[FRIAM] Hywel

[Nick Thompson]

Barry, 

Isn't it an Abductive process?  

Surely not inductive. 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Barry MacKichan
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2018 10:09 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hywel

I second Jon’s thoughts about Hywel’s contribution to our small group reading a gauge theory book.
I came to appreciate Hywel’s point of view. In mathematics, we prove theorems starting with axioms or hypotheses. In spite the surpassing usefulness of mathematics in physics, it really boils down to trying to match a mathematical model to reality, and this always is an inductive process, not deductive. It’s not surprising that an experimental physicist will be more critical of some models, no matter how beautiful they may be mathematically.

We will miss him and his thundering “Wrong!”

--Barry


On 22 Jun 2018, at 1:56, Jon Zingale wrote:

> Thank you for passing this sad news on to friam.
> I will miss Hywel very much and often enjoyed his contributions to our 
> gauge field theory book group over the last year. His sense of humor 
> often brought a chuckle and smile to my face. Hywel's unique 
> perspective on matters of physics and its tenuous relation to the 
> platonic world of numbers provided much food for my thought. After 
> all, 'Mathematics is ok, but it's better to know what you are doing' 
> :) ============================================================
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