On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:41:18PM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote:
I've been re-trained over the last few years by a
German
mechanical-engineer friend to think in a very reductionist,
non-magickal, deterministic, cold-hard-reality kind of way.
Mechanical engineers, in particular those doing precision
mechanics, can be very Zen. I remember one of them, Alex.
Twenty years or so ago I was with a company making plotters,
me doing the DSP for motor control and Alex doing the mechanics.
A tolerance of 0.01 mm he'd call 'coarse'. He would take up a
screwdriver, adjust a screw by 5 degrees, then wipe it with a
white silk cloth and put it back into its place in his toolbox
which was off-limits to everyone except himself. Still makes me
feel guilty when looking at the pile of pliers and screwdrivers
in my box.
It's all ones and zeroes. Given the same inputs,
the same
output should be obtained. Acoustics is physics. And if I
can't measure it, it doesn't exist.
Science is not only physics. Today psychology is science as
well, a fact largely ignored not only by the unwashed masses
but even by many intellectuals who still consider Freud to be
the last word on these matters.
Ciao,
--
FA
O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
E guerra e morte !