Talk:Selector calculus

message: Infinities, continua, vacuums, and reifying the zero are nonsense. It looks to me as though Heim found an answer to Zeno of Elea. Mathemeticians may not like this development, that does not give them grounds to reject his work out of hand. In fact, the burden of proof is and always has been on those adopting the Platonic approach.
216.207.89.34 19:58, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this is crap.  I am nominating it for deletion. ---CH 22:14, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Selector calculus. 

message: I am not a mathematician or physicist. I am an educated reader who is old enough to clearly remember John F. Kennedy as President.
Deleting this is petulant censorship. Selector calculus may be nonsense. So what? Wikipedia has lots of articles on other unproven, wrong-headed, or silly notions: UFOs, cold fusion, the soul, God, Britney Spears. Nobody seriously proposes deleting these.
Instead of deleting it, it is fairer, and more accurate and helpful to readers, to label it clearly as fringe science or mathematics. Or, merge it into the other disputed articles on Heim. Someone put work into this, and it has value for those looking for information on this type of fringe science or mathematics.
I am now an existence proof for this viewpoint. Before seeing this article, I never heard of selector calculus. Now I know it is nonsense. I have added this fact to my knowledge of the world. This is a good thing.
Label this for what it is. Modify the text. Warn the readers. Then, let them make up their minds on the matter. Don't try to decide things for others.
Thank you.
:I disagree that selector calculus is nonsense.  As I understand it, Heim assumes space is quantized.  Normal calculus is only valid over a continuous range.  If the range is discrete calculus fails as follows: for Δx less than the discrete interval integrating from x1 to x2 gives a different answer than integrating from x1 to (x2 + Δx).  A discrete calculus returns the identical (and correct) answer for both ranges.  What the article lacks is an example of selector calculus vs Newton/Leibniz calculus for a trivial problem in a quantized space - which would show why it is necessary.  Youngbadfrog (talk) 06:49, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Censorship 

message: :# Merge the "meat" of the article (everything except the introductory paragraph) into difference operator, which is real mathematics.
:# Merge the introduction into Heim theory.  (This includes making sure that there is a link from Heim theory to difference operator.)
:# Redirect this article to Heim theory.
That seems fair, whether or not the theory has any validity, unless the article were to be greatly expanded, or if there is some "meat" which is not accepted by the mathematical community. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:50, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (I'm willing to do the first part, if I can get some guidance as to what I need to say in the comments.) Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The "meat" is now copied into difference operator, although we may need to credit the first quotient formula to somebody. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:38, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

text: By real mathematics above, I mean generally accepted mathematics. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New proposal 

message: I'm trying to find some good sources for this. I did discover a couple of interesting comments
*Heim had to go the other way and use the Calculus of Differences and extened it to Tensors which he called Selector Calculus. 
*While the mathematics of finite lengths has been developed in the literature (Nörlund, 1924; Gelfond, 1958) the novel feature of Heim’s metronic theory is that it is a mathematics of finite areas. 
so it seems we are only half way there. We now have some stuff on difference operators, but have yet to get to the novel part of the theory which is the application to tensors, i.e. a finite version of Covariant derivative. --Salix alba (talk) 01:15, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, you find the application, and I'll tell you whether it's really novel.  Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I see your point.  I think it can be corrected for matrix multiplication / tensor contraction, although I didn't feel the need in the difference operator article, but division (aka reciprocal) is almost hopeless. Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Courant paper 1942. Very Interesting. A paper not accessible to a German soldier during WWII. Heim as a result of an explosion was largely deaf, blind & w/o hands at the age of 19. He invented the mathematics he needed for the physics problems presented. In the way of Newton and Liebnitz. Even as a historical genetic creature, I still don't see the hearburn in certian quarters with Selector Calculus.--Will314159 23:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extending diference calculus to tensors 

message: What's the difference between this and umbral calculus? —Keenan Pepper 21:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no assertion in the article which differentiates (sorry) it from difference operator.  An umbral calculus link would be inappropriate.  — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 15:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Umbral calculus