What do you take for granted in your discipline ? Is it carved in stone?
What basic assumptions have been challenged in your field over the past
year ? What is it that you always took for granted but don't any more?
Here's my candidate for physics/chemistry.
Grade 10 physics and chemistry never prepared me for the possibility that
the melting point of a substance can be below its freezing point.
But that's what happens when dimensions get really small. Scientists at
Washington Univ have discovered "that small clusters of atoms-say a dozen
atoms across-exhibits properties so different from normal everyday
aggregations that they're essentially a new form of matter."
Small clusters of sodium don't melt at the usual melting point of 208F
but at 21F-below the freezing point. Why and how is still a mystery
(Ref Business Week, Sept 29th, page 106)
...maybe that's why homeopathy works....hmmm ?? new effects at the
microcellular level that we can't even imagine yet at our normal scale of
reality.
So, what's your candidate for the most unique assumption challenge in
your field that was first suggested or proven in 1997 ?
Please email me <
wd@itrc.on.ca> your suggestions by Oct 20th. It's for a
journal article I'm writing.
Walter Derzko
Director, Idea Lab
Toronto, Ontario
wd@itrc.on.ca
(416) 588-1122