[snip]
>
>Also, what does the axiomatic method have to do with quantum mechanics?
Sure,
>von Neumann axiomatized it after the fact, but the work of Bohr,
Schroedinger,
>etc was all non-axiomatic. Newton in the early calculus was hardly using
>axiomatic approaches. Nor was most classical physics axiomatic, but rather
>bunches of problem solutions.
>
>Your claim is pure chauvanism.
>
>Val Dusek
>
>
I've known quite a few physicists, and I once investigated numerous
attempts at axiomatizing classical (Newtonian) mechanics beyond Newton's
"laws of motion", and some definitions of sorts, i.e. with the kind of
detail and precision numerous pure mathematicians are or have been fond of,
but I don't recall ever being able to find a physicist who had paid any
attention at all to such axiomatizations. I did find a number of
physicists, though, who thought they were a considerable waste of time, or
a kind of degenerate scholasticism or pedantry, or possible palliatives for
some sort of psychic disorder having to do maybe with insecurity or an
inability to understand and use mechanics the way physicists customarily do.
Gordon Fisher gfisher@shentel.net