The Archimedean property of reality: if you put one foot in front of the other for long enough, you can travel an arbitrarily long distance.
This is, of course, the Archimedean property of the real numbers -- that is, for any two positive real numbers x and y, there exists an integer n such that nx > y -- if we can make the assumption that step length is constant.
It's also what got me through some hard times in the first year of grad school, when I doubted my mathematical abilities; at least I could successfully walk to and from school each day. The proverb "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" comes to mind, but my walk is about a mile and a half.
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1 comment:
Ah, but like a law of physics, the certainty of death gives the reals an unreal quality. The p adic numbers are much nicer.
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