Chronology of what was authored in the year 2005
Physics is considered one of the hard sciences and might be such, not because it's based on a solid foundation, not because it aims to uncover this solid foundation. The real question might be: what exactly is that which the field of physics studies?
Are we merely studying shadows of something greater?
Computers are microchips and electricity. Furniture might be wood with metal nails. Fashion is the arrangement and composition of fabric, fibers and filament.
In a word, these are all technology. Computers are considered high tech and wood benches of Shaker design, low tech. Clothes constructed by the goo from which microfibers ultimately originate is a commercial use of chemistry while the wool stitched together by the finest tailors started from a biological process of hair growth.
The way wool makes it from hair follicle to tailored suit is technology.
If we may stretch the definition to include the mechanism by which something gets created, whether or not involving a human hand, this opens an opportunity to understand something profound.
With Lisp, coding is no longer the bottleneck. This is in part due to the unemcumbered syntax, in part due to hygienic macros, in part lazy versus eager evaluation at the discression of the coder on a per-definition basis, closures, dynamic & lexical scope, etc., etc. Most importantly, you get all this plus no matter how much you use it, it's never dull.
Lisp makes programming fun again.
Why are macros so important to Lisp programmers? ... Because Lisp is its own metalanguage, the power of the entire programming language can be brought to bear on the task of transforming program text. ...
Why settle for anything less than the full programming language itself?
—Gabriel & Steele "The Evolution of Lisp," p78.
Calling it the granddaddy of programming languages would be bad metaphor.
Yes, Lisp predates most other languages. It's true that many other dynamic languages start out by being simple yet around the decade mark, seem to each add sufficient complexity such that one can see how these others— e.g., Perl, Python, PHP— attempt to bolt-on features that are first class elements of Lisp. Others that begin as a simplified or 80% Lisp— such as Ruby— still leave us wanting things like macros.
The history of the world serves to provide sufficient common understanding of science and technology that we may now answer and understand the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
From the perspective of physics, Newton's laws work on a human scale. At an intuitive level, these feel right.
Einstein's general relativity works on the large scale. After a bit of explanation, it's straight-forward enough yet too conceptual for everyday use.
They are but two of the proverbial blind men touching the elephant.
Rather than attempting to comprehend the workings of the universe, there might be easier path: reverse-engineering reality.