Scientists and specifically physicists have been struggling over many centuries to decipher the secrets of nature. Scientific theories are never complete. New theories always come to complete or refute previous ones. After reading a physics book recently, the analogy between God and programming came to my mind.
Imagine that God is a programmer. That He wrote the universe(s) like any programmer would write a software. However, God did not disclose the source code of his program. We don't even know what programming language did God use to accomplish his task. Galillee once said that God used mathematics to write the universe, but this has yet to be proved.
Early physicists and philosophers struggled to find out this source code. They just wanted to access the absolute truth, the writings of God. Many physicists like Isaac Newton were very pious and their scientific work had sometimes religious motivations. As centuries went by, some physicists learned to be more humble and others became atheists. Most contemporary physicists are just trying to build models that mimic the behavior of the universe.
Physicists look like some programmers who are trying to write a software whose behavior is as close as possible to the SOFTWARE, that is to nature. The programming language used in this project is mathematics.
Newton suggested his classical mechanics to describe the motion of planets, stars and any other bodies. The program written by Newton had a very similar behavior as the SOFTWARE, as was verified by experimentalists. Maxwell added a module to this program to take into account electromagnetic phenomena.
By the end of the 19th century, some physicsts tried to test the Newton-Maxwell program with a new set of test cases. This set included bodies that moved at light speed. The tests did not go through which meant that the Newton-Maxwell program was boggy. Einstein fixed this bug by suggesting relativity, a generalization of Newton's mechanics. The resulting program is known as classical physics.
At about the same time, other experimentalists looked at other features of the SOFTWARE, that is microscopic phenomena. Classical physics failed to mimic these phenomena and a brand new program was written. This program is known as Quantum physics. Some components were though used to build the new software which is also known as modern physics.
As years went by, the new program failed to mimic some features of SOFTWARE. Physicists kept adding new features to get rid of the discrepencies between their product and God's software. They defined particles spins, particles colors, flavors, strageness...Just abstract concepts that allow taking into account the results of newer experiments.
These new concepts are very similar to patches that some software companies publish after releasing their products. Who is not familiar with Microsoft patches? This led some people to think that quantum physics is not a homegeneous theory by itself but a collection of various concepts.
As all computer engineers know, when you lack knowledge about the problem at hand it is very likely that you will produce some sloppy and bogus code. Code quality also drops down when the software gets more and more complex. This seems to be exactly the case of quantum physics. Some reverse engineering might be needed to clean up the theory.
Amen.
Imagine that God is a programmer. That He wrote the universe(s) like any programmer would write a software. However, God did not disclose the source code of his program. We don't even know what programming language did God use to accomplish his task. Galillee once said that God used mathematics to write the universe, but this has yet to be proved.
Early physicists and philosophers struggled to find out this source code. They just wanted to access the absolute truth, the writings of God. Many physicists like Isaac Newton were very pious and their scientific work had sometimes religious motivations. As centuries went by, some physicists learned to be more humble and others became atheists. Most contemporary physicists are just trying to build models that mimic the behavior of the universe.
Physicists look like some programmers who are trying to write a software whose behavior is as close as possible to the SOFTWARE, that is to nature. The programming language used in this project is mathematics.
Newton suggested his classical mechanics to describe the motion of planets, stars and any other bodies. The program written by Newton had a very similar behavior as the SOFTWARE, as was verified by experimentalists. Maxwell added a module to this program to take into account electromagnetic phenomena.
By the end of the 19th century, some physicsts tried to test the Newton-Maxwell program with a new set of test cases. This set included bodies that moved at light speed. The tests did not go through which meant that the Newton-Maxwell program was boggy. Einstein fixed this bug by suggesting relativity, a generalization of Newton's mechanics. The resulting program is known as classical physics.
At about the same time, other experimentalists looked at other features of the SOFTWARE, that is microscopic phenomena. Classical physics failed to mimic these phenomena and a brand new program was written. This program is known as Quantum physics. Some components were though used to build the new software which is also known as modern physics.
As years went by, the new program failed to mimic some features of SOFTWARE. Physicists kept adding new features to get rid of the discrepencies between their product and God's software. They defined particles spins, particles colors, flavors, strageness...Just abstract concepts that allow taking into account the results of newer experiments.
These new concepts are very similar to patches that some software companies publish after releasing their products. Who is not familiar with Microsoft patches? This led some people to think that quantum physics is not a homegeneous theory by itself but a collection of various concepts.
As all computer engineers know, when you lack knowledge about the problem at hand it is very likely that you will produce some sloppy and bogus code. Code quality also drops down when the software gets more and more complex. This seems to be exactly the case of quantum physics. Some reverse engineering might be needed to clean up the theory.
Amen.
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