On 11/30/2008 2:26:19 AM, Ronn! Blankenship ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
wrote:
> At 08:25 PM Saturday 11/29/2008, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
>
> >(Although to be fair, classical mechanics does sum up pretty well what
> >we see on our scale.
> It's just right for the wrong reasons, is all. :)
>
>
>
> Why is it "for the wrong reasons"? Some would say that if it leads
> to predictions which match the observations closely enough to be
> useful, it's
> good enough, at least in the limited range of
> observations of interest where it is applicable ("our scale"), and
> matching or not matching observations of reality is all that makes a
> model "right" or "wrong." No one except a theoretical physicist is
> going to devote such huge amounts of computation time to a real world
> problem where classical mechanics gives a good enough answer to
> predict frex whether a building will stand or fall or whether a space
> probe will successfully land on Mars or crash or miss the planet
> entirely . . .
>
Actually, I think you are both right in some respects.
All of our maths concerning physics (to any degree) are no more than
approximations. It just depends on how exact an answer you require to solve
a problem reliably.
If physics were anything more than approximate, we would have final answers
to all our questions.
xponent
Masters Of The Universe Maru
rob
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