The limitations of that approach don't line up with the example. Someone running a fever is running a fever because of an immune response to illness a lot of the time, which is an aggregate response. The body has trillions of cells, in the case of temperature you don't need a reading of each one. Researchers sometimes do, and medical testing of methods, drugs, or devices is a lot more scrutinized before doctors ever get access.
Re:The Limits of Science
by nighthawk648 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @02:00PM
(#21337125)
Yeah this guy gets it! Thank you :)
Temperature is a very inexact model of the dynamics of a system. It does not tell you anything about the energy of any individual atom. It's an aggregate number.
Thermodynamics was an eye opening course for me. Its impressive how much real engineering can be done with lumped parameter models. The author wants to convey the limitations of that approach.