[FRIAM] invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

[Jon Zingale]

I take it from the Wikipedia entry that *physics envy* is a second-order
*math envy*. I often got the impression from Hywel that he was a radical
empiricist. More extreme than Gisin, Hywel did not only reject the reals but
also the integers. Hywel's reasoning (which makes a weird kind of sense to
me) was the reasoning of approximations and measurement, always emphasizing
phenomena first and theory second. Not only would I say he was warding off
(our) *math envy*, but also that he was reminding us that all convenient
assumptions (such as conservation laws) must ultimately stand before what
can be known through measurement. His physics would not be the target of the
envy described by the Wikipedia article in that his physics was the master
of its mathematics, not the reverse. A truly remarkable human being!



--
Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/