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From: litow@uwm-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Comment on Superconductivity
Message-ID: <650@uwm-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 10:44:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwm-cs.650
Posted: Tue Jul 21 10:44:34 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jul-87 01:06:26 EDT
References: <2385@ames.arpa> <8707210421.AA16893@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: U of Wi-Milw, College of Engineering
Lines: 25
Summary: relationship of theory to experiment

In article <8707210421.AA16893@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>, obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes:
> Theorists had made speculations about high Tc superconductors long before
> they were discovered.  But since theory people have such limited imagina-
> tions, they need giant hints from nature in order to identify the correct
> zeroth order approximation that will kick start their calculations.
The above point is very well made. I do not agree that theorists have limited
imaginations. I rather thought that 'hints from nature' combined with
theoretical calculations,etc. were,taken together,what one generally calls
Physics. However,the main contribution in the above paragraph is the idea
that significance in a derivation may only be discernable to human intellect
after just such a kick start (colorful but useful language) which gets the
iteration going so to speak.

I would like to extend the observation made by M.Wiener to computer science.
In brief his remark explains why I do not accept Church's Thesis. I think
that if CT were really the case,then the structure of the physical world
would not play a role in computing and vice versa. I am not claiming that
physics enters into computing in a first order way. The theorems of
computational complexity theory e.g. intractability of Pressburger Theory
do not depend upon thermodynamics but the actual scope of our ability to
compute may indeed depend upon thermo. I am not speaking of bigger and faster
but of conceptual changes caused by our understanding of subtle relations
between computing and physics. It is just those 'kick starts' that seem to
me to deny that computability is subsumed by Turing machines. I expect that
such 'kick starts' will shortly be identified in computer science.