GEB is recommended reading if you want a book which you can finish in maybe a lifetime or two.
Here is a passage:
To show why order versus chaos is such a subtle and significant issue, and to tie it in with questions of location and reveleation of meaning, I would like to quote a beautiful and memorable passage from “Are Quanta Real” - A Galilean Dialogue, by the late J.M.Jauch:
SALVIATI: Suppose I give you two sequences of numbers, such as:
7, 8, 5, 3, 9, 8, 1, 6, 3, 3, 9, 7, 4, 4, 8, 3, 0, 9, 6, 1, 5, 6, 6, 0, 8, 4 ….
and:
1, -1/3, +1/5, -1/7, +1/9, -1/11, +1/13, -1/15 …
If I asked you, Simplicio, what the next number of the first sequence is, what would you say?
SIMPLICIO: I could not tell you. I think it is a random sequence and that there is no law in it.
SAVLVIATI: And, for the second sequence?
SIMPLICIO: That would be easy. It must be +1/17
SALVIATI: Right. But what would you say if I told you that the first sequence is also constructed by a law and this law is in fact identical with the one you have discovered for the second sequence?
Now, that is interesting … can you find out this law?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Rajesh B R // Mar 27, 2008 at 8:27 am
The first series is the digits of the expression (PI / 4) which is
(3.14159… / 4) ~ 0.78539816339744830961566084….
Sum to N (N is very much greater, approaching infinity) numbers of the
second series leads to the same value given above.
2 Pramode C.E // Mar 27, 2008 at 10:56 am
Right!
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