Question: What is, in your opinion, the most important theory of all time(i'd say quantum theroy or M-theroy?

Freya Wilson answered on 19 Jun 2015:

So this is a quote from a guy called Richard Feynman:

“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied. ”

I think that knowing about atoms revolutionised the way we see our world, and we gained an awful lot more clarity and understanding when we figured that out, and it was the precursor to so much more- materials physics, chemistry, nuclear physics, quantum physics, DNA, genetics and genetic mutations, forces, subatomic physics and particle physics, the starting line for what is becoming the grand unified theory (the holy grail of science). All these things and all this knowledge came from figuring out everything was made up of atoms.