From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Fri Jan 07 2005 - 23:57:10 GMT
Hi Rich,
You said
"Math, .... exists solely in a closed world of impersonel objectivism,
and our cultures' worship of math, instigated I think by those who are
in awe of something they incompletely understand, right down to the
philosophic level, is sympomatic of it's failure to be awed instead by
the primary reality of quality and value."
I identify with that issue - our culture's "worship" of objectivism -
and very telling to hear a (thoughtful) math teacher say it. I too was
awed by the [e i pi 0 -1] relations, 30 odd years ago, but as you say
this only makes "sense" in the closed world of mathematical constructs,
where axioms and equalities rule. I guess the awe comes from that fact
that these individual components first arise in what appear separate
fields of mathematics, but the startling identity is still only in that
ideal (non real) domain.
Did someone post praising Ilya Prigogine's "End of Certainty" a couple
of months ago, or did I imagine it ?
First time I read it I was unimpressed, but I'm currently re-reading and
being knocked out by it. Einstein, Schroedinger, Poincare, Hawking,
no-one is immune from being politely discounted by Prigogine. Even
Schroedinger (derived using Euler) is just an abstraction to use in the
ideal, time reversible world, not the real messy, fuzzy, chaotic,
population statistics world of quality and value. There is very little
in the real world "explained" by Euler or Schroedinger's equations,
however usefeul they are in maths and conventional QM. Interesting that
Schroedinger did learn this. His "What s Life" is an interesting read,
and a million miles from his wave equation.
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard Loggins
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 3:40 AM
Subject: RE: MD "Is there anything out there?"
Hi MSH,
I realize I'm not the freindliest of people. Its something I'm working
on. My commentary was not meant to be discourtious or unthoughtful, but
to point out that your statement was, at best, wildly misleading. Let me
explain. As Kieth pointed out (although I can't find his original post
to you) Euler has a more generalized equation that relates an exponent
of e to sines and cosines. Naturaly, all waves (and therefor Shrodingers
wave equation) can be described by combinations of sines and cosines and
so can be related to Euler's generalized relation. But the famous
special case of Euler's generalized equation involving e, i, pi, 1, and
0 which you talked about is NOT used as "the BASIC equation of ANY wave
motion, a wave on water, the sound waves coming from an air raid siren,
or electromagnetic radiation." That's just poppy-cock but if you got
that information from Scientific American magazine I wouldn't be
surprized. I'm a math teacher and being a stickler about su! ch things
is my nature, but perhaps your Phd buddy could show me wrong.
As to your larger point that we should be wow'd by the correlation
between math and so-called physical reality, and that there is more to
it than tweeking equations until it fits the data, let me remind you
that math is as much a creation of our intellect as the physical world
is, and since the original purpose for math was to count objects in a
subject-object world of our making, it shouldn't come as any surprize
that the relationship comes full circle and applies the other way round.
As a consequence math, excepting its creative aspects, has nothing to do
with Quality, as it exists solely in a closed world of impersonel
objectivism, and our cultures' worship of math, instagated I think by
those who are in awe of something they incompletely understand, right
down to the philosophic level, is sympomatic of it's failure to be awed
instead by the primary reality of quality and value. I don't know..it
could be that maybe I'm the insane one or it's just the w! hiskey
talking. I'm from Jersey too. Whereabouts are you? Want to have a drink
sometime? - Rich
Mark Steven Heyman <markheyman@infoproconsulting.com> wrote:
Hi Rich,
Nice to hear from you again, and thanks for the courteous and
thoughtful commentary.
On 3 Jan 2005 at 20:25, Richard Loggins wrote:
MSH said: "The whole of quantum physics depends upon
this simple equation. It is the basic equation of any wave motion, a
wave on water, the sound waves coming from an air raid siren, or
electromagnetic radiation."
rich:
Oh come on. you must be joking. You can't really believe everything
you read on the internet.
msh says:
LOL. Well, yes, obviously I've over-simplified things to make my
point in a few paragraphs. But you've made the simplification more
extreme by limiting my point to the two sentences above. The fact is
that equations in the form I've described are found throughout the
physical sciences, and are especially obvious in any discussion
surro! unding the Schroedinger equation, which was the first thing
that gave people confidence in such a crazy system as quantum
mechanics.
As for your comment about the internet as a source of information, I
don't believe anything I read there, or anywhere else, unless I can
discover independent corrorboration. But why should reading an
article, say, on The Scientific American website be any less
reliable
than reading the magazine itself?
Finally, I should emphasize that I'm not suggesting that these
equations somehow prove that God exists and that she's a
mathematician. My point is that the correlation between math and
physical reality is more than just measuring things, then tweaking
equations till they are useful.
Thanks,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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