On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 10:17:01AM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote: > > My feeling is that we observe that the world has certain symmetries, then we > design our theories to reflect these symmetries, because theories that > incorporate the observed symmetries work better. Since the starting point is > observation, we have some prospect of learning something other than the > nature of our thought processes. > > Bruce
My claim is that there are always symmetric theories. Assuming some horrible non-symmetric world, we can make a symmetric theory by a suitable transformation of variables - in rather the same way we can see a computation in a rock by a suitable transformation of variables. What do you say to the proposition that evolution might have equipped us with the facility to see those symmetries "intuitively", since it makes computing things about the world easier? Of course it's not quite so simple, as naive physics had things coming to a stop if you remove the force, and heavier things falling faster than light things, but still it probably came close enough that science could refine observations into the symmetries we see today. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow [email protected] Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
