Re: Real World

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Ephemerides may not be appropriate for exact study because they reflect
> more than Kepler's laws which are all we really teach.  Teleologically
> they don't address our understandings of gravity and gravitational
> phenomena (still a very open field of research) at all.

Come on, Dan! Surely you've got past the notion that the only physics
that is worth doing is that which is capable of expression in closed
form? Numerical physics is still physics. It has an elegance of its
own, and the ephemerides of the Galilean satellites (with their
resonantly coupled mean motions) are certainly exemplary as among the
highest achievements of physical reasoning.

Leigh