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From: lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Biblical value of pi
Message-ID: <1024@ihuxr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Apr-84 13:43:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.1024
Posted: Wed Apr  4 13:43:21 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Apr-84 02:31:16 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 13

Last year I saw a videotape of a colloquium entitled, "Universality and
Singularity - Phase Transitions and Our Understanding of the Physical World".
I posted something about it at the time, but I'm mentioning it now in
connection with the "biblical value of pi".  The speaker actually had a
viewgraph of the verse from I Kings which implies pi = 3. He compared this
with a more modern numerical crudity, consisting in the assumption that the
function expressing the approach to a phase transition was quadratic.

His point was that the assumption was implicit and uncritical, and further
that it would be a mistake to deem ourselves too far superior in our
understanding of the world than the ancients.

	Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew