Let me ask: did anyone really NOT understand what I was saying on my website?

Oh, we could do this: strip any descriptive use of language. Bye bye poems, novels, songs. . . “LITERALLY” anything that brings personality to the written word!

Lee H. Baucom
author of Save The Marriage
(The website that started this post!)

This need not necessarily be a small change.

I don’t see a paradigm shift as necessarily being a quantum leap, though. Even when only one person is making the change: - there can be an in-between stage where the person is considering the new perspective and making an effort to look at the world that way, to see if it works better, but isn’t completely convinced. And then when two or more people are involved, perhaps some have made the paradigm shift and some have not.

“Quantum Leap: An abrupt change or step, especially in method, information, or knowledge.”

If you are ever in the mood to take a break from literalness, there is another malconstruction that drives me insane: using the word “you” instead of “one” and especially using the word “you” instead of “I.” Example: “When I walked across campus, you could hear the bells ringing.” That implies a very odd cause-and-effect, doesn’t it?

In the vernacular, the term quantum leap has come to mean an abrupt change or “step change”, especially an advance or augmentation. The term dates back to early-to-mid-20th century. The vernacular usage usually implies a large and abrupt change, while the physical term typically refers to a small change in quantum mechanics, often even the smallest possible. The usages agree, however, in that both describe a change that happens all at once, rather than gradually over time. A ‘quantum leap in technology’ is thus a revolutionary advance, rather than an evolutionary one.