/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15227193
Sure, but all components of scientific models are abstractions.

How is a "fundemental particles" or wave any different? Wilzek, one of the pioneers of QCD say in The Lightness of Being that with quarks, the it appears to be the bit.

As to discreteness and continuity, this is an open question. There are experimental results to support either position and nothing conclusive on either side. Many phenomena down to the smallest scales can now be modeled using discrete systems, it's just often more difficult and uses newer mathematics.

If there is a level at which continuous differences become indistinguishable from one another, not just in practice, but for all possible natural observers, then what makes the universe continuous in that case? Anything that can be said about it can be said in discrete terms. You might as well posit an unobserveable partical, the nullon, that permeates all space time but can never be seen.

If it is impossible for a thing to make a difference to any observer/system anywhere, then its being and non-being are co-identical, so in what way does it exist? You'd have to posit such a things existence as a brute fact not subject to any falsification or confirmation.

That's where the route to discrete universes lies, but it's an open question.