I thought that the point of Swimmer’s comment was to suggest that reality undergoes this type of surprise, while beliefs do not.
Reality doesn’t undergo the surprise. It “knew all along.” (Quantum mechanics was a pretty big surprise, but it was true even back in Newton’s day...even back in paleolithic days.) Beliefs undergo changes in response to a ‘surprise.’ But that surprise doesn’t happen spontaneously...it happens because new information entered the belief system. Because someone had their eyes open. Reality causes the surprise.
If, in some weird hypothetical world, all physics research had been banned in 1900, no one would’ve ever kept investigating the surprising results of the black-body radiation problem or the photoelectric effect. No human would’ve ever written the equations down. Newton would be the final word on everything, and no one would be surprised. But quantum mechanics would still be true. A hundred years later, if the anti-physics laws were reversed, someone might be surprised then, and have to create a new hypothesis.
Reality doesn’t undergo the surprise. It “knew all along.” (Quantum mechanics was a pretty big surprise, but it was true even back in Newton’s day...even back in paleolithic days.) Beliefs undergo changes in response to a ‘surprise.’ But that surprise doesn’t happen spontaneously...it happens because new information entered the belief system. Because someone had their eyes open. Reality causes the surprise.
If, in some weird hypothetical world, all physics research had been banned in 1900, no one would’ve ever kept investigating the surprising results of the black-body radiation problem or the photoelectric effect. No human would’ve ever written the equations down. Newton would be the final word on everything, and no one would be surprised. But quantum mechanics would still be true. A hundred years later, if the anti-physics laws were reversed, someone might be surprised then, and have to create a new hypothesis.
Sorry that was a typo, I meant to say that in reality we undergo this type of surprise, but in our beliefs we do not.