quote
As Plank himself stated in a famous quote, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” [23]; a rather ironic remark, since after igniting
the revolution he remained a leader of the “conservative faction” for the rest of his life. In fact, it was a new generation of very young physicists—encompassing W. Heisenberg,
W. Pauli, P. Dirac, together with the less young M. Born and
E. Schrodinger—that lay the groundwork for the new quan- ¨
tum theory in the mid-1920s. Quantum physics, while being
extremely successful for predictions (more than any other theory ever formulated) shattered many of the mechanistic beliefs
that had characterized the form of explanation of the previous
physics (which, by contrast, is now called classical physics).
It abandons the idea of causal determinism, i.e. that the laws
of physics determine uniquely the past and the future evolution of physical objects (and ultimately of our universe), providing only fundamentally probabilistic predictions. It introduces discreteness over classical continuity, the impossibility
of measuring certain pairs of physical variables at the same
time (Heisenberg uncertainty principle), and forces us to rethink our idea of locality (i.e., that systems cannot influence
each other at-a-distance). And it even questions the existence
of an objective reality independent of an observer. Note that
these positions, that are still the object of debate to date, are
really radical and open science to a kind of explanation that
would have not been considered scientific in the previous centuries.
end of quote
A. It is a misnomer to state that changes in scientific thought await the death of an old guard. In between the Michelson Morley experiment and Special and general relativity, there was the death of the Ether proposal , and then a long decades long interrugum where until Einstein did get its results about NO basic understanding how or what would replace the Ether hypothesis
Now here is the supreme irony, some of the Ether hypothesis is now bunded by a few as DARK ENERGY, albeit in a completely different stand point than what was demolished by the Michaelson and Morley experiment
B. The death of locality and simple minded action at a distance. UM not exactly, see quantum ENTANGLEMENT and the EPR paper
C. Quantum physics shattering the mechanics view of the Universe
tHOOFT has proposed a variant called DETERMINISTIC quantum mechanics, which in fact is a way to embed 3+1 dimensional quantum mechanics say within a 5 dimensional deterministic structure
there are yet other ironies
Point is that the delineations of the scientific revolutions we have seen are now shading into each other. and that its not simple to make clean delineations as we have been wont to do
This means that our ideas of culture have to change, and to realize that there is in certain fashion a recycling of older physics memes in new guises