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Slightly OT, but I get annoyed when an idea is presented as "THE theory of ..." or "THE mathematics of ...", as opposed to "A theory/mathematics of ..." As tho
by DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
Slightly OT, but I get annoyed when an idea is presented as "THE theory of ..." or "THE mathematics of ...", as opposed to "A theory/mathematics of ..."
As though that particularly bit of theoretical work is uniquely appropriate for the phenomenon it's meant to describe.
Am I alone in this?
- edem 9y agoNo, not at all. I also don't like what the implies instead of a.
- ssivark 9y agoBut it is supposed to be so! At least in physics or mathematics (and the "harder" sciences), if there are multiple descriptions, they better be completely equivalent in the answers they give, otherwise all but one of them are wrong. It is possible that different fundamentally equivalent frameworks might be more suited to different problems (eg: Newtonian mechanics -vs- Lagrangian mechanics)
- jonnybgood 9y ago"The" in this context is used as a general classifier for all the science and mathematics related to quantum information. It wouldn't make sense to use "A theory of..." unless you're speaking of a particular case that doesn't fall under the general classification.
- rytill 9y agoPerhaps interesting: Shannon's original information theory article is titled 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', and when later released in book form was renamed 'The Mathematical Theory of Communication', due to the generality of information theory.