What exactly did happen here? Don’t worry, I will drop hints in upcoming strips to clarify. Since I’m probably the only one who catches that kind of stuff, I’ll also put what’s going on in the commentary. I don’t want to write myself into a a corner, but I also don’t want to leave you guys hanging.
On another note, I chose the word “subatomic” because I thought it fit nicely in the space. ”quantum” also was a consideration, but in the end it was purely an aesthetic choice. I wanted to hint at the micro. Yes, I’m aware that General Relativity has room for the possibility of closed timelike curves, but that’s not really the same thing as what I think about when I think of travelling back in time (though for a proper space-time topology, it’s functionally identical and a moot point).
My point is, I wanted to invoke the micro because there seems to be this common thought that newer theories replace older theories; that somehow because subatomic particles behave as wave functions we can no longer speak of Newtonian principles when discussing macro objects. That’s ridiculous — It’s not that we can no longer ask the questions of where and how fast something is, it’s that for certain classes of problems we don’t need to ask the questions because in those certain classes the questions make no sense. In some way, I hoped that people would read this last panel and consider what they thought of physics and science in general. But that’s probably asking too much of one word in a comic strip.
Philosophy, literally translated, is lover of wisdom (philo-: friendly, virtuous love, soph: wisdom, plus some implied declension for possession). It is common to hear philosophy referred to as the pursuit of truth. If that is true, then physics is the pursuit of a perfect model: A deterministic truth of the Universe. Just as we don’t throw out all previous philosophy when we find a new field (such as the philosophy of government or economy), we are best served to remember not to throw out established physics models at one scale just because a model at another scale explains something new, or parts of the old model in a more accurate and/or precise way.
Anyway, you’re probably all waiting for me to click the Publish button so you can read the comic. Well, hang on, I’m going to click it right after I finish this sentence.