[William Tell]

js1138 said: "Is anyone else troubled by the fact that the beautiful equations for gravity, relativity, etc. are just approximations (relativity falls apart at the atomic level). And the really great numbers are irrational? "

No. The beauty that people are seeing is the satisfaction derived from understanding. Simple Newtonian physics is beautiful as long as it appears to predict physical outcomes. When the quantum theory is developed, it destroys the beauty of Newtonian physics, but replaces it with a beauty which derives from the ability to describe a wider range of phenomenon.

The things that we do not yet understand will someday become the basis for a more complicated, but more "beautiful", equation describing them.

[js1138]

This might get me flamed, but it appears we are creating approximate descriptions that will eventually be replaced by better descriptions. The beauty is in the mind of the description's creator, not nature, because the description is never exact.

There was a time not too long ago when physicists hoped that the simplicity of descriptive equations said something about their truth.