Quote:
Originally Posted by pj67coll
For a long time I've had similar feelings about the frontiers of quantum physics and cosmology. I have no college education so cannot comment on the mathamatics involved but I think that it is so advanced that it has long superceded the ability of spoken languages to translate it into concepts of which the great unwashed can achieve a meaningful understanding.
This is something I've often discussed with an old high school friend of mine who is now a professor of astrophysics at UCLA. Himself very much a theorist. I wonder if in fact much of the most advanced theories are inherently understandable outside of pure mathamatics. If not, then how does one differentiate them from the morass of metaphysical philosophy?
- Peter.
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Actually, one of the greatest leaps of string theory is it's differentiation from pure mathematics. This may seem silly, but pre-string theory quantum physics treated "particles" as mathematical points, ignoring their capacity to occupy space. This distinction has profound ramifications and solves many of the problems quantum physics had previously presented. For example, while you can plot an infinite number of mathematical points on the surface of a sphere, there is a finite limit to the number of strings that can occupy that same space.