Insane Clown Posse is insane and so despite how much they enjoy the miracles¹ of the natural world, the operational mechanics of magnets continue to elude them. But they’re not alone.

It’s easy to say that magnets emit a magnetic field, but when you get down to it, that statement that needs more explanation. What is a magnetic field, and more importantly why does it cause that repulsion and attraction. The strange truth about most things we take as a given is that there are scads of underlying assumptions we ignore because at some point it’s easier to just take it as a given.

That’s not to say there aren’t people out there who truly understand magnetism, but chances are you’re not one of them.

Feynman’s ‘explanation’ of magnetism via a chain of questions running down into more and more general and fundamental truths reminds me of this great bit by Louis CK:

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Footnotes

1. Miracle in this instance meaning things science has explained quite well, but are still ‘magical’ in the poetic sense. [↩]