A few minutes of key ideas!
The research & wisdom reminders.
These are the six key ideas that guided the high-level topics of this week’s column.
This week:
Boundaries.
Boundaries reveal where understanding ends—and honesty begins.
1.
Max Planck
1858
Lived from 1858 to 1947, aged 89.
Planck discovered limits by following the math honestly—even when it contradicted intuition.
2.
“It was an act of despair, to sacrifice physics for the sake of finding an explanation.”
- Max Planck
- circa 1900
Breakthroughs often occur when conviction gives way to honesty.
3.
Why is Planck time important?
Planck time isn’t invented—it’s unavoidable. It emerges when quantum mechanics, relativity, and gravity are forced to coexist. The moment their constants intersect marks the shortest time our current physics can describe coherently. Beyond that, the frameworks diverge, and explanation gives way to speculation.
4.
Did talking our way through life drive a million years of brain growth?
Human brain size increased rapidly over the last million years, and growing communication demands may have been a major evolutionary driver.
5.
Why do we struggle to recognize the limits of our own thinking?
Good thinking requires recognizing where explanation stops -- where evidence stops.
6.
Has Planck’s Constant been updated?
Planck’s constant evolved from a mathematical fix into a fundamental boundary of our current understanding of reality.
That’s it. The end.