Max Planck

In Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger invokes Planck as the source of the observation that even in physics, radically new ideas are seldom really accepted by the old guard — progress instead comes from a new generation “less brain blocked by its previous conclusions.” Munger uses this as evidence for the human tendency to process disconfirming information so an original conclusion stays intact, noting that precisely this sort of brain-blocking happened to a degree even in Albert Einstein, who “at his peak was a great destroyer of his own ideas” but as an older man never accepted the full implications of quantum mechanics. The “Planck principle” thus appears in the wiki as a worked example of Confirmation Bias and institutional inertia in the sciences.

Planck also surfaces in The Faith of a Scientist, where Eyring quotes Planck’s Scientific Autobiography at length on the relationship between science and religion, identifying the world order with God.

Context: Max Planck (1858–1947) was the German physicist who originated quantum theory by introducing the idea that energy is emitted in discrete quanta, for which he received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is widely associated with the dictum, often paraphrased as “science advances one funeral at a time.”

Where this appears

• Charlie Munger — The Psychology of Human Misjudgment — Munger cites the “Planck principle” that new ideas win only as a new generation replaces the old guard, as a case of confirmation bias.
• The Faith of a Scientist — Eyring quotes Planck’s Scientific Autobiography on science, religion, and the world order.