Simulating Physics with Computers

Abstract

This chapter describes the possibility of simulating physics in the classical approximation, a thing which is usually described by local differential equations. But the physical world is quantum mechanical, and therefore the proper problem is the simulation of quantum physics. A computer which will give the same probabilities as the quantum system does. The present theory of physics allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore, if this proposition is right, physical law is wrong. Quantum theory and quantizing is a very specific type of theory. The chapter talks about the possibility that there is to be an exact simulation, that the computer will do exactly the same as nature. There are interesting philosophical questions about reasoning, and relationship, observation, and measurement and so on, which computers have stimulated people to think about anew, with new types of thinking.