On Sat, Jun 7, 2025 at 1:52 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote:
*>> The conservation of energy is not a statement about pure mathematics or >> logic, it is a statement about the physical world, so it's not surprising >> that historically its derivation has come from observation and >> experimentation. Nobody has ever been able to derive the conservation of >> energy from logic alone, and I very much doubt anybody ever will. In fact >> nobody has ever been able to derive ANY physical law from mathematics >> alone, unless you want to say that it's a physical law that 2 rocks plus >> another 2 rocks is equal to 4 rocks. * > > > > *> You're mistaken. Try this, by > Feynman, > https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-01sc-classical-mechanics-fall-2016/mit8_01scs22_chapter14.pdf > <https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/8-01sc-classical-mechanics-fall-2016/mit8_01scs22_chapter14.pdf>If > you look, you'll see that Feynman shows that in classical mechanics, energy > is conserved on a closed loop. He proves many other things about energy > conservation in that link.* *NO! Feynman proved IF you assume that a system obeys the Principle Of Least Action AND you assume that the system has Time-translation invariance THEN, because of Noether's theorem, the system must obey the law of Conservation Of Energy. But both the Principle Of Least Action and Time-Translation Invariance are observations, NOT logical necessities. I can imagine a universe with different physics in which neither the Principle Of Least Action nor Time Translation Invariance are true, but I can't imagine a universe that contained a largest prime number. * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 753 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1Pc%3Dk6n%3D8Hkth86rv17U%2Bwy%3Dxh3Te8feJg-6%3Di5F9snQ%40mail.gmail.com.
