|American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), the eponym of the term Feynman time capsule wisdom, explaining the physics of quantum electrodynamics.|
“Believe in the atomic hypothesis.”
This thought experiment postulate was conceived by American physicist Richard Feynman in his famous 1964 Lectures on Physics and represents his opinion as to what bit of knowledge a person should most want to believe in to the exclusion of all else.
The original full statement is as follows:
“If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”
In other words, according to Feynman, the fundamental piece of knowledge to human existence is belief in the existence of the "atom".
Thims time capsule wisdom
In extrapolation on this model, in the 2010 views of American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims, an inclusioned footnote to Feynman's one sentence, if the time capsule were to allow such a thing, supposing the capsule to be opened in the year 4500 (approximately double the span of time since Leucippus first introduced the atomic theory (450BC)), would be:
“Believe in the human molecular hypothesis.”
It has been over 210-years not since French philosopher Jean Sales first introduced the human molecular hypothesis (1798), a subject for which he was jailed for, and in modern times hardly more than a handful people have belief in this doctrine.
● Belief system
● Feynman problem solving algorithm
● Eddington rule
● Clausius postulate
● Einstein postulate
1. (a) Feynman, Richard. (1964). Feynman Lectures on Physics. Publisher.
(b) Richard Feynman – Wikiquote.
(c) The Feynman Lectures on Physics – Wikipedia.