On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:52:02 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> writes: >> Depends on how you define "discontinuous". > > The mathematical way, of course. For any epsilon > 0, etc.
I thought we were talking about discontinuities in *nature*, not in mathematics. There's no "of course" about it. >> Catastrophe theory is full of discontinuous changes in state. Animal >> (by which I include human) behaviour often displays discontinuous >> changes. So does chemistry: one minute the grenade is sitting there, >> stable as can be, the next it's an expanding cloud of gas and metal >> fragments. > > If that transition from grenade to gas cloud takes a minute (or even a > femtosecond), it's not a mathematical discontinuity. In mathematics, you can cut up a pea and reassemble it into a solid sphere the size of the Earth. Try doing that with a real pea. Mathematics is an abstraction. It doesn't necessarily correspond to reality. Assuming that reality "really is" the mathematical abstraction underneath is just an assumption, and not one supported by any evidence. > The other examples work out about the same way. <handwave> Quantum phenomenon are actual mathematical discontinuities, or at least they can be, e.g. electron levels in an atom. Even when they are continuous, they're continuous because they consist of an infinity of discontinuous levels infinitesimally far apart. </handwave> -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
