Re:Some Fundamental Theorems in Mathematics (2019) [pdf]
by efavdb on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @02:35PM
(#24064029)
That's mostly true -- however, physicists devote a lot of time to studying phase transitions and characterizing the kinds of discontinuities that are possible etc in that context.
Re:Some Fundamental Theorems in Mathematics (2019) [pdf]
by pmiller2 on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @02:42PM
(#24064092)
Ah, yes, I forgot about phase transitions. Those are actually interesting discontinuities. It seems to me the uninteresting ones are the ones that have roughly the same behavior all around them (e.g. poles of complex functions are not that interesting).
Would you say that's an accurate characterization?
Re:Some Fundamental Theorems in Mathematics (2019) [pdf]
by efavdb on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @04:22PM
(#24065129)
sorry don't have much more insight here. I think the goal is to generally make any approximation that isn't relevant to the physical behavior one is trying to model. if a pole sitting somewhere isn't related to the phenomenon you're trying to explore, ignore it!
I suspect that "all equations have one solution" is a lot easier to satisfy when all functions are continuous, or otherwise nice, as well.