Wolfram probebly thought he could do the same trick with celular automata as Einstein with the theory of relativity: rewrite a lot of stuff without references and everybody will believe it is original and a work of genius?
Hilbert's program on the consistency of mathematics was based on this idea that math is logic. The same goes for Frege's "Begriffschrift" and Russel's/Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica".
Goedel's theorem "on formally undecidable propositions" ended the Hilbert program by proving (inter alia) that math cannot be reduced to logic.
I second that. I would suggest ARM to learn assembly. ARM has an elegant instruction set & an nice collection of registers, it is widely used (palmtops, embedded...) and several operating systems (Linux, EPOC/Symbian, RiscOS...) are available.
No, Einstein was 26 when he copied the special theory of relativity from Jules Henri Poincare, who himself was 50 when he presented the principle of relativity in 1904.
Poincare's "we have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals" quote is from 1898, not 1889. But I do know Poincare was working on this since the 1880s, I'm still looking for a correct reference.
We do not have to wait until Poincare's 1904 speech at the International Congress of Arts & Siences in St. Louis (USA) to
find evidence of his relativity principle. He was working on it since the 1880s. In 1889 he's quoted to have said "we
have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals." (website of the Nobel Committee
)
In "La Science et l'hypothese" (Flammarion, Paris, 1902), we read in chapter VI on "space" (p. 111-112): "1. Il n'y a
pas d'espace absolu [...]; 2. Il n'y a pas de temps absolu [...]; 3. Nous n'avons pas [l'intuition directe] de la
simultaneite de deux evenements qui se produisent sur des the^atres differents [...]; 4. Enfin notre geometrie
euclidienne n'est elle-m^eme qu'une sorte de convention de langage [...]" Here, Poincare states there is no absolute
space and time, he discusses the problem of simultaneity and he concludes that Euclidian geometry itself is nothing more
than some language convention. There is nothing primitive or in the "old way of thinking" about this! The fourth point,
Poincare's conventionalism, has never been popular. It was proven wrong by the general theory, where geometry indeed has
implications (gravity!) on physical reality. Perhaps it was his conventionalism which prevented Poincare from getting to
the general theory too.
Poincare's book caused at publication in 1902 some fuss among the "Akademie Olympya" that was founded in Bern by Albert
Einstein, Maurice (Moritz) Solovine and Konrad Habitch. Together, they read and discussed this book. (ref.: letter from
Albert Einstein to Maurice Solovine, published in French as "Lettres a Maurice Solovine", Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1956;
or also: J. Stachel, Ed., The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 2, Princeton University Press, (1989), p. 255, Ref. 13). So, we know for sure Einstein was more than aware of the work done by Poincare before he wrote his article in
1905.
In 1904 at St. Louis, Poincare listed the major principles of physics; among them was: "the principle of relativiry,
according to which the laws of physical phenomena should be the same, whether for an observer fixed, or for an observer
carried along in a uniform movement of translation; so that we have not and could not have any means of discerning
whether or not we are carried along in such a motion." (ref: Ralph Baierlein, "Newton to Einstein, the trail of
light" Cambridge 1992, p. 187)
In his june 1905 paper "Sur la Dynamique de l'Electron, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des seances de L'Academie des
sciences, 140" (1905), pp. 1504-1508, Poincare wrote for the first time in a complete and correct form the coordinate
transformations, which he called "Lorentz transformations": "Le point essentiel, etabli par Lorentz, c'est que les
equations du champ electromagnetique ne sont pas alterees par une certaine transformation (que j'appellerai du nom de
Lorentz) et qui est de la forme suivante a) x' = kl (x + e t), y' = l y , z' = l z, t' = kl (t + e c) x, y, z sont les
coordonnees et t le temps avant la transformation, x', y', z' et t' apres la transformation. D'ailleurs e est une
constante qui definit la transformation k = (1 - e 2) -1/2 et l est une fonction quelconque de e On voit que dans cette
transformation l'axe des x joue un role particulier, mais on peut evidemment construire une transformation ou ce role
serait joue par une droite quelconque passant par l'origine. L'ensemble de toutes ces transformations, joint a l'ensemble
de toutes les rotations de l'espace, doit former un groupe, mais, pour qu'il en soit ainsi, il faut que l = 1 ; on est
donc conduit a supposer l = 1 et c'est la une consequence que Lorentz avait obtenue par une autre voie." In there is
also Poincare's proof that the requirement that Lorentz transformations (including rotations of space) form a group
implies l = 1. The essential point here stressed by Poi
Thanks for your reply, CheshireCatCO. I admit that the case of GR is fuzzy (What was the input of Einstein's wife, for instance?), but about SR: what did Einstein add that was not yet there in the work of Lorentz (the formula's) and Poincare (the principle & the interpretation of Lorentz's formula's)?
Of course, Einstein didn't get the Nobel prize for the relativity theories, because these theories - contrary to popular belief - aren't his. The formula's for special relativity were discovered by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (and Fitzgerald), the principle of special relativity was introduced by Henri Poincare. We own general relativity to Paul Gerber and David Hilbert. Albert Einstein has received the Nobel Prize for his work on photons.
In Belgium, there are 3 official languages: Dutch, French and German. A lot of people speak English too. Which of them should be renamed into "Belgian"? There's already a name for Belgian Dutch: it's called Flemish.
I strongly disagree that all science should be done in English. Education and justice should be in the local language, at least everyone has access to it. Science, as it is organised in universities, is part of the educational system. Diversity is a good thing.
Paraconsistent logic is logic that can handle inconsistencies. One way to implement this, is by having more than 2 truth values. For instance {0} for false, {1} for true, {} for undecided and {0,1} for the contradictions. Some interesting (IMHO) links about this are: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-para consis tent/ http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Logi/LogiPavl. htm
Slashdot Mirror
Wolfram probebly thought he could do the same trick with celular automata as Einstein with the theory of relativity: rewrite a lot of stuff without references and everybody will believe it is original and a work of genius?
Hilbert's program on the consistency of mathematics was based on this idea that math is logic. The same goes for Frege's "Begriffschrift" and Russel's/Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica".
Goedel's theorem "on formally undecidable propositions" ended the Hilbert program by proving (inter alia) that math cannot be reduced to logic.
I second that. I would suggest ARM to learn assembly. ARM has an elegant instruction set & an nice collection of registers, it is widely used (palmtops, embedded...) and several operating systems (Linux, EPOC/Symbian, RiscOS...) are available.
To highlight that Gates is a free OS, we could add you wouldn't have to pay the Bill to use it...
What about "Gates"? They could have a slogan like "Why stare through the Windows if you can walk through the Gates..."
No, Einstein was 26 when he copied the special theory of relativity from Jules Henri Poincare, who himself was 50 when he presented the principle of relativity in 1904.
The English translation of Poincare's "Science & Hypothesis" can be found here.
Poincare's "we have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals" quote is from 1898, not 1889. But I do know Poincare was working on this since the 1880s, I'm still looking for a correct reference.
On special relativity:
We do not have to wait until Poincare's 1904 speech at the International Congress of Arts & Siences in St. Louis (USA) to find evidence of his relativity principle. He was working on it since the 1880s. In 1889 he's quoted to have said "we have no direct intuition about the equality of two time intervals." (website of the Nobel Committee )
In "La Science et l'hypothese" (Flammarion, Paris, 1902), we read in chapter VI on "space" (p. 111-112): "1. Il n'y a pas d'espace absolu [...]; 2. Il n'y a pas de temps absolu [...]; 3. Nous n'avons pas [l'intuition directe] de la simultaneite de deux evenements qui se produisent sur des the^atres differents [...]; 4. Enfin notre geometrie euclidienne n'est elle-m^eme qu'une sorte de convention de langage [...]" Here, Poincare states there is no absolute space and time, he discusses the problem of simultaneity and he concludes that Euclidian geometry itself is nothing more than some language convention. There is nothing primitive or in the "old way of thinking" about this! The fourth point, Poincare's conventionalism, has never been popular. It was proven wrong by the general theory, where geometry indeed has implications (gravity!) on physical reality. Perhaps it was his conventionalism which prevented Poincare from getting to the general theory too.
Poincare's book caused at publication in 1902 some fuss among the "Akademie Olympya" that was founded in Bern by Albert Einstein, Maurice (Moritz) Solovine and Konrad Habitch. Together, they read and discussed this book. (ref.: letter from Albert Einstein to Maurice Solovine, published in French as "Lettres a Maurice Solovine", Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1956; or also: J. Stachel, Ed., The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 2, Princeton University Press, (1989), p. 255, Ref. 13). So, we know for sure Einstein was more than aware of the work done by Poincare before he wrote his article in 1905.
In 1904 at St. Louis, Poincare listed the major principles of physics; among them was: "the principle of relativiry, according to which the laws of physical phenomena should be the same, whether for an observer fixed, or for an observer carried along in a uniform movement of translation; so that we have not and could not have any means of discerning whether or not we are carried along in such a motion." (ref: Ralph Baierlein, "Newton to Einstein, the trail of light" Cambridge 1992, p. 187)
In his june 1905 paper "Sur la Dynamique de l'Electron, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des seances de L'Academie des sciences, 140" (1905), pp. 1504-1508, Poincare wrote for the first time in a complete and correct form the coordinate transformations, which he called "Lorentz transformations": "Le point essentiel, etabli par Lorentz, c'est que les equations du champ electromagnetique ne sont pas alterees par une certaine transformation (que j'appellerai du nom de Lorentz) et qui est de la forme suivante a) x' = kl (x + e t), y' = l y , z' = l z, t' = kl (t + e c) x, y, z sont les coordonnees et t le temps avant la transformation, x', y', z' et t' apres la transformation. D'ailleurs e est une constante qui definit la transformation k = (1 - e 2) -1/2 et l est une fonction quelconque de e On voit que dans cette transformation l'axe des x joue un role particulier, mais on peut evidemment construire une transformation ou ce role serait joue par une droite quelconque passant par l'origine. L'ensemble de toutes ces transformations, joint a l'ensemble de toutes les rotations de l'espace, doit former un groupe, mais, pour qu'il en soit ainsi, il faut que l = 1 ; on est donc conduit a supposer l = 1 et c'est la une consequence que Lorentz avait obtenue par une autre voie." In there is also Poincare's proof that the requirement that Lorentz transformations (including rotations of space) form a group implies l = 1. The essential point here stressed by Poi
Thanks for your reply, CheshireCatCO.
I admit that the case of GR is fuzzy (What was the input of Einstein's wife, for instance?), but about SR: what did Einstein add that was not yet there in the work of Lorentz (the formula's) and Poincare (the principle & the interpretation of Lorentz's formula's)?
Of course, Einstein didn't get the Nobel prize for the relativity theories, because these theories - contrary to popular belief - aren't his. The formula's for special relativity were discovered by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (and Fitzgerald), the principle of special relativity was introduced by Henri Poincare. We own general relativity to Paul Gerber and David Hilbert. Albert Einstein has received the Nobel Prize for his work on photons.
In Belgium, there are 3 official languages: Dutch, French and German. A lot of people speak English too. Which of them should be renamed into "Belgian"? There's already a name for Belgian Dutch: it's called Flemish.
I strongly disagree that all science should be done in English. Education and justice should be in the local language, at least everyone has access to it. Science, as it is organised in universities, is part of the educational system. Diversity is a good thing.
Paraconsistent logic is logic that can handle inconsistencies. One way to implement this, is by having more than 2 truth values. For instance {0} for false, {1} for true, {} for undecided and {0,1} for the contradictions. Some interesting (IMHO) links about this are:a consis tent/. htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-par
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Logi/LogiPavl