Talk:435: Purity
See Comte's hierarchy of the sciences from his law of three stages: Mathematics; Astronomy; Physics; Chemistry; Biology; Psychology; Sociology. --24.85.241.128 07:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
In addition to Comte, Randall's tweaking P.W. Anderson's 1972 article "More Is Different." Anderson gives a similar list and then says "But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is "just applied Y*" 108.162.219.202 22:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
Shame it leaves out Engineering running parellel to all of them - maybe Engineering is just too busy getting shit done? -- 2.121.172.39 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- What can we learn from this? - Actually as an Engineer I have a different view point to 2.121.172.39. We are implementers of original ideas and a few of us are lucky to be original idea generators. As a successful full time Engineer I still find time to be a philosopher and aspiring teacher (who simply didn't want to be poor, which is hard to do when specializing in the other two professions). How ever I do keep asking myself often who wrote the laws that mathematicians and theoretical scientists keep re-discovering for us... - E-inspired (talk) 17:04, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
"More is Different", written by Nobel laureate P.W. Anderson, is an insightful critique of constructivism. Quote:
But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is "just applied Y." At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one.
Allenz (talk) 02:20, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
This one resonated around the Internet quite a bit more than average, and deservedly so. I'd think it'd be almost as far-reaching as the grownups one. I did wonder, after I saw this, how one would take into account things like linguistics, logic, and philosophy. Then I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and returned to normal. --Quicksilver (talk) 03:58, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Could one argue that Mathematics is applied Philosophy? NikoNarf (talk) 15:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
- Physics and mathematics
Physics, chemistry, biology, earth science,... are science on how things work. Mathematics and philosophy are science on how things can be predicted to work. 108.162.222.32 10:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
A friend of mine compared the math-physics relationship to linguist-regular person. A linguist researches all the little details in a language that a normal person merely uses in his everyday life without giving the language itself much thought.141.101.99.215 08:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Before we get into an edit war here, I'd just like to say that "physics is the real joy in the world" would make absolutely no sense to me if I was not a native English speaker or I simply wasn't getting the comic's point in the first place. Not only does it have shades of grammatical incorrectness, it does absolutely nothing to actually explain how mathematics and physics can be compared to sex and masturbation. Thus I've changed the title text around to a compromise between my edit and what it was before. I hope this is more acceptable. Jetman123 (talk) 13:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
- I'm still not happy with the title text explain:
- The explain implies that masturbation "is all just in your head" and not "involves interactions with real objects". Isn't a vagina/penis also a real object?
- My last edit on this wasn't perfect as well, so it still needs an enhancement. The joke is more like this: Math/maturbation gives only satisfaction to the subject acting on this — Physics/sex are related to the real world (applied science/babies). And this is surely exaggerated by Randall because physics couldn't exist without mathematics — those faculties just joking about each other. --Dgbrt (talk) 20:13, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Some experts say the universe is a computer. Some other experts say all computers can be hacked. If both groups are right, then it follows that physics is one stack-overflow exploit away from being reduced to applied computer science. Promethean (talk) 23:48, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
