 |
 |
Mathematics Predicting the Future
Name: Sarah L.
Status: student
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Can the future be predicted through a complex series of
mathmatical data, similar to the psychohistory used in Isaac Asimov's
Foundation series?
Replies:
Sarah,
I'm inclined to think the answer is, no. Why? It is because the future offers
infinite possibilities that are not on record -- until the possibility
becomes the present, at which time it immediately becomes the past.
For reasons too complicated to outline here, there might be a better
possibility to travel backward in time to revisit events that have already
occurred and therefore are unalterable. It would be a little like watching a
movie of events past. However, as you probably already, realize, if you were
actually there in the past, your very presence would alter the past. That is
already forbidden by the historical record of the time you visited.
The future is yet unformed. So how would one visit or view that which has not
already happened. For example, you could be sitting at your computer reading
this message OR my computer could have crashed before I even sent it to you
and it became lost forever. How could one visit the wedding of a friend if
the friend never marries? The contingencies are endless. The future is
inaccessible -- until we get there.
Keep up the mental exercise and do continue to ask questions.
Regards,
ProfHoff
Quantum theory suggests that since we can never know all the information of
all the particles of matter involved ina system we can not predict with
certainty the future. That does not mean we cannot predict within a certain
degree of certainty what might happen. If I remember correctly Asimov's
Foundation Phsychohistorians predicted what would venetually happen based on
probablities...not absolute certainties...which is possible.
PF
Click here to return to the Mathematics Archives
| |
Update: June 2012
|
|
