quantum leap --- Akin to the leap from classical to quantum physics

quantum leap --- Akin to the leap from classical to quantum physics

Posted Sep 28, 2006 18:50 UTC (Thu) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256)
In reply to: quantum leap by dark
Parent article: Google's Tesseract OCR engine is a quantum leap forward (Linux.com)

As amusing as this observation might be, I think it's reasonably well-understood by those who use and understand the phrase that "quantum leap" is idiomatic (rather than idiotic).

A leap of only one quanta would, of course, be an incremental advance. However to say that this is a "leap" that's akin to the one that lead from classical physics into quantum physics. Also there is the implication that the result could not possibly have been attained by smaller increments ... that their is, figuratively, some chasm that most be lept across --- a paradigm shift (where they old pattern of progress no longer applies).

Of course terms like "quantum leap" and "paradigm shift" are used rather loosely. Often they are hype rather than the result of any real insights into the process by which any particular points of progress have been achieved.

JimD

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