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From: gordon@stats.ucl.ac.UK ("Gordon Joly, Statistics, UCL")
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: The Uncertainty Principle.
Message-ID: <19880915011015.4.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 15 Sep 88 01:10:00 GMT
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To: AILIST@ai.ai.mit.edu, bph@buengc.bu.edu
cc: gordon@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: The Uncertainty Principle.
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 88 09:38 EDT
From: "Gordon Joly, Statistics, UCL" <gordon%stats.ucl.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>

In Vol 8 # 78 Blair Houghton cries out:-
> I do wish people would keep *recursion* and *perturbation* straight
> and different from the Uncertainty Principle.

Perhaps... But what is the *perturbation* in question? "Observation"?

Blair also observes
> Electrons "know" where they are and where they are going.

And I know where I'm coming from too, Man!

On page 55 (of the American edition) of "A Brief History of Time",
Professor Stephen Hawking says

``The uncertainty principle had profound implications for way in
which we view the world... The uncertainty principle signaled an
end to Laplace's dream of a theory of science, a model of the 
universe that could be completely deterministic: one certainly
cannot predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure
the present state of the universe precisely!''

And what of "chaos"?

Gordon Joly.