science and termites

working very slowly on a re-write of an OOD poem called Ware. Realized it is both about software / ahrdware and making and about turtullian and rigor

also still exceptionally slowly on inanna poem which is merged with the identity theft poem/chapbook

back to ware, looking at wikipedia, found

Wigner begins his paper with the belief, common to all those familiar with mathematics, that mathematical concepts have applicability far beyond the context in which they were originally developed. Based on his experience, he says "it is important to point out that the mathematical formulation of the physicist’s often crude experience leads in an uncanny number of cases to an amazingly accurate description of a large class of phenomena." He then invokes the fundamental law of gravitation as an example. Originally used to model freely falling bodies on the surface of the earth, this law was extended on the basis of what Wigner terms "very scanty observations" to describe the motion of the planets, where it "has proved accurate beyond all reasonable expectations."


this is exceptionally stupid. one begins with easily-observable phenomena, like gravity. using those observations, one abstracts a mathematical / symbolic description. one eventually, because of this long attention, finds other phenomena, many not so close at hand, which are surprisingly familiar -- gee, we've got this formula which we now know how to wear/ware. look at those stars in the sky. hey -- lookey, we've made a description that has a more universal application than we realized. some specific things can be universal. now, how about that wheel....

this is no more a showing of a symbolic, abstract, or mathematical universe than it is a showing of how the "mind" works (though it does seem to demonstrate rather amply a way in which belief works)

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