Posted by Tom Napier on May 23, 2013 at 06:22:44 user Didymus.
In Reply to: Re: Quantum Entanglement posted by John Nichols on May 22, 2013 at 16:41:15:
Thanks, John, I had overlooked the D's observatory discussion in WH. Dick correctly implies that even Sir Walter Raleigh could not see distant events before the light from them had reached him. Dick then, anticipating Douglas Adams by some 50 years, muses about the vastness of space and concludes, with just a touch of the banal, that "[S]ize did not seem to matter."
I would expect Dick to be somewhat familiar with Special Relativity (published in 1905) and he might have heard of General Relativity (published in 1915). Both had a credo quia absurdum feel to them that attracted public notice and both were famously the work of a genius who had overturned physics, apparently single-handedly.
Dick might not have heard of Quantum Theory. Although its roots date back to 1900, QT was a multi-year effort by a generation of European scientists. The finishing touches were still being put to it in 1930. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, for example, had only been published in 1927. The more picturesque aspects of QT such as the indeterminate fate of Schroedinger's Cat and the EPR Paradox were still a few years in Dick's future.