numbers truth and science
Suppose someone came to us (humans) and said, simple problem, how would you divide 22 chocolates equally among seven kids, all of humanity, with all its technological advances, super computers, laser cutting tools and ingenuity woudnt be able to solve this problem, why, simply because 22/7 is an infinite decimal, so if Pi is the truth, we know of only an approximation, the actual value or absolute truth is unknown to us.
Coming back to the chocolates, even if Pi stretches to infinity, at what point does a chocolate cease to be a chocolate, perhaps Pi at its milliont decimal divides a quark into 7 pieces, but a quark is not a chocolate, at which point we arent dividing a chocolate anymore, we are dividing something else, hence does it really matter for dividing chocolates, to know the end result of Pi. I guess not, so perhaps truth is a function of its environment, there is a truth for each occasion, there is no absolute truth.
So are we doomed as humans, never to experience the absolute truth, even if it is with numbers, will we never know what Pi actually is, what 22/7 actually means, maybe it doesnt mean musch when we deal with our present problems because our sense of what is chocolate, i.e. what they say in physics least count, never exceeds say 100 digits, but suppose we need to calculate how to get to another star, or galaxy and somewhere Pi props up, we are doomed as the farther we need to go, the farther we will be off, remember all the problems we had when some smart guy decided to use two digits for year instead of 4, now what if somebody used Pi to just one million digits and instead and we landed at a black hole instead of another planet. Hence to figure out such things we will need a better system of mathematics, maybe even a different system of numbers.
Maybe we should try to find a different system of numbers, maybe we should question, why are we getting recurring decimals and infinite decimals, something wrong with our 10 base number system, (just because we have 10 fingers, doesnt mean we base our whole science on the number 10)
I know its easy to say that we need to re-invent our fundamentals to learn about all those things which are outside our grasp now, perhaps thats what they call quantumn mechanics but are we doomed in our lifetimes to live in an imperfect world that doesnt know the truth...............
Coming back to the chocolates, even if Pi stretches to infinity, at what point does a chocolate cease to be a chocolate, perhaps Pi at its milliont decimal divides a quark into 7 pieces, but a quark is not a chocolate, at which point we arent dividing a chocolate anymore, we are dividing something else, hence does it really matter for dividing chocolates, to know the end result of Pi. I guess not, so perhaps truth is a function of its environment, there is a truth for each occasion, there is no absolute truth.
So are we doomed as humans, never to experience the absolute truth, even if it is with numbers, will we never know what Pi actually is, what 22/7 actually means, maybe it doesnt mean musch when we deal with our present problems because our sense of what is chocolate, i.e. what they say in physics least count, never exceeds say 100 digits, but suppose we need to calculate how to get to another star, or galaxy and somewhere Pi props up, we are doomed as the farther we need to go, the farther we will be off, remember all the problems we had when some smart guy decided to use two digits for year instead of 4, now what if somebody used Pi to just one million digits and instead and we landed at a black hole instead of another planet. Hence to figure out such things we will need a better system of mathematics, maybe even a different system of numbers.
Maybe we should try to find a different system of numbers, maybe we should question, why are we getting recurring decimals and infinite decimals, something wrong with our 10 base number system, (just because we have 10 fingers, doesnt mean we base our whole science on the number 10)
I know its easy to say that we need to re-invent our fundamentals to learn about all those things which are outside our grasp now, perhaps thats what they call quantumn mechanics but are we doomed in our lifetimes to live in an imperfect world that doesnt know the truth...............
posted by adarsh adarsh at 5:18 PM
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