Math, physics, chemistry won't change. Who knows if software will be nearly recognizable in 10-20 years from now, but the reality of the world will not.
20 years is nothing. Code still looks the same essentially. Lots of “new” patterns are just ancient patterns rediscovered by people who never had exposure to the old ones. Code in 100 years might be different but probably not by much. I don’t see cpu arch radically changing. I hope it does.
Math, sure - doesn't the understanding of physics also go through changes? Do we really understand the reality of the world; or how do we know our current understanding of it won't change?
Asimov wrote an essay called "relativity of wrong" that I think does a good job of capturing the changes our understanding of the world goes through.
Yes, Einstein's theory of relativity was a change from Newtonian physics but it's a fairly minor correction for most practical purposes and Newtonian physics is still important to know and understand.
So yeah, our understanding of physics will likely change but it'll only matter in more and more extreme edge cases and will likely build on our current understanding. Maybe it'll result in us finally having fusion reactor, room temperature super conductors, or quantum computers but you're still going to get a roughly parabolic arc when you throw a ball through the air.
I think 20 years for physics won’t really make much of an impact. Maybe you build an even bigger particle accelerator and confirm another well accepted idea. But, there’s not really going to be groundbreaking changes that affects people on the daily.
The whole beauty of science is that it doesn't ever claim to have static, absolute answers - it's constantly growing and changing as we learn more about everything.
Likewise, the humanities are always growing and changing and being reinterpreted, reflecting what and how we can understand now.
> Who knows if software will be nearly recognizable in 10-20 years from now
Software goes through rapid cycles of invention and forgetting what's come before. Its totem animal is a Nobel laureate goldfish. That doesn't change.
> The whole beauty of science is that it doesn't ever claim to have static, absolute answers
That's wrong for maths and, by extension, theoretical CS. I mean, sure, some of the answers come with caveats ("assuming P!= NP", etc.), and in theory, all of mathematics could be proven inconsistent (but that to me is completely unreasonable to believe), but for all intents and purposes, these answers are static and absolute.