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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 1594070" data-attributes="member: 2013">WARNING: THREAD HIJACKNot quite true.  Context is everything.  My understanding of the matter is that at the time the quote was delivered, it went something like this...Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was asked once by a reporter if it were true that only three people in the world understood the theory. Eddington simply stared off into space in an abstracted fashion. When asked what the trouble was, he replied: "I'm trying to think of who the third person might be."The reason is simply, as I was told (and I could be wrong) when studying as I got my physics degree is not (contrary to popular belief) that the math is hard, but rather that Einstein had excitedly sent his paper to Eddington to read.  At the time, only Einstein and Eddington had read the paper, and as such only they were privy to the idea - THAT's why Eddington couldn't think of a third person - not because the concept is hard, but because it had not been disseminated among more than two people.As a side note, anyone with a fair grasp of three-dimensional calculus - usually taught in the 2nd year of college calculus IIRC - can derive the basic equations of special relativity from Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism.  I actually managed this task inadvertently when studying Maxwell's equations - I accidentally derived the equations for relativity before being taught that you can and how to do it - now, because I had already studied some relativity and knew what the equations looked like, I recognized them immediately - so that helped - but anyone with a couple of years of college calculus under their belt can understand the math involved.  Given that many people take college calculus, I don't think it's being elitist to say that "it is not that hard."  Most people who put forth the effort to study math for a couple of years in school can comprehend it.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn, I'm just saying that I'm no super-genius and if *I* could accidentally stumble upon it in college without really trying, it's a pretty fair bet that anyone who actually tried to study it could understand it. I disagree by splitting hairs - given the knowledge of the math and a copy of the text, it's not that hard to grok.  However, it takes a darn bit of effort (years of it) to gain the knowledge of the math... so getting to the point where you're able to claim "given the knowledge of the math" is what's so nastily hard about it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Quantum is a little trickier, and part of the reason it can't be "fully" understood is that it deals in a continuous distribution of probabilities, for which there is no easy analog. As Feynman once put it,That's why quantum is so hard - because quantum particles behave like perfect little mathematical constructs - and since math is abstract, it's sometimes hard to wrap your mind around.  I studied quantum for a couple of years and still, it's counter-intuitive... the only thing I understand about quantum mechanics is "if I don't follow the math and try to follow anything else, I'm bound to mess up." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />/HIJACK--The Sigil</blockquote>

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