Taking Ideas Apart

Abstract

Some ideas are easy to understand. We know from direct experience what ‘a book’ is. We have seen enough books to understand what the idea of a book is in general. Unfortunately not all ideas are like this. Take the idea of a ‘black hole’. You may have seen plenty of images connected with black holes, such as that from the Hubble Telescope given in Figure 5.1. But it is unlikely that you fully understand what a black hole is from these images.