The difference between gravity and quantum physics is that by the time someone is ready to learn about gravity, they’ve lived gravity and experienced it their whole life.
Yes, they’ve “experienced” quantum physics too, but their intuitions about it will (almost certainly) turn out to be mostly wrong; therefore, mathematics is required.
The difference between gravity and quantum physics is that by the time someone is ready to learn about gravity, they’ve lived gravity and experienced it their whole life.
People seriously thought the Earth was the center of the universe. They thought that light objects fell slower than heavy ones. My intuitive experience of the world is that it’s flat and the sky is a hemisphere enclosing me. I can still teach the reality of gravity to a five year old, despite it being unintuitive. You don’t have to have everyday experience to learn something.
I’m confused why “experimental evidence” is less convincing than mathematics. I’ve taught the first half of the sequence to others without even mentioning complex numbers, so my anecdotal experience is that no, people do not need mathematics to correct their intuitions.
You’re conflating experimental evidence (by which I imagine you mean the two-slit experiment and etc., correct me if I’m wrong) with everyday experience. The latter contains virtually no useful information about quantum physics. It entices us to think that matter is made up of particles, that observables take fixed values after being measured, and so on...
The difference between gravity and quantum physics is that by the time someone is ready to learn about gravity, they’ve lived gravity and experienced it their whole life.
Yes, they’ve “experienced” quantum physics too, but their intuitions about it will (almost certainly) turn out to be mostly wrong; therefore, mathematics is required.
People seriously thought the Earth was the center of the universe. They thought that light objects fell slower than heavy ones. My intuitive experience of the world is that it’s flat and the sky is a hemisphere enclosing me. I can still teach the reality of gravity to a five year old, despite it being unintuitive. You don’t have to have everyday experience to learn something.
I’m confused why “experimental evidence” is less convincing than mathematics. I’ve taught the first half of the sequence to others without even mentioning complex numbers, so my anecdotal experience is that no, people do not need mathematics to correct their intuitions.
You’re conflating experimental evidence (by which I imagine you mean the two-slit experiment and etc., correct me if I’m wrong) with everyday experience. The latter contains virtually no useful information about quantum physics. It entices us to think that matter is made up of particles, that observables take fixed values after being measured, and so on...