We start with this quote from Feynman (via here)
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations 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...We next pass to this slide from a talk by Ulrich Haisch, which tells us that likely only 5% of the matter in the universe is made of atoms. If instead of just one, two sentences were allowed to be passed on to the next generation of creatures, would this be mentioned?
(Six Easy Pieces, p.4)
