Publication Date
2-2019
Abstract
Nobel-prize winning physicist Lev Landau liked to emphasize that logarithms are not infinity -- meaning that from the physical viewpoint, logarithms of infinite values are not really infinite. Of course, from a literally mathematical viewpoint, this statement does not make sense: one can easily prove that logarithm of infinity is infinite. However, when a Nobel-prizing physicist makes a statement, you do not want to dismiss it, you want to interpret it. In this paper, we propose a possible physical explanation of this statement. Namely, in physics, nothing is really infinite: according to modern physics, even the Universe is finite in size. From this viewpoint, infinity simply means a very large value. And here lies our explanation: while, e.g., the square of a very large value is still very large, the logarithm of a very large value can be very reasonable -- and for very large values from physics, logarithms are indeed very reasonable.
Original file
Comments
Technical Report: UTEP-CS-19-11a
To appear in Proceedings of the World Congress of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and the Annual Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society IFSA/NAFIPS'2019,, Lafayette, Louisiana, June 18-22, 2019.