Subject: CCL: Orbitals and philosophy

From: José Ignacio García Laureiro <jig.-at-.unizar.es>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:44:29 +0100

Brian Salter-Duke wrote:

>Orbitals are mathematical objects that are "not real" in
>a quite different way from wave functions being not real.

This immediatly remembered me a delicious tale of Stanislaw Lem
in Cyberiad, beginning as follows:

"Trurl and Klapaucius were students of the great Kerebron Emtadrat, who
had been teaching general dragon theory for 47 years at the Neantic
University.  As everybody knows, there are no dragons.  A simple mind
might be satisfied with this statement, but not scientific
inquiry. [...]  And so, by means of very exact methodology, the highly
talented Kerebron discovered three types of dragons: null dragons,
imaginary dragons, and negative dragons.  As already mentioned, none
of these types exist, but each of these do not exist in their own
very individual and different manner."

Maybe should we assist to some courses in the Neantic University?

Just for relax a little bit the discussion...

Jose I. Garcia

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Josi I. Garcma
Senior Reasearcher
Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragon
CSIC-Univ. de Zaragoza
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