Deriving meaningful scientific laws from abstract, 'gedanken' type, axioms: five examples

Autor:	Jean-Claude Falmagne
Rok vydání:	2015
Předmět:	Algebra Thought experiment Scientific law Faithful representation If and only if Applied Mathematics General Mathematics Calculus Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics Verifiable secret sharing Axiom Mathematics
Zdroj:	Aequationes mathematicae. 89:393-435
ISSN:	1420-8903 0001-9054
DOI:	10.1007/s00010-015-0339-1
Popis:	A scientific law can be a faithful representation of the physical world only if its form is invariant with respect to changes in the unit or units. This is referred to as the ‘meaningfulness condition.’ This condition is powerful. If we require it, the mathematical form of a scientific or geometric law may be derivable from some abstract constraint, possibly verifiable by a thought experiment or a trivial argument. We discuss five examples of such abstract constraints in this paper: In each case, just one or a couple of meaningful mathematical representations are possible. In this paper, we derive the possible meaningful representations in five examples. These results are obtained under some general conditions, in addition to those listed in 1–5. Other meaningful representations may be possible under different additional conditions.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::5fd7603a94259578ea870b48c0eb5b6f https://doi.org/10.1007/s00010-015-0339-1 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Plný text ve formátu PDF