Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:58, 4 April 2004

A lie-to-children is an expression that describes a form of simplification of material. The universe is very complicated. The first time you explain something to a person (especially a child), you might give an explanation that is simple, concise, or simply 'wrong' —but "wrong" in a very special way which makes the situation understandable to a young person.

Later on you end up having to admit you were wrong, and you can replace your explanation by a more sophisticated lie-to-children, which also happens to be nearer to the truth. You can continue this process all through a persons education.

example for physics (taken in part from h2g2)

1. Weight is constant.
   • Children in primary school learn that the weight of something doesn't change if you just change its shape.
2. Weight is not a constant. What's actually constant is mass.
   • In secondary school, children often learn that on the moon or on mars, an objects' weight will be different, because gravity in those places is different.

   But the mass will stay the same.

3. Mass is not a constant, but depends on the velocity of the object, relative to lightspeed, which is a constant.
   • In university classes, we find out that relativity teaches us that the mass of an object can vary depending on velocity .
4. Lightspeed is not, in fact, a constant, but may have been significantly larger than its current value during the early life of the universe.
   • Generally only postgraduates learn up to this level.

It's important to use lies to children to teach people things, since it's very hard for a young child to grasp details about the speed of light, and even older people have some trouble with the details from time to time.

When discussing things or adding articles to the wikipedia, it's very important to remember that much of what you have been taught is probably actually a lie-to-children, and that reality might be far different from what you thought it was.

Sources

The term first appeared in one of the rare serious books co-authored by Terry Pratchett : The Science of Discworld

• see:

for examples see:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A685055#back3

Note that these quote a different source as first inventing the term: (from footnote 3: The phrase 'lie to children' was coined by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, authors of The Collapse of Chaos and Figments of Reality.)

• v
• t
• e