>
> For a really lovely refutation of this commonplace
> misconception, see Paul Churchland's little book,
> Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind.
> "Perceptual" realism -- realism about trees, houses,
> cats, midsized objects generally -- might qualify as
> beefed up common sense, if we bear in mind that common
> sense is theoretical through and through. Scientific
> realism -- realism about the spacetime manifold,
> quarks and muons, genes and chromosomes -- has not a
> trace of common sense to it. jks
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Yet. The physicist Max Tegmark did a calculation of how much US gdp is the result of quantum mechanics, it's about 30% . The article was in Scientific American a couple of years ago.
Ian