Owen hath stateth, that Dr. Moore stateth: "in physics that the simplest, most beautiful solutions are the most likely to be correct, almost as if there were a wonderful, elegant designer behind things."
Owen, My philosophy of pedagogy leads me to suspect that Dr. Moore is missing a critical element of the picture. I suspect that a big part of professionalization in any higher education context is aesthetic training, in which one learns to find certain types of things as beautiful and simple (including, for example, that simple is beautiful). I think one would be hard pressed to convince a layman that Newtonian physics was somehow simpler or more beautiful than the Aristotelian variety. Is 12-dimensional super-string theory really "simple" by any standards? Surely, the answer is "yes", by the standards some physicists have been trained to see. So, I would posit the opposite causal order: There is something about the training of physicists, which leads them to see things that are true as both simple and beautiful. I also posit that Thus there IS a necessary designed, but it is not an all-powerful who designs the world, it is somewhat powerful set of designers (often referred to as "faculty") who design the observer. I have a hunch this overlaps with the discussion the "mathematical thinking" group is having. Just some near idle speculation, Eric On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 12:50 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > On Feb 25, 2010, at 12:06 PM, Grant Holland wrote: >> Dear FRIAM... >> >> I'm excited and happy to subscribe to the group. (Thanks for the >> invite Stephen, - and David.) For many years I have architected and >> implemented large-scale (mostly Java) enterprise software >> (applications and systems) for corporations and gov. >institutions >> mostly in North America on behalf of a number of major computer >> systems vendors (e.g. Sun). >... > >Hi Grant, sorry to be so late responding. I was at Sun as well, I >suspect our paths crossed. http://backspaces.net/ > >I'm taking CS500 at UNM this semester, and Cris Moore, the prof and >SFI faculty member made an interesting comment: > >We find in physics that the simplest, most beautiful solutions are the >most likely to be correct, almost as if there were a wonderful, >elegant designer behind things. While in constructed things, like >computer science, we often find the reverse: they are very hard to >understand and often the best solutions have an Advisory trying to >make a worst case solution intractable. > >Apologies to Cris for the misquoting, but an interesting thought. > >Are you here in Santa Fe? Linkedin has a profile including Grant >Holland & Associates. If so, you may be interested in the SFComplex: >http://sfcomplex.org > where a lot of complexity goes on! > > -- Owen > > >On Feb 25, 2010, at 12:06 PM, Grant Holland wrote: >> Dear FRIAM... >> >> I'm excited and happy to subscribe to the group. (Thanks for the >> invite Stephen, - and David.) For many years I have architected and >> implemented large-scale (mostly Java) enterprise software >> (applications and systems) for corporations and gov. >institutions >> mostly in North America on behalf of a number of major computer >> systems vendors (e.g. Sun). > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
