I always found this principle a bit "strange". Is it about physics or about math? It looks to me like a funny way to write equations in, say, another form, very useful, but I am not sure about its "fundamentality" from the physics point of view.
The most fundamental principle in physics is called 'The Principle of Least Action'. It also happens to be a good principle to live by during these trying times
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i would argue that there's no more fundamental principle. it's one of those things that has remained true from classical mechanics all the way down to quantum field theory
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It's called that but strictly speaking it's not least but stationary? I could approximate stationary...
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both are good advice in this case
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Please tell me I don't have to use calculus of variations on myself...
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no, variation is VERY BAD
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Seems to be working for the president
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But how does nature know, before event happens, that which trajectory is having stationary action? I mean, it doesn't run simulations to find out best trajectory,it just happen to know before the event even starts. I apologize if you find this question stupid,I am just curious.
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I'd say nature tries to balance all acting forces, leading to tiny movement, and then balances them again leading to a trajectory... it evolves in infinitesimal steps, very much like timestepping with discrete finite timesteps works in numerics... It gets philosophical easily :)
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