NP Alabama Pi

[sigfpe]

>      I won't reproduce it here, but the gist: There seems to be growing
>      support, among those who think about such things, that Pi (and
>      other versions of Platonic Idealism) ain't so absolute, after all.

I believe a little precision is in order here or else half-truths
will beget quarter-truths and so on.

The ratio of the circumference of a physical circle to its physical
radius is not a constant.  The idea that it might not be goes back
as far as Gauss and Lobachevsky and with the triumph of GR (that
is General Relativity - Einsten's theory of gravity) it became
clear that this ratio really is, at best, approximated by pi.  This
is no growing movement, this is mainstream physics for at least
half a century.

That pi, the pure mathematical constant, might not be a constant,
is something of an oxymoron.  It is defined to be "The constant
such that..." where the ellipsis is the definition.

Before a century ago there was no doubt that the above ideas
represented the same thing.  But the revolution in science where
it was realised that they might not be passed by before most of us
were born.
--
sigfpe