Dear Alan
I agree with you - but perhaps more so. The why questions are good for the
dinner table but of little use in science. Your "why - because of gravity"
tells us nothing as you show. We want to know how things come about. I'm
not sure conjuring "real" things helps us here - that is, not until there
is a unified theory of the physical universe. Penrose's ideas about the
possible quantum nature of the human mind suggest that we should be very
cautious in assuming that we can model on a computer anything but broad
approximations of human cultural and cognitive life. What's really going on
is probably beyond our ken (cf Gödel's Incompleteness Theory).
"Real" entities come into being in the move from the quantum to the macro
universe (see Penrose/Hawking et al) - and in this sense anything that can
be observed can be taken to be real for the purpose of an analysis (the
shift is linked to observation - Heisenberg etc). But it is important
always to remember that this is an incomplete account of the quantum/macro
event. In simulations I guess you model observations,the observations being
the link to the material world - whatever its unified form may actually be.
Of course the observations need to be robust, but events at the macro level
can be nonlinear.......
My next question - wouldn't we be better off doing maths?
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Dr. Alan Dean
Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology
School of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences
The University of Hull
Hull
HU6 7RX
UK
Phone: +44 (1482) 465743
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Fax: +44 (1482) 466306
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