3 ms·

But an abstraction is always an extension of reality.

• mike00632 6y ago
  The concept of "smooth" is fairly rooted in reality, right? This is one of the concepts that a continuous set of numbers like the Real Numbers can accommodate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoothness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoothness If it turns out that reality is actually jagged at the quantum scale that doesn't mean that our conception of "smooth" is void.
  • Koshkin 6y ago
    Exactly so. When reality becomes too complex, we abstract some things away to get a simpler model. (This we "forget" about the finite and get infinity; ignore the jaggedness and get smoothness).
• GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  Like phlogiston.
  • Koshkin 6y ago
    That one was a physical hypothesis, not a mathematical abstraction.