Theories of Development
Everything that we see around us today started out as an idea in somebody’s mind - a “theory”. Everyone knew that iron sinks to the bottom of the sea but somebody thought it could be shaped in such a that its buoyancy would be greater than its weight. And everyone knew nothing heavy could fly - but several people thought that if they could push air to create pressure on the underside of a metal surface, that surface - and anything attached to it - could fly. These theories, however, would have remained ideas only - “imagination”, many would call them - if not for the fact that certain individuals decided to act on them, to test them. Many of them failed - literature is full of stories about attempts and failures before the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight in Kitty Hawk - but even these failures contributed to eventual success because the experimenters learned something, even if it was only how not to do it. Experiments produced more data and more insights, whic...