I'll just divide it all by zero.
There.
All gone.
You fool! Divide by zero makes it everywhere and everything!!! Ubiquitous! Eeegad, now you've done it.
Zinj
I'll just divide it all by zero.
There.
All gone.
Calling π "1" instead of "π" changes nothing. Relabeling is not simplicity.
It is lovely to see someone who revels in their ignorance. The mystery is as much a pleasure as the knowledge that enables us to see it. That is the heart of a ScientistSoT - thank you for your explanation. I doubt that I will take 2 weeks off to study algebra either. In fact it would probably take me about 10 years to get a handle on it. My encounter with pure maths in first year university was enough to spin my mind permanently.
Further to your occasional sleeplessness, it always struck me as being really odd - well, bloody stupid really - that we could not accurately describe the circumference of a circle, given its radius. If you draw the circle from a radius, it has finite length and it can be measured with a ruler. Why can't it be calculated???
And.... capacitance, which is also an actual thing, has to be described using the square root of -1. What's this about???
If there is something wrong, it must be pretty basic.
If we were blessed with eleven figures instead of 10, or 7 or 16, would this make a difference? Have we been led down a mathematical dead-end because a chance mutation way back when gave us 10 fingers to count on, which led to a base 10 system?
In quantum physics, do you actually plug numbers into the equations, or is this 19th century thinking as well??
May favourite tautology is Darwinism.This is the joy of tautologies!
Interesting post. Thanks.Biology is not my field, but the idea that Darwinism is a tautology is a misconception I find very interesting. Darwinian evolution is indeed very close to being a tautology. This is why it is ubiquitous and inevitable. But it is not, in fact, a tautology at all. This is why it is actually a valuable idea.
It's easy to see how it is almost a tautology. It says that the fitter organisms tend to survive, or rather, to reproduce in larger numbers. But when you ask, "Which are the fitter ones?", then in one sense the only answer is, "Those that reproduce more." So it may well seem tautological. But it is not, for one simple but subtle reason. The reason the only answer to "Which are fitter?" is, "Those who survive," is that it doesn't matter how they manage to survive — whatever works, works. But here's the catch: however they manage to survive more, whatever gives them their edge, it has to be something. Survival isn't just a matter of having a higher 'fitness' stat, like some crude role playing game system. If that were the case, then Darwinism would indeed be a tautology. But in fact there has to be some specific trait that puts the fitter organism over the top — longer neck, bigger brain, whatever, but something particular.
What this means is that fitness does not actually mean exactly only "tending to survive more". It means "having some particular trait that makes it survive more — though it doesn't matter what exactly the trait is, as long as it works".
I think of evolution as being like football. You could say that football is a tautology, because the best team tends to win. And which team is the best? Why, the one that wins. And that's true. But sport is not really a tautology, because there is always some particular thing that makes a team win, not just an abstract 'winningness'. Any particular thing that produces wins will do. It doesn't have to be the passing game; it could be the running game. It doesn't have to be the quarterback; it could be the defensive line. In that sense, whatever makes the team best is just whatever makes it win. But it's not a tautology because winning isn't just winning as an abstract property, it's winning somehow.
Evolution has been shaped by the work of Gregor Mendel, Watson and Crick, and by Dawkins. By refering to it as Darwinism, I am referring to 'survival of the fittest,' which until I read the post under yours, I believed to be a tautology.As opposed to Evolution?
Thankyou.Biology is not my field, but the idea that Darwinism is a tautology is a misconception I find very interesting. Darwinian evolution is indeed very close to being a tautology. This is why it is ubiquitous and inevitable. But it is not, in fact, a tautology at all. This is why it is actually a valuable idea.
It's easy to see how it is almost a tautology. It says that the fitter organisms tend to survive, or rather, to reproduce in larger numbers. But when you ask, "Which are the fitter ones?", then in one sense the only answer is, "Those that reproduce more." So it may well seem tautological. But it is not, for one simple but subtle reason. The reason the only answer to "Which are fitter?" is, "Those who survive," is that it doesn't matter how they manage to survive — whatever works, works. But here's the catch: however they manage to survive more, whatever gives them their edge, it has to be something. Survival isn't just a matter of having a higher 'fitness' stat, like some crude role playing game system. If that were the case, then Darwinism would indeed be a tautology. But in fact there has to be some specific trait that puts the fitter organism over the top — longer neck, bigger brain, whatever, but something particular.
What this means is that fitness does not actually mean exactly only "tending to survive more". It means "having some particular trait that makes it survive more — though it doesn't matter what exactly the trait is, as long as it works".
I think of evolution as being like football. You could say that football is a tautology, because the best team tends to win. And which team is the best? Why, the one that wins. And that's true. But sport is not really a tautology, because there is always some particular thing that makes a team win, not just an abstract 'winningness'. Any particular thing that produces wins will do. It doesn't have to be the passing game; it could be the running game. It doesn't have to be the quarterback; it could be the defensive line. In that sense, whatever makes the team best is just whatever makes it win. But it's not a tautology because winning isn't just winning as an abstract property, it's winning somehow.