait.
Ctrl-A moves you to the beginning of the line (and Ctrl-E to the end of the line); Option-left-arrow moves you left by word, option-right-arrow right by word.
Physics advances like geography: there's a New World in the Americas, but Libson is still there. Newtonian mechanics remains as the consequence of relativity and quantum mechanics where we "live," and the existence of other things under different conditions doesn't change that. Kuhnian revolutions involve the old models being discarded.
"If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of new sorts of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory. On this point historical evidence is, I think, entirely unequivocal. The state of Ptolemaic astronomy was a scandal before Copernicus’ announcement. Galileo’s contributions to the study of motion depended closely upon difficulties discovered in Aristotle’s theory by scholastic critics. Newton’s new theory of light and color originated in the discovery that none of the existing pre-paradigm theories would account for the length of the spectrum, and the wave theory that replaced Newton’s was announced in the midst of growing concern about anomalies in the relation of diffraction and polarization effects to Newton’s theory. Thermodynamics was born from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories, and quantum mechanics from a variety of difficulties surrounding black-body radiation, specific heats, and the photoelectric effect.4 Furthermore, in all these cases except that of Newton the awareness of anomaly had lasted so long and penetrated so deep that one can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of growing crisis."
Later in the same chapter, he gives three examples of crises that led to paradigmatic revolutions: "a particularly famous case of paradigm change, the emergence of Copernican astronomy."; "the crisis that preceded the emergence of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion"; and "the late nineteenth century crisis in physics that prepared the way for the emergence of relativity theory."
Kuhn absolutely considered relativity and quantum mechanics to be examples of paradigmatic revolutions, just like Newtonian mechanics in the 17th Century and the earlier Copernican revolution.
If you want to argue that Kuhn was wrong about history, then you can do that (and I would at least partly agree); but if you want to claim Kuhn didn't say what he actually said, that's a different matter.
If you read Kuhn's book, you'll see he uses quantum mechanics as one of his examples of a scientific revolution. I mean, you might think he's wrong, but that's stretching the definition of "Kuhnian Revolution" a bit. And sure, Newtonian mechanics might come out in the classical limit, but the probabilistic aspect of QM alone represents a completely different way of viewing the universe than the Newtonian model.
I do think Khun is wrong under his own definitions. Quantum amplitudes are over mechanical possibilities, and they no more overturn them than icing overturns cake. :-)
I think you make a mistake when you look at physics with your modern eyes. Knowledge should make you see more, but this is the case when it makes it hard to see the history. Try to look at it with eyes of 19 centuries physicist.
Physics was all deterministic and objective. And then comes QM saying that there is no determinism and about the role of an observer, and comes GR saying there is no objective observer, because different observers can't agree about time and length.
I heard that physics professors in 19 century told their students that they had chosen the wrong career because physics was almost done. There were slight difficulties with electromagnetism, but they surely is going to be resolved in coming years. And then all that shiny and almost complete physics was blown up because very foundations of it were destroyed.
It was a paradigm shift. If it wasn't then what is? Copernicus? But the Ptolemaic astronomy did work and it works today. With its limitations of course, but it works. You can calculate positions of heavenly bodies with epicycles. Galilean laws of motions? But the laws of Aristotle works no worse then when Aristotle invented them.
We did "discard" newtonian gravity and mechanics in favor of sr,gr and qm as fundamental theories. They still give good approximations over a wide range of conditions so we keep using them for calculations.
it’s a necessarily a logical implication that this theory would be a good approximation at certain scales just by the sheer fact that it used to be a theory that fit observations at some point. That is also true of “completely incorrect” theories like heliocentricity.
In the case of NM we happened to have something that is often also computationally simple and efficient so we keep using it, but it is by no means a “correct theory”. just a useful model that is still useful.
i daresay it will continue to be useful for some things even if we eg discover that we are living in a simulation and manage to escape! As long as some part of us will continue to experience this reality it will be useful - the math is simple and gives good approximations in many cases.
maybe a clearer case - the “planetary” model of electrons floating around the nucleus is useful in chemistry and is still taught in grade school, but i would definitely call it “discarded” in that no one doing research in the field would use that - it’s just a useful model for “engineering” practitioners
I wouldn't say it's useful in chemistry. Chemistry at any basic level is deeply concerned with the shape of the probability fields of electrons around a nucleus since it's the dominant contribute to the shape of molecules and strength of bonding.
EDIT: Like ironically I would say the planetary model has 1 unique utility, which is that for hydrogen-NMR it's useful to just assume that 1 electron is producing a little magnetic field like a Bohr model atom.
im less interested in having a pedantic argument online regarding exact meaning of useful and exactly for what. the bottom line with this example is that its a useful model for some things and therefore still is taught in science classes today as a “correct” description just like NM, both of which which are not, fundamentally.
The Wikipedia entry includes notes on the hypothesized history of modifications to the disk. For example, the non-solar arcs were probably added later (different gold). So the original version had just the lunar crescent.
> In 2023, the state of Saxony-Anhalt filed a DMCA take down notice requesting removal of nine images of the Nebra sky disc from Wikimedia Commons, asserting that they were the "owner of the exclusive copyright in the Sky Disk of Nebra". Wikimedia Deutschland, a chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, subsequently filed a DMCA counter-notice stating that since the implementation of Article 14 of the Directive 2019/790 of the European Parliament, there can be no such copyrights on reproductions of visual works that are in the public domain.
Tardigrades are not "extremophiles", which refers to organisms that live (grow, reproduce) in "extreme" environments ("phile" = "like, love"). Tardigrades can temporarily survive some rather extreme conditions, but they generally require fairly ordinary environments to actually live. (As suggested by common names like "water bear" and "moss piglet".)
From the linked Washington Post story: "The cloned animals were made by injecting one of Willa’s cells into an egg from a domesticated ferret."
Which is kind of interesting, because domesticated ferrets are a different species. (I wonder if this means the clones have mitochondrial DNA from the domesticated ferret egg.)
They do have domestic ferret mitochondria. The plan is to breed them, take only the male offspring, an cross those back into the original population (and thus get rid of the domestic heritage again).
Those would be "captive" ferrets, not "domesticated" ones. (They want to introduce the offspring from the breeding program into the wild, and have in fact done this for about 10,000 offspring.)
This article in Science about the first cloned black-footed ferret (https://www.science.org/content/article/conservation-first-c...) specifically says, "Cloning endangered species faces unique ethical questions, as well. One is whether the clone, which can hold trace DNA from its surrogate mother, is actually the same as the species that researchers are trying to save. For example, black-footed ferret clones are created using eggs from domestic ferrets, meaning they carry that species’ mitochondrial DNA, which is left in the egg after its nucleus is extracted."
(Later in the article: "... apart from her mitochondrial DNA, most of which comes from her domestic mother, genetic analysis shows she is 100% a blackfooted ferret".)
The Tines in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep are pretty good example. (The aliens in A Deepness in the Sky are physically alien, but psychologically pretty close to humans.)
Because of course it is.
(Also, the Acknowledgments ends with "We further thank [list of names] for their support and for eating up the sample leftovers.")