¶ Bubbles in the Wake of a Ship Sequence (2)
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Bubbles in the Wake of a Ship Sequence:
"elegantly conceived, beautifully manufactured, and readily broken.
"Inasmuch as the kind of mathematics I had learned of in school required the use of the XYZ coordinate system and the necessity of employing pi in calculating the spheres, I wondered ‘to how many decimal places does nature carry out pi before she decides that the computation can’t be concluded?’ Next I wondered, ‘to how many arbitrary decimal places does nature carry out the transcendental irrational before she decides to say it’s a bad job and call it off?’ If nature uses pi she has to do what we call fudging of her design which means improvising, compromising. I thought sympathetically of nature’s having to make all those myriad frustrated decisions each time she makes a bubble. I didn’t see how she managed to formulate the wake of every ship while managing the rest of the Universe if she had to make all those decisions. So I said to myself, ‘I don’t think nature uses pi. I think she has some other mathematical way of coordinating her undertakings.’
“It seemed preposterous to go on trying to force nature to”
