LizR wrote:
On 6 June 2015 at 07:22, John Clark <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 , meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > It's very relevant if you want to know what is a simplified approximation of what. And we both agree that a electronic computer is vastly more complex than it's logical schematic, so why can we make a working model of the complex thing but not make a working model of the simple thing when usually it's easier to make a simple thing than a complex thing? The only answer that comes to mind is that particular simplified approximation is just too simplified and just too approximate to actually do anything. That simplification must be missing something important, matter that obeys the laws of physics. > The trouble with this argument is that the laws of physics are mathematical abstractions. Mathematicians are always saying that mathematics is a language, butwhat would be the consequences if that were really true? I'm not sure that mathematicians say this (well, Galileo did, iirc, but generally they don't). The best way known to describe the laws of physics is to write thenin the language of mathematics, but a language is not the thing the language is describing. A book about Napoleon may be written in the English Language, but the English Language is not Napoleon and mathematics may not be the physical universe. Or maybe it is. As I've said many times I'm playing devil's advocate here, maybe mathematics really is more fundamental than physics but if it is it has not been proven.I doubt anything could prove this if it's still being debated even though physics has been based on maths for 300 years.
I think you will find that physics has been based on experience, and the the experience/experiments have been codified/described by mathematics. To say that is "has been based on maths" is a gross distortion of the facts.
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