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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 4971799" data-attributes="member: 177">In the realm of the sciences - mathematics and physics, specifically - there is a concept to "elegance" that is a bit difficult to define.  You know it when you see it, but it roughly goes, "beauty and simplicity in basic formulation".Maxwell's Equations, Schrödinger's Equation, Newton's Laws of Motion, are all of the "elegant" class.  They have symmetries, and say things such that some fundamental basic truths just flow out of them. If you pick up Maxwell's equations, the wave nature of light just sort of falls into your lap with no work to speak ofAre they complete? Well, each of them is complete at what it sets out to do, yes.  Newton's laws fully cover the motion of objects in flat, non-relativistic space, for example.  And they're all pretty clear on what realms they do cover.Are they flexible?  Well, here's where we learn something important - "elegance" does not mean, "is always easy to use in practice".  Newton's laws of motion are complete, but if you try to solve the three-body gravitational problem (like, three planets in orbit around one another) the math is generally insoluble.  And any grad student that has tried to derive the electric potential field around an array of current-carrying wires can tell you that in practice the math is a vicious critter.I think this is carried out into other realms.  A woman may have a beautiful, elegant gown.  As soon as I say that, though, you know I am talking about a dress that she would not wear to work in the garden, cook dinner in, or to swing-dance.  Elegance in no way implies practicality or functionality.  Often quite the opposite is true.  Typically, the way to get solid, day to day functionality out of a thing is to veer away from elegance. As an aside - To my my way of thinking, appeals to DM fiat are not elegant.  That's like the physicist writing, "and then a miracle occurs," on the blackboard.  Maybe what happens in that section is smooth, and maybe it isn't - whatever it is, it certainly isn't attributable to merits of the system.</blockquote>

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