On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 6:40 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 18 Nov 2014, at 18:34, John Clark wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Maybe Schrodinger's Wave Equation doesn't interfere either, only other >>> worlds do, >>> >> >> > ? >> > ! > > >> and maybe the wave equation is just a way, and certainly not the only >>> way, humans have of describing that interference between worlds. >>> >> >> > Indeed, >> > > Then why the "?" ? > > > Probably because I did not parse well the sentence above, and the term > "world" is a but fuzzy in this context. But I guess we are OK. > > > > > > You know positivist physicians still alive? Who? >> > > Every physicist alive uses both Heisenberg's Matrices and Schrodinger's > Wave; > > > OK, and other pictures and formulations of QM too. > > > > none use Positivism or any other school of philosophy because no > philosophical franchise is of the slightest help in doing what scientists > want to do, figure out how the world works. > > > I disagree. The collapse axiom, which is still in amost textbook, and > which is used by bad pedagog to avoid hard question, is a philosophical > axiom relying on a religious belief: the belief that there is only one > physical universe, and that we are unique. > The collapse hypothesis is correct if we need to conserve the total energy and information in the universe. Richard > > Some physicists used it as a rule of thumb, and as a way to not do > philosophy, but of course, that is eventually like a use of God-gap type of > explanation. > > > > > > In math and physics, it is frequent that two apparantly different >> theories are equivalent, >> > > Yes, just like Heisenberg's Matrices and Schrodinger's Wave, they both > tell a story with a identical plot they just use different symbols in the > vocabulary of mathematics to do so, just as 2 books about World War 2 tell > the same story but use different symbols in the vocabulary of the English > language to do it; however neither book about World War 2, no matter how > good, is World War 2. I said it before but it's worth repeating, maybe we > should take seriously and think through the implications of what > mathematicians have been saying for years, mathematics is a language. > > > Mathematics use a mathematical language, but is not a language itself. You > can use different language to describe a similar mathematical reality. You > can use the combinators, or the sets, to *represent* the natural numbers, > and admit quite different axioms, but you will get the same facts, for > example that the number of ways to write an odd natural number as a sum of > four square is given by 24 times the sum of its odd divisor. Like the > product scalar does not depend of the orthonormal base, in linear algebra, > the truth of the arithmetical statements do not depend on the theory and > language used to describe them. It is the same for computer science, which > is actually a branch of number theory. Some machines will stop on some > input independently of the language used to describe those machines and > input. > > > > > > > but that does not make the thing described into a convention or >> language. >> > > True. A electron is not a convention or a language, but what about a > description of the electron written in a particular dialect of the language > of mathematics, like the Schrodinger Wave Equation? Yes Schrodinger's > Equation does a good job describing the behavior of a electron, but Dirac's > Equation does better, and Feynman's sum over histories even better. And > some equations do a terrible job describing the electron even though the > are grammatically correct sentences in the language of mathematics, that is > to say they are logically self consistent. So maybe you can not only write > true descriptions of the electron in the language of mathematics maybe you > can also write the equivalent of a Harry Potter novel in the language of > mathematics. Maybe Cantor's infinities and the Real Numbers are > mathematical Harry Potter novels. Actually I kinda doubt it but maybe. > > > Sure. but may be electron are only useful fiction to get the voltage right > for the working of my fridge. Here math and physics are alike, and it asks > some familiarity with the subject to develop an intuition of what might be > conventional and what might be a deep truth independent of the subject. > > > > > > > On the contrary, it points on something real beyond the language. >> > > But that's exactly what I was getting at, maybe it points to something > real beyond the mathematics. > > > I was meaning "it points on something real and mathematical beyond the > language. > > > > > I don't insist that is true, maybe mathematics is more than just a > language, but maybe not, I believe it's worth thinking about. Unlike > philosophers who are always certain but seldom correct I just don't know. > > > The choice of a theory might be conventional, but some truth will not > depend on that choice. And with computationalism, I explain that even > physics is "theory independent". You can use the axiom of arithmetic, or > the axiom on combinators, and the existence of 24, or of electron, will not > depend on it. A bit like most truth in linear algebra don't depend on the > choice of the base. > > It is not a convention that 17 is prime. It really means that you cannot > divide 17 to make some rectangle from it. If math was conventional, there > would not be any conjecture, like the Riemann hypothesis, or the twin prime > conjecture. Then Gödel's theorem justifies that the arithmetical truth is > beyond all possible theoretical formalization of it, and this, imo, gives > grain to realism in math, against conventionalism. > > Bruno > > > > > John K Clark > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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