Physics versus Mathematics and Logic.

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22 years 2 months ago #2857 by Atko
Replied by Atko on topic Reply from Paul Atkinson
I tend to agree with you. Cellular automata formalism is currently being applied to the fields of surface tension analysis, lattice gases, crystal growth, studies of ecological systems and even road traffic simulations. I think there has been some work on magnetism, but I guess the emphasis is on payback in terms of practical industrial applications and $$$'s. Applying this approach to whole branches of physics would be mighty challenging in terms of initial set up - just crow-barring the Mathematical/Theoretical Physicists out of their well-established position at the head of the field would be a Herculean task!

I think this would constitute real "thinking outside the box".

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22 years 2 months ago #2909 by AgoraBasta
Replied by AgoraBasta on topic Reply from
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...just crow-barring the Mathematical/Theoretical Physicists out of their well-established position at the head of the field would be a Herculean task!
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That's kinda-sorta exactly right! All we'd need instead of those leeches would be some imaginative experimenters and good computers. And like I said in the original post - some basic cell designs may be incorporated on the hardware level in our computers. (Kinda like hardware-accelerated physics, the same way as the 3D-graphics is hardware-accelerated these days.)

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22 years 2 months ago #2859 by Patrick
Replied by Patrick on topic Reply from P
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I think it's worth having a stab at actually answering Agorabasta's original posting in this thread (it kind of got high-jacked by Patrick's theory on Nothing versus Everything!).
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Atko is correct, please accept my formal apologies. I had no intentions of diverting your forum. <img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>

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22 years 2 months ago #2913 by Jeremy
Replied by Jeremy on topic Reply from
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The question is - can mathematics and logic account for real world physics?
To me the answer is rather no.

Maybe we could construct mathematics using real processes instead of stupid numbers? Maybe we could pick some "elementary" processes to use as digits and do "calculations" by putting them to interact in some basic configurations to be called "operators"?
Further, we could put the hardwired simulators of those "digits" and "operators" into our computers; that's instead of software-only models based on our current dumb-primitive theories...

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I would agree that mathematics does not describe reality but can only arbitrarily approximate it to a closer and closer degree. This has always been the problem with professional scientists in that they unconciously (or conciously) adopt their theory as REALITY and forget that it is only a model. The map is not the landscape. This is why people like Tom get such ill treatment, he is playing with someone's emotional investment is what they think is real. These same critics would doggedly claim they have no bias in their theory but merely believe it because of evidence. It is much like judges that make abyssmal moral decisions and are oblivious to it because they are merely following precedence.

Your last statement about using processes instead of mathematics I think in a sense is shooting yourself in the foot because you speak of these "processes" being modeled in computers, these can only be modeled using conventional mathematical operations albeit in a different manner. If you want cellular automata in physics read Stephen Wolfram's latest book, that is what it is devoted to. He claims the universe can probably be modeled in a page of code although I notice he cannot produce this page of code for us. Perhaps that will be his next book.

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22 years 2 months ago #2877 by AgoraBasta
Replied by AgoraBasta on topic Reply from
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Your last statement about using processes instead of mathematics I think in a sense is shooting yourself in the foot because you speak of these "processes" being modeled in computers, these can only be modeled using conventional mathematical operations albeit in a different manner.
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Well, that "statement" was intentionally made in a very "maybe" form. I have no clear understanding of optimal way to do it all.
But while we wait for the CA model availability, we could try some hybrid model with complex 3D "macro-cells" applied onto model of space in a multi-layer way with iterative recurring corrections; some special measures must be taken to avoid divergences, like using extra precision with finer scaling in suspect areas. Anyway, I'm no specialist here.

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22 years 1 month ago #3167 by jimiproton
A supplementary question: would "mathematics" refer to the use of the constants that scientists recognize as being invented by man (pi, or Euler's number), or natural constants ([theoretical] E=mc^2)? Or would it refer to the current acceptance of numbers as being of human invention, not being "real" at all?

There are other natural constants, less defined than Einstein's, but which cry out for further understanding; eg.:

absolute zero: -273.2 degrees celcius
expansion of gas as heated by one (celcius) degree: 1/273.2
one sidereal month (orbit of moon to same position in relation to the background sky): 27.32 days
Moon acceleration around the Earth: 273cm/sec^2
Human conception to birth: 273 days
Female oestral cycle: sidereal month

Please for give the profanity of trampling on the hallowed ground of the various scholastic branches in one breath (this did not exhaust the correlations), but lest's look at the current state of the Academia. A magnanimous scientific spirit would apear the only option in the current state of affairs.

A recent trend (initiated by the Chemist-turned interscholastic, "Peter Plichta") approaches a unification of the two mathematical categories, based on a view of the universe as "harmonious;" changes in process in space occurring at points correlating to prime numbers (disharmonious points), beginning with the various powers of electron shells, and expanding into space ad infinitum.

In brief, we can assume that both the natural and man-made mathematical contstants, as well as the proposed new mathematics (and all sciences, for that matter) converge, at the equation 1=1. In the larger processes, only by leaping to infinity can we hope affirm a claim of the self-evidence of mathematics (N.B. granted, individually we may leap to infinity at some point).

Would a new variety of mathematics necessarily cancel the old one? "Classical" mathematics as yet remains beyond our understanding, and yet it is harmonious in it's relation to real-world physics.

A postulation: we will only ever be able to observe things that are material, and countable, therefore, mathematic ["old"].

To which one may say, "merely to the limits of observation" -which is why there are various physical "theories." But one should not say "mathematical theory," unless semantics itself is theoretical, which begs the question of any purpose for theories -it is a semantic item, after all.

On a comletely un-scientific note, consider the enjoyment one has of a harmonious Vivaldi concerto, or some Bach (I'll put Tchaikovsky up there in the celestial realms) and the differential but non-exclusive operation of sound waves, according to current mathematical theory (arithmentic!) Is this out the window?

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