Making Assumptions 

I was reading some more of Schrödinger's Rabbits: The Many Worlds of Quantum last night. The chapter I'm in right now deals a lot with historical perspectives of quantum physics... specifically on how well respected physicists were baffled by the concepts and data being presented to them. I got a charge out of this quote involving Niels Bohr:

Bohr, by contrast, seemed to dismiss many questions about quantum as altogether meaningless, analogous to asking: "What color is up?"

Being the smart ass that I am... I mostly likely would have responded to Bohr by saying "Up is blue." More interestingly though was the analogy the author presented later on:

In Howard's view, Bohr, far from being intentionally mystical in his replies, was merely being careful. If Howard is right, the nature of Bohr's caution is perfectly described by an anecdote many people will have heard in different forms. In my version, a child, a physicist, and a philosopher are traveling in a train passing through a country none of them has previously visited. The train passes a field in which they see a black sheep.

"Wow," says the child, "look at that. All of the sheep in this country are black!"

The physicist smiles. "We don't know that," he says. "All we can really tell is that some of the sheep in this country are black."

The philosopher smiles. "We don't know that," he says. "All we really know is that at least one sheep in this country appears black on at least one side!"

It's an interesting thought exercise to go through. How often do we make assumptions about the world around us... filling in missing details with things we assume to be true. How many "truths" do we miss because we made an assumption?