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.......and now I've finally reached the conclusion of the first leg of this journey. It is to show the relevance and importance of God irrespective of ancient religious philosophies in terms of the Human Condition:
"God as an Imaginary Number: an Engineered Reality or to be dismissed for lack of evidence?"
Intro: Define i; (As you read; Think 'i' as synonymous with "god"). i = square root of -1 see pik above. It essential you understand the meaning of 'i' as mathematically an imaginary number. If the picture and short dialogue above is not helpful you might want to google 'imaginary number' to getr a more in depth understanding otherwise the significance of my following little dissertation will be completely lost. Thanx. Enjoy!
The first record of anyone working with i dates back about 2000 years to Heron of Alexandria in 50AD but he deemed trying to solve equations involving i as impossible & gave up. Others around that time tried to define i as well but they too soon gave up and then it was a really, really long time before anyone ever tried to manipulate i again.
In 1545, Girolama Cardano tried solving equations involving i but he greatly disliked i and he wrote that working with i was “as subtle as it was useless” and he also referred to working with problems involving i as a “kind of mental torture” – most people agreed. Albert Girard, for example called i “an impossible solution”. Rene Descarte, in 1637 came up with a standard math form for i but he didn’t like i either referring to it sarcastically as ‘imaginary’ and assumed that if one used i you would be unable to solve your problem. Isaac Newton agreed with Descarte; hating the idea of i & dismissed i as at best a form of whimsy.
So while some of the greatest mathematical & scientific minds in history have hated the idea of i that didn’t mean, however, that they could stop others from believing that i might exist. The Italian mathematician Rafael Bombelli for example, was a firm believer in i; but because he didn’t quite know what to do with i he mostly was not taken seriously about i. Then one day Bombelli had what people today would call a really wild idea – he found that you could use i to get real number (real world) answers. This is known as mathematical conjugation.
Over the decades then, more & more people began to believe that i existed and they tried to make i understood and accepted. One way they found to do this was to plot i on a graph. John Wallis, in 1685 was the first to try this but he was ignored. A century later Casper Wessel & Leonard Euler separately wrote papers about how to plot i but they too were mostly ignored. In 1806, Jean Robert Argand showed how to use i in a graph and today we call this an Argand Diagram and in 1831, Carl Gauss used an Argand Diagram to make i popular with many mathematicians. It took all of these people working together over time to get the scientific community to accept and see some value for i.
i then was created because people simply needed it & today i is very useful to the world. Engineers use i to study beam stresses and wave resonance. i is used in the fields of hydraulics and hydrology to study fluid dynamics thru pipes and around objects as in oceanic current flow around the continents. Quantum mechanics & electromagnetism depend on calculations using i and when engineers design aircraft wings i is vital to their calculations. Electrical engineers use i in the development of all of today’s electrical technology – cell phones, laptops, computers, medical diagnostic equip. as well as communication, defense, weather & gps satellites; just to mention some. Geodetic & geologic studies – volcanism & earthquake studies as well as the search for minerals vital to our modern cultures involve analysis of data using equations that need i. Today’s modern technology with which our civilization depends would not exist if it were not for designs mathematically created utilizing calculations with i.
i then has many uses - more than we’ll ever realize and i has a fascinating history, full of some mathematicians & scientists not believing in i and others desperately trying to prove the existence of i. Many of these people brought together as much evidence as possible that i exists and we have them to thank today that we can use i whenever we please, without ever being questioned about it. (let simile sink in & elaborate; god v man; i/ as abstract invented tool not been applied properly by human structures; many do not ‘get’ math or science, physics, engineering, etc. hence can’t appreciate i or god as a possible useful tool; therefore should either be dismissed???) You must answer this for yourself.
Thanx...............INTJohn
to b cont.
