Nick writes, in relevant part: > AS for the discussion with Doug and Peter, I am, I guess, > an incurable amateur. I think of the world as arrayed in > layers [of abstraction]; for me, there always is [should be? > -note the use of modal language!] a level of abstraction at > which it is appropriate for somebody to explain something to > somebody else. For instance, if somebody asks me a question > based on the mother earth fallacy (gaia hypothesis, whatever) > (which drives me WILD), I try to answer it at the level of > the abstraction, rather than at the level of the fact. The > good answer is something like, "I will try to answer your > factual answer in a moment, but first I need to understand > the assumptions behind it: Why is it that you suppose that > nature is beneficent?"
I won't try to answer your factual question (much less your factual answer!) in a moment, if ever, but first I need to understand the assumptions behind it: Why is it that you (as it seems to me) suppose that Doug and Peter *could*, if they only *would*, explain to you the complexities of fluid dynamics (or even just the particular complexities involved with water draining from a basin, supposing--which appears to be false-- that those particular complexities can be sensibly disentangled from the general complexities of that very complex subject, which is by no means satisfactorily mathematized [see http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Navier-Stokes_Equations/]), in your present state of understanding of physics (and mathematics)? To put it another way, given that the best explanation I've seen for what Eugene Wigner called "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences" is that the human capacity to think *mathematically* (and therefore *effectively*) about the physical world is an evolutionary consequence of the comparative *ineffectiveness* of thinking *unmathematically*, why do ... oh, hell, I can't finish that sentence. But I'll leave it, as an opening for you to divert the conversation to *your* expertise, and give me a chance to play the goat (rather than the "let's you and him fight" bystander, with a side order of Physical Ignoramus, Second Class) for a while. Lee Rudolph ============================================================ 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
