Elephant, Roger, Peter, Platt, Glenn and all,
> ELEPHANT:
> "Precisely"? Strikes me that if almost anything can be an analogue computer
> for anything else then "precise" is the very last word I'd use to describe
> the oxymoronic notion "analogue computer". I'm quite sure that was the
> "precisely" the point Peter was making: he was pulling your leg, tickling
> your instep, pulling a face. Did you laugh? Did you get it? Did you feel
> the weight of many pennys droping apple-fashion without the aid of a single
> calculation? Did you pi squared.
>
Dear elephant,
I find your tone rather reminiscent of Struan - a pity really. It diminishes
your otherwise valuable input.
It's strange that you dismiss the idea of the "analogue computer" as
"oxymoronic". The idea has been around for years, and machines by that name
have been built.
In your rather hasty and crass discussion of the subject, you missed my direct
question (in an earlier post), so I repeat it here and await your answer:
Do you think digital computers perform mathematical calculations?
Thank-you in advance for your reply.
I note in the dispute that arose between Marco and Elephant, a central issue
was their different uses of the word "event". I want to point out that words
often change their meaning according to context. This even happens when using
a "scientific" word like gravity (incidentally, the analogue computer first
came up in the gravity discussion).
It's interesting to see in our discussion that gravity has been called both a
force and an acceleration.
In physics, the two concepts are quite different, and force and gravity have
different dimensional units (newtons for force, metres per second squared for
acceleration). As far as Sir Isaac Newton is concerned, he actually changed
the definition of gravity from force to acceleration, or rather, he clarified
the distinction. After Sir Isaac, the word gravity took on a new meaning.
The story doesn't stop there. Acceleration requires the action of a FORCE on
a MASS, and Newton implicitly accepted the idea of force at a distance. This
was not acceptable to Einstein; while one can feel the accelerating force of
the seat back when the car accelerates, the parachutist in free fall cannot
feel the acceleration towards earth. The parachutist is in free fall, and
feels himself to be weightless. Thus, in General Relativity, the concept of
free fall becomes one of following the "natural curvature of space", and a
gravitation is conceived as the curvature itself (i.e. large masses tend to
bend space so that objects in free fall are directed towards them). I know
this all sounds confusing, but it is very common in science that new ideas
tend to change the meaning of words that have till then been used in different
ways.
Jonathan
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