STEM-FOCUS + ANECDOTE?

In 2016, "The Hindu Business Line" published a feature article about one tangential consequence of the STEM incubator culture in Japan during the Meiji era (1868-1912).
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A key figure in this context was Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Kelvin was a mathematical physicist. He sent many of his young students to work and teach in Japan. These students were known as oyatoi gaikokujin (‘honourable foreign employees’).
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One of these former students, John Perry, questioned a key factor in the Fourier analysis strategy Kelvin used for estimating the geological age of the earth. -- see Patrick Jackson, "William Thomson's Determinations of the Age of the Earth,"Chapter 10 in "Kelvin: Life, Labours and Legacy" by Raymond Flood et al. (2008). https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231256.001.0001/acprof-9780199231256-chapter-10
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Kelvin assumed that the earth's core is solid. Whether the earth has a solid or a fluid core would have a profound effect on Kelvin's mathematical calculations.
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It turns out that Perry’s theory of a fluid core and continental drift is now accepted science.
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"The fact that Perry was in Japan, surrounded by its art and culture, teaching physics to sake-drenched samurais, may indeed have played a role in shaping his theory."-- see "Death of the floating world" (Rohit Gupta). ''The Hindu Business Line." January 1, 2016. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/explore/death-of-the-floating-world/article8050613.ece
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In Japan, Perry would have encountered the metaphor of a "floating world." -- see below, image of immersive art installation: "Dreamed Japan, Images of the Floating World," Atelier des Lumières, Paris. https://injart.org/exhibition/short-program-dreamed-japan-images-of-the-floating-world/
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Continental drift is about movement of tectonic plates which float on molten lava in the earth's mantle -- and the words "floating world" could be an apt figure of speech to describe this phenomenon.
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QOTO = Question Others to Teach Ourselves?