Re: theory and practice: ying and yang

Mikito Harakiri schrieb:
> Alexandr Savinov wrote:
>

>>Sets do not exist in reality because elements cannot exist in vacuum
>>like in set theory. Elements of a set *must* have some coordinates
>>(offsets, positions etc.) in order to be qualified as (separate)
>>elements. Thus when we say we have a set we normally mean we have some
>>representation of them (but we do not care how concretely it is
>>organized, particularly, we do not care its order).

By the way, I also think that real numbers is non-sense. I strongly believe that the world is finite and discrete. Having real numbers is a way to bypass very complex problems that cannot be solved at the current level of mathematics but the problems still exist. For any naïve (classical) thinker real numbers is something really existing but if we look at the problems deeper we will see that they are not needed. The same situation with the concept of infinity. It was introduced in order to substitute the term "I do not know what is there" just like real numbers reflect the fact that we do not know what is between two existing numbers. Both these terms and many others prejudices reflect our view of the world as a large box with objects. But I am not against such an approach, it is one possible way of viewing the world which has direct consequences on how we are describing our data and how we are programming. However, there may be other positions with other consequences. In this thread I just wanted to stress an importance of such concepts as

*representation* - Real and existing is only what we can represent and we know things only as soon as and to the extent they are represented.

*access* - Most interesting and complex things happen during access.

I understand that it is something unusual so sorry for being too abstract and somewhat off topic. For me these general statements have direct consequences on what is a good data model, what is good programming language etc.

-- 
alex
http://conceptoriented.com