The Relativity of Wrong is a 1988 essay collection by Isaac Asimov, which takes its title from the most ambitious essay it contains. Like most of the essays Asimov wrote for F&SF Magazine, each one in The Relativity of Wrong begins with an autobiographical anecdote which serves to set the mood. Several of the essays form a sequence explaining the discovery and uses of isotopes; the introductory passages in these essays recount Asimov's not particularly pleasant personal relationship with Harold C. Urey, whom he met at Columbia University. In the title essay, Asimov argues that there exist... degrees of wrongness, and being wrong in one way is not necessarily as bad as being wrong in another way. For example, if a child spells the word sugar as "pqzzf", the child is clearly incorrect. Yet, Asimov says, a child who spells the word "shuger" is "less wrong" than one who writes a random sequence of letters. Furthermore, a child who writes "sucrose" or "C12H22O11" completely disregards the "correct" spelling but shows a degree of knowledge about the real thing under study.
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| Author: | Isaac Asimov |
| Genre: | Science, Mathematics, Essay |
| Year published: | 1988 |
| Number of editions: | 3 |