🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep29.182835.26555@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
|> [...]
|> Of course, mathematics has been a branch of mysticism ever since the
|> Pythagoreans (if not earlier).  As a mathematician, if one could
|> find a mathematical model from which quantum mechanics and general
|> relativity both "fell out" in some natural manner, it would count
|> as an outstanding achievement even if it had no testable consequences.

Yes.  It's always useful for your model to be easily manipulated.
However, a model by itself isn't a theory.  A theory is a model
*PLUS* a mapping from the model onto measurable aspects of reality.
Those parts of the model which are *not* mapped to measurable aspects
of reality cannot be said to *necessarily* correspond to anything 
physical - no matter how elegant they are.  Any alternative 
model which produces the same measurable predictions with the
same accuracy will do as well - and often in the past, well
regarded models have had to be discarded because new methods
of testing became available which disproved previously untestable
aspects of those models.

Of course, the *really* strange thing about QM is the claim that
a mathematical function *is* the physical object being studied.
In any other part of science, this would seem rediculous (or,
at the very least, uninformative).  To derive a function which
gives a prediction for sky-light as a function of sun angle,
horizonm angle, wavelength of light, and observer altitude
should be possible.  To say that the sky really *is* that
function when you're not looking up is rediculous.  For one
thing, what does such a claim even *mean*?  Or, consider the
following function on integers: f(i) = max(0, min(i-1, 13-i))/36.
This is the probability of rolling `i' as the sum of two dice.
It is rediculous to say the dice really *are* this function
while they are rolling and that the function `collapses'
to a given number when the dice stop rolling.

-- 
J. Giles