* "idea" isn't necessarily the right word there but I'm sure you see what I mean...

Amongst the almost uncounted thousands of English words, Idea is just
fine. And it is 'necessarily' the right word.

Accordingly, you trap yourself into necessarily-human concepts (no, I
am not going 'intelligent design'). Tree capillaries are nearly perfect
circles. Something dropped into still water causes near-perfectly
circular ripples which propagate based on pi-based relationships.
Molecules make up these circumferences and fit as perfectly as our
pen-or-ink efforts, or more-so. So, if nothing else, Nature understands
pi perfectly... and uses it. All the time. What humans did is merely
_describe_ it.

So, you need to understand that most of the concepts discussed in this
thread are entirely independent of us. What we do is describe what
*must* exist even if we cannot describe it perfectly given our fairly
rigid and absolutely limited understanding. Just keep in mind that if
our understanding were 'unlimited', no progress could be possible. We
push those limits (Clarke's second law) in order to increase those
limits.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

p.s.: Chicken and egg.... the egg is potential, the chicken is fixed.
Give me the egg every time.