At the heart of all this calculation lies the deeply held
conviction that natural phenomena are, in essence,
the consequence of just a small number of physical
laws, and that these laws are best expressed in the
language of mathematics. The goal is to construct a
working model of the universe out of commonplace
notions: ideas of number and order and measures of
time and distance. With such a working model, we
can leap ahead in time and predict what the otherwise opaque future has in store for us (Peterson,
1993).
Chapter 7
Conservation of mass and momentum
Structural block diagram of a part of the Penninic Alps,
Switzerland (Argand, 1911).