Newtonian physics and leaky abstractions
I’m currently reading The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Gary Zukav. I bought it several years ago, but I didn’t get very far for some reason. I don’t know if this is a book that I want to read, but since I don’t have other books that I want to read currently, I’m leafing through this one.
As I read him explaining Newtonian physics and how quantum mechanics relates to it, I came to think of Joel Spolsky’s post on leaky abstractions (see also my post on this). Zukav writes that Newtonian physics still applies on the macro scale, while on the subatomic scale, it doesn’t. This made me think of Newtonian physics as an abstraction, and I wondered how events on the subatomic scale affect the macro scale – if this ever happens – that is, if the Newtonian abstraction leaks.