The Relation Between Mathematics and Physics by Paul Dirac (damtp.cam.ac.uk)

38 pointsby rramadass4 days ago9 comments

VorpalWay 41 minutes ago

Shouldn't this have a "(1939)" suffix on the title according to HN rules? ;)

wolfi1 an hour ago

there is a quote from Pauli about Dirac : 'There is no God and Dirac is his prophet' Heisenberg and Dirac had different opinions on the existence of a god and Pauli, asked for his opinion, had the former to say

rramadass 3 days ago

Also see Relationship between Mathematics and Physics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_mathemati...

general_reveal an hour ago

Haven’t even made too far down, but:

”There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success. This must be ascribed to some mathematical quality in Nature, a quality which the casual observer of Nature would not suspect, but which nevertheless plays an important role in Nature's scheme.”

I mean, Hume answers this, but so does time, and I guess they both answer it together. Our observed measurements are true for the certain time period we’re in and remain true while we are in that window. To conclude with Hume, it’s all true until it isn’t, in time (well I suppose even in timelessness, entire properties can change - even so, with respect to measuring, I believe that requires a physical step function so we can’t avoid time here :)).

Aside:

”This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.”

Thorough worshipping of Math and “Mathers”, like as if they are a gift from God. Again, let’s stick with Hume, you’re the shit until you’re not. Einstein went to death not understanding Physics as he wanted to.

Hey, I’m a programmer, I didn’t necessarily want robots to do my job either. God loves that essay Hume wrote, truly.

It’s all fun and games until God mindfucks your understanding.

n4r9 30 minutes ago

This is probably a reference to Hume's problem of induction, i.e. that observing a regularity in the past cannot justify assuming that it will hold in the future. It's vaguely related to the article, but talking about "time windows" and "Mathers" muddles the point.

general_reveal 26 minutes ago

Is it vaguely related? He wondered why measuring anything even works. Why wouldn’t the measurement disappear, thus making all this measuring pointless? Because, apparently the measurement(s) are true each time-step, and it will be true for that time, until it’s not true. Why it reasonably works well for us? Well, God , I guess. Same way the Sun doesn’t burn our skin off (God, I guess, but some have issues with that).

Sorry, I had to critique that immediately because I could already see that other second paragraph I quoted coming, as in, this author probably worships Math, Science, and those that do it, certainly not God, because he was unable to characterize the phenomena of it as related to God.

n4r9 21 minutes ago

Yes, vaguely related. He's not wondering why measurement itself works, but why mathematical reasoning applies so effectively to the measurement results.

I think it's valid to be surprised that all observations of a physical phenomena up until this point have obeyed a beautiful and (relatively) simple mathematical relationship, without even thinking about predicting the future.

lolakutty 27 minutes ago

>There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all,

One reason I can think of is if we consider that some regularity in the physical behavior is required for consciousness to evolve and so consciousness only forms in such worlds.