My cousin's four year old son is obsessed with things like quarks and infinity. He insists to his mother that infinity is the last number. She isn't so sure, and wants to know more about things like strangeness. I don't want to determine this kid's future, but it seems fun to feed his curiosity. And since my wife's babysitter was Murray Gell-Mann, the responsibility has fallen partially on my shoulders to help answer his questions. What kinds of information can you recommend that I give to his mother so that she, an attorney and not a mathematician, and her son can learn more about this information. In particular, what kinds of books, games, and projects would introduce him to other neat ideas in mathematics and physics?
posted by billtron on Feb 16, 2008 - 27 answers

At the end of this book, Fritjof Capra describes a hipothesis that proposed that the properties of quarks could be wholly deduced from something that looked like a logic table. Also, I think the same book proposed a new non-hierarchical epistemology based only on the principle of non-contradiction (my memory is sketchy on this, and I'm nowhere near the book). Does anybody know what I'm talking about, and whether or not that these theories were ever taken seriously by anybody?
posted by signal on Feb 22, 2004 - 2 answers