vol 4: Glossary
Action
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Action
The term action, in its physical sense, began to emerge with Fermat's 'principle of least time' and de Maupertuis' 'principle of least action'. J J O'Connor and E F Robertson,
Act (or action, there is but little distinction) reasserted its importance with the discovery of quantum mechanics. Max Planck, in attempting to understand the radiation spectrum of black bodies, was forced to assume that physical systems interact in a quantised way. Thus was born the quantum of action, the measure of whose physical size is now called Planck's constant. Kuhn.
We may think of the quantum of action as a measure of the elementary operations in the universe. In the communication and computation model which we propose (the transfinite network), such an elementary action is analogous to a calculation involving involving an elementary operation of the propositional calculus.
We deal with the quantum of action more thoroughly when we come to quantum mechanics. Dirac, von Neumann. We will see also, when we look at quantum computation, that elementary operations in the real world are much more complex than elementary operations in propositional calculus.
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