Re: what is understanding?

[twayburn@juno.com (Thomas L Wayburn)]

On Wed, 9 Jul 1997 10:38:50 -0700 Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca> writes:
> I think understanding of physics is never attained. One can always
> see deeper into a subject even after one feels one understands it
> satisfactorily. Understanding admits of various degrees. Even the
> simplest of concepts can be deeper than an expert on the concept
> realizes. I have seen the understanding of the entire physics
> community deepen beyond the previous understanding of even the
> acknowledged world expert too many times to accept the
> pronouncements of authority as final.
>
> Leigh
Absolutely, that's why the arrows point approximately at the right thing.
 They can always point in a truer direction.  Also, the morphisms are
surjections (onto but not all of the object mapped) and/or injections
(into but not onto all of the object onto which we wish to map).  We
would dearly love to get bijections (one-to-one and onto and, therefore,
right and left invertible).   When we get an isomorphism the
understanding of the student is the same as the understanding of the
teacher AND we have not yet judged the correspondence with reality,
which makes perfectibility an open question.
We get deeper and deeper, but we never do apprehend the "thing in itself"
- except under the strange condition that Mind might be able to apprehend
its true nature (noumenon) by deep introspection (meditation?).  As we
are Mind, this might be possible.  Outside of Mind, unlikely.    But,
let me set up the math, which is interesting in and of itself - even if
it be nonsense.   (Math is permitted to be nonsense, after all.)

Regards / Tom