I take it from the Wikipedia entry that *physics envy* is a second-order *math envy*. I often got the impression from Hywel that he was a radical empiricist. More extreme than Gisin, Hywel did not only reject the reals but also the integers. Hywel's reasoning (which makes a weird kind of sense to me) was the reasoning of approximations and measurement, always emphasizing phenomena first and theory second. Not only would I say he was warding off (our) *math envy*, but also that he was reminding us that all convenient assumptions (such as conservation laws) must ultimately stand before what can be known through measurement. His physics would not be the target of the envy described by the Wikipedia article in that his physics was the master of its mathematics, not the reverse. A truly remarkable human being!
-- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
