> On 27 Oct 2018, at 20:56, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 1:35:14 PM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote: > > > On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 4:29:08 PM UTC, Tomas Pales wrote: > > > On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 5:41:22 PM UTC+2, [email protected] <> > wrote: > > > On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 3:20:23 PM UTC, John Clark wrote: > On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 5:40 PM <[email protected] <>> wrote: > > > the concept of a plane wave, one of the solutions of Maxwell's equations. > > It certainly doesn't exist in THIS universe > > I agree with the general point you're trying to make, just because something > can be consistently described mathematically doesn't prove it must exist > physically. However if you're interested in the waves that enter your radio > telescope and consider them to be plane waves the error in doing so can be > made arbitrarily small by increasing the distance from the point source or by > decreasing the size of the antenna. As a practical matter because the things > astronomers study are so distant and their antennas are so small they can > treat the waves they're interested in as plane waves and produce no > measurable error by doing so. But a designer of optical microscopes would not > have that luxury because the lens of a microscope is large compared to the > distance from the sample, so he could not treat them as plane waves. > > John K Clark > > A spherical wave asymptotically approaches a plane wave as it progresses in > space and time, but it never becomes a plane wave. This where the rubber hits > the road for the MUH; we have a mathematical construct that doesn't exist in > physical reality. Moreover, since the amplitude along the wave front is a > plane, the wave changes instantaneously in every direction along the plane > for every increment of time however small, which I refer to as "instantaneous > with a vengeance". So, as far as I am concerned the MUH is easily falsified, > and why it continues to interest people is baffling. AG > > > What is baffling is why you think that your example falsifies MUH. If a plane > wave is logically impossible then it doesn't exist - MUH is intact. If a > plane wave is logically possible then exists, in a universe with > instantaneous action at a distance if necessary - MUH is intact. > > This is like the myth of the monster, the Hydra? -- you cut off one head and > two new ones emerge, and so forth. In THIS universe, to the best of our > understanding and belief, instantaneous action at a distance does NOT exist. > Yet in THIS universe, plane wave solutions to Maxwell's equations DO exist. > So in THIS universe, the MUH is falsified. Now if you want to claim that > OTHER universes exist where the MUH is true, it seems to me you're grasping > at straws. AG > > > > Since mathematics is a form of fiction, like all fiction, there are "objects" > in it that just don't "exist in the world", like vampires, werewolves, and > live mummies 3000 years old in literary fiction.
That is pure mathematics. Say. Physics consists in computing the probability that you will meet the vampire. With mechanism, it is easy to show that all universal machines are executed by all universal machines, and none can know which one, making physics into a “bastard calculus” (to use Plato and Plotinus terming) on the non computable indeterminate. At first sight it gives too much (and it does mathematically on []p), but things get better when we remind that the knower is not given by the believer []p, but by the true believer []p & p, although we need to consider also the only consistent believer ([]p & <>t), and even the true consistent believer ([]p & <>t & p), on the sigma_1 arithmetical sentences p. We get quantum &/or intuitionist logics there. Those nuances are imposed by incompleteness. G* proves them equivalent, but G does not, and it makes arithmetic being capable of being viewed from inside in *many* ways. Happy Halloween! Bruno > > Happy Halloween! > > - pt > > > > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- 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.
