About Imaginary Numbers
#
Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge
of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between
being and non-being.
/ Gottfried Leibniz /
#
One might think this means that imaginary numbers
are just a mathematical game having nothing to do
with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist
philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real.
All one can do is find which mathematical models
describe the universe we live in. It turns out that
a mathematical model involving imaginary time
predicts not only effects we have already observed
but also effects we have not been able to measure yet
nevertheless believe in for other reasons.
So what is real and what is imaginary?
Is the distinction just in our minds?
/ Stephen Hawking /
#
Pi is not merely the ubiquitous factor in high school
geometry problems; it is stitched across the whole
tapestry of mathematics, not just geometry's little
corner of it. Pi occupies a key place in trigonometry too.
It is intimately related to e, and to imaginary numbers.
Pi even shows up in the mathematics of probability
/ Robert Kanigel /
#
The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics
becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary
numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier
the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order
and a spiritual aspect to science.
/ Dan Brown /
===