The other day I had a funny thought, which is perhaps true, but perhaps not. But since it is just a thought, I'll expound it. It has to do with models. If you are quite the purist mathematician, there is, perhaps not any place for models: mostly comes from some basic assumptions, and then you build on these assumptions using other assumptions to make a theory, and even prove a couple of lemmas. Physicists would ideally like to proceed that way, but lack both the rigor and the patience, so in many cases they take the short-cut way and build models. These models are supposed be peek into the many complicated things that are quite unworkable with "first-principles" theory, something the physicists like to do call assumptions that do not stem from first principles. Anyway, models are more often used by biologists and chemists, because they want to model things like complicated molecules and chemical substances, organs, nerves, genes or perhaps even the brain. Even the economists and financial analyzers at banks keep making models of the economy in order to maximize profits.
If you have read on till now, you'll realize that model is essentially meant to be a simplified version of some grand thing we are always trying to emulate. In that respect, it suddenly occurred to me that films, books, poems and songs, and art of course, falls in the same category. They are just models. Models that seek, in some way or the other to mimic the eternal complicated fabric, or the string-net condensed phase of what you call Life. Life, as we know it, is tremendously complicated: human beings are emotional, they kill, they love, they become rulers, the forbid others to eat beef, or to have sex with the same genders, they find tribes, which they call Religion, the make trains, they try to understand the Nature, they are complicated. Animals are simpler, but still they have own traits, own habits. So, when something is captured on film, like the break-up story of a couple, or the hunting habits of lions, whether be it a romantic drama or a documentary, these are all models trying to emulate something complicated -- more often with creativity and inspiration rather than not.
A simple thought, but this unifies a lot of different things. I felt happy.
If you have read on till now, you'll realize that model is essentially meant to be a simplified version of some grand thing we are always trying to emulate. In that respect, it suddenly occurred to me that films, books, poems and songs, and art of course, falls in the same category. They are just models. Models that seek, in some way or the other to mimic the eternal complicated fabric, or the string-net condensed phase of what you call Life. Life, as we know it, is tremendously complicated: human beings are emotional, they kill, they love, they become rulers, the forbid others to eat beef, or to have sex with the same genders, they find tribes, which they call Religion, the make trains, they try to understand the Nature, they are complicated. Animals are simpler, but still they have own traits, own habits. So, when something is captured on film, like the break-up story of a couple, or the hunting habits of lions, whether be it a romantic drama or a documentary, these are all models trying to emulate something complicated -- more often with creativity and inspiration rather than not.
A simple thought, but this unifies a lot of different things. I felt happy.
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