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Very good. So GR used its first dibs on Alice in Wonderland by claiming the Mad Hatter. Then about 90 years later QM staked its claim to the Cheshire Cat.

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2025 Award

That's a rather odd piece of writing. It kind of reads like someone trying to say relativity is daft because something something literary reference. But then it cites the anomalous precession of Mercury and Eddington's eclipse observations and says in passing "What will happen when we come into knowledge of the control of sub-atomic energy? for these small fry move with terrific velocities. Shall we soon be able to release this energy, and later to harness it?" Which is a remarkable insight for 1921.

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Ibix said:

That's a rather odd piece of writing.

In college, I took a 19th century Literature course (strictly because a literature course was "required").
What became very evident to me, very quickly was that this literature was written for an audience that, if not "home bound", was mostly "town-bound" - and without TV or radio (or even the internet ). The average reader spent hours reading newspapers and literature. Homes commonly had bookshelves filled with decades of back-issues of everything (especially Reader's Digest) and basements with old news papers all in chronological order.

This Atlantic article is "early 20th century" (before radio broadcasting was popular). There was huge consumer demand for literature during this period. And successful writers and publishers were experts at addressing this market.
That intended audience no longer exists.

So, if that article comes across as "odd", bear in mind that you've just walked into someone else's conversation and you're never going to fully catch the context.