The Chronicle: Colloquy: Responses

My compliments to the community for ignoring Putnam's recent "equation coincidence" post. I'll merely remind him that his mystical coincidence depends on the choice of units, since the two sides of the equation have different units. If we happened to have a different unit of energy, or used minutes rather than seconds, or anything else no such coincidence would appear. This is a clue that it is meaningless. It is too bad that philosophical nonsense is not so transparently so.

: -- Adrian Melott, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas (posted 2/12, 9:55 a.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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