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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (84880)	9/16/2008 2:38:05 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541489

Fourier Analysis is a very powerful technique which views a given function (just think of a squiggly line) as being composed of an infinite number of sinwaves starting from very long period ones (low frequency) up to infinitely short period ones (high frequency) summed together. These sinwaves also exist in time from -infinity to +infinity. As it so happens, you can replicate pretty much any squiggle using the above constraints, and a chap named Fourier devised a method for figuring out the amplitudes and phase of all those sinwaves (rather important constants of which there are an infinite number as well). The problem remains that clearly this is physical nonsense because of the +/-infinite timescale for the sinwaves. You can see this as follows: Using a very pure source, produce middle C for 1 sec. There is absolute silence before and after. The physical description of this would be 0 for t<0, middle C for 0<=t<=1 sec and 0 for T > 1. Fourier Analysis would instead say that all these infinite sinewaves exist from -infinity to +infinity such that they sum together to produce the same thing, namely silence for ever, except that 1 sec of middle C. The math does all work out. But that does not mean this says something profound about reality, namely that all these sinwaves have been vibrating throughout eternity just to produce the one second of sound. The theories about multiverses strike me as similar to this issue. Just because the math works does not mean you have the correct interpretation. There might be another way to describe it as I did above. We can never quite be sure what the relationship between math and physics is. Often some branch of math, which was already worked out, suddenly becomes useful to describe a branch of physics where progress had stalled, and it seems like the math was somehow magically linked to the physical reality. General Relativity and Riemanning Geometry (differential geometry) being one of the classic cases, or Hilbert Spaces (generalized Euclidean spaces) and their far reaching impact on physics of all kinds as well as algebras and their impact. It all seems kind of mystical. I've slowly come to accept that math is likely just a polymorphism of physical reality, because both math and the physical universe deal with numbers. Math is just the abstract, the universe is the real deal. It should come as no surprise that numbers behave the same way in both cases. That is why I hold out hope for Lisi and his Lie Algebra GUT. It just makes sense that something as fundamental to math would also be fundamental to a universe populated with discrete units. If there where no discrete units (particles) in the universe, than one would not expect such results. Just my WAG