Toss a ball in the air and it follows a parabola
Toss a ball in the air and it follows a parabola
But what the equation leaves out it the tossing and catching.
Approximation is the basis of conventional science, providing very useful equations for natural systems that display a constant behavior. It simply discards and excludes from study the shifting structures of nature though, simply because that data is not helpful for defining equations with fixed structures. It defines science as a study of nature's fixed structures, ignoring its irregular, unstable and changing ones. Lots of relatively useless things are brushed away, like the constant departure and return of self-correcting natural systems largely responsible for keeping nature's rules steady, for example. Where there's a rule to follow, there's often little value to noting the divergences from it, and are harmlessly discarded.
Approximation also leaves out all of nature's transitional and connecting systems, though, like those involved in beginning and ending things by uniquely individual developmental processes. These are surprisingly prominent in the data of nature once you look. The data tails that get chopped off because they can't be usefully modeled by equations are a goldmine of information about how nature creates and disposes of order, and about the kinds of change in our immediate personal environments that are coming our way. The slides introduce some of the physics of how, where and why you can find them, and some examples. It's because things begin and end, and in order to do that they need to follow developmental processes of a particular kind consistent with the laws of conservation.
back to the Physics of Happening
ed. 10/21/06