Is the world evolving discretely? (Q1408275)
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English | Is the world evolving discretely? |
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Is the world evolving discretely? (English)
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15 September 2003
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The title and the first sentence of the article were meant probably to be thought-provoking, but they turned out to be rather simplistic. -- According to Kant, continuity and discreteness are merely perception modes of the mind. Neither is an ``Absolute''. Mathematical descriptions of `Natural Science' phenomena, continuous or discrete, are nothing more than models, established for accuracy, efficiency and convenience. -- Many individuals were perplexed by the discovery that light `is' a wave, a particle, or both `simultaneously', depending on observational circumstances. A similar situation is known to prevail in classical and relativistic mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, chemistry,\dots and even biology. The argumentation presented is primitively speculative. No concrete `Natural Science' or mathematical problem is solved. The existence of `gravitons' is still conjectural, precluding thus a realistic discrete modelling of gravitational phenomena. The article contains no heretofore unknown results. The references are scanty.
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discrete models
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