The Quantum Of Continuity :: essays research papers

<a href="http//philosophos.tripod.com">http//philosophos.tripod.comThe problem of continuum versus decidedness seems to be link up to the issue of infinity and finiteness. The number of points in a line served as the logical floodgate which led to the development of Set Theory by Cantor at the end of the 19th blow. It took almost another century to demonstrate the problematic nature of some of Cantors thinking (Cohen completed Godels race in 1963). But continuity can be finite and the link is, most times, misleading rather than illuminating. Intuition tells us that the world is ceaseless and contiguous. This seems to be a state of things which is devoid of characteristics other than its very existence. And yet, whenever we result the microscope of scientific discipline at the world, we encounter quantized, segregated, distinct and discrete pictures. This atomization seems to be the natural state of things - why did evolution resort to the stupid perception of con tinuum? And how can a machine which is bound to be discrete by virtue of its "naturalness" - the brain - perceive a continuum? The continuum is an external, psychogenic category which is imposed by us on our observations and on the resulting data. It serves as an idealized approximation of reality, a model which is asymptotic to the Universe "as it is". It gives rise to the concepts of quality, emergence, function, derivation, influence (force), interaction, fields, (quantum) measurement, processes and a host of other holistic ship canal of relating to our environment. The other pole, the quantized model of the world conveniently gives rise to the complementary color set of concepts quantity, causality, observation, (classic) measurement, language, events, quants, units and so on. The private, macroscopic, low velocity instances of our physical descriptions of the universe (theories) break away to be continuous. Newtonian time is equated to a river. Space is a ya rn. whizz was the last classicist (relativity just means that no classical percipient has any preference over another in formulating the laws of physics and in performing measurements). His space-time is a four dimensional continuum. What commenced as a matter of mathematical convenience was transformed into a hallowed philosophical system homogeneity, isotropy, symmetry became enshrined as the cornerstones of an almost religious outlook ("God does not play dice"). These were assumed to be "objective", "observer free" qualities of the Universe. There was supposed to be no preferred direction, no cluster of mass or of energy, no time, charge, or parity asymmetry in elementary particles.