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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker hopes science will eventually accept that space is complex and real, not empty.
In plain terms
Science should realize space is full of real differences, not just empty.
What can you take from it?
Reality is more complex than our common senses suggest.

Where it applies

  • scientific debate
  • philosophy of science
  • explaining complex ideas

Putting it to work

  • teaching physics
  • writing science fiction
  • discussing cosmology

Questions to consider

  • What does real reality look like beyond our senses?

Another view

It assumes our current reality is insufficient without evidence.

More from John Buchan

  1. I am bound to say that it took me a long time to understand what he meant. He began by saying that everybody thought of Space as an 'empty homogeneous medium.'…

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  2. I mused upon the ironic fate which had compelled a mathematical genius to make his sole confidant of a philistine lawyer, and induced that lawyer to repeat it …

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  3. How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which res…

    Permalink to quote #14

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