[tsimionescu]

Sure, but calculus makes infinity sufficient, but not necessary for describing the physical world. Integers, rationals, and apparently complex numbers (presumably those with rational components) are actually necessary for describing the physical world, given our current understanding. Irrational numbers and infinities are extremely useful, but not strictly necessary.

[ithkuil]

Sorry, I'm not getting it. A large use case for complex numbers is describing things that rotate, literally or not, like oscillations, waves etc. Trigonometry lies deeply in that math and the irrational number pi pops out left and right. An approximation of pi wouldn't cut it, would it?

[tsimionescu]

Actually, for any practical use case or possible observation, there is an approximation of Pi that is good enough. The ancient Egyptians apparently did quite well in their architecture approximating Pi as 22/7 (3.(1428571)).

You only need the exact number Pi if you want to measure something like the ratio between the length of a perfect circle and its radius with infinite precision. But you can't be sure your measurement has infinite precision with a finite number of measurements, and so you can't observe the difference between a perfect circle and a many, many sided X-agon, even if perfect circles do exist in the geometry of the universe.

Just as a fun aside, even if perfectly circular shapes do exist, it's unlikely that perfect circles would exist in physical objects - at best, you would have ellipses, and there is no (known?) way to compute the ratio between the length of an ellipse and the properties of its foci.

[ithkuil]

We're clearly talking about different things.

You're talking about measuring something in the real world. Measuring is basically counting how many thing a given reference thing fits into the thing you're measuring. I have no problems with the assumption that for all intents and purposes we live in a finite (space and time) physical universe and there is a maximum precision that will ever be necessary.

What I am talking about is that in order for the math we use to describe that universe to work out we need irrational numbers; otherwise you couldn't be able to prove theorems and whatnot. I think this makes the irrational numbers (e and pi in particular) quite fundamental tools and I don't care if the real world doesn't allow objects (or positions) to be measured with irrational numbers.

> there is no (known?) way to compute the ratio between the length of an ellipse and the properties of its foci.

There is no closed-form expression for the circumference of an ellipse. There is an infinite series though. Same for a circle; there is no closed-form for computing pi either!