From First Principles

2025-06-05

In physics, "From First Principles" refers to starting with a well established set of laws and reasoning from there to a conclusion.

"From First Principles" entered my lexicon as a jest. At STSC I was a programmer working on the development of an APL interpreter. APL is a high level programming language and an interpreter is the software that executes code written in such a language - a program that runs a program. My cohorts used the term "from first principles" to refer to an answer given in a long and explanatory style. This usually involves starting the discussion from a set of principles and working your way to the answer. An answer given in this way provides a path to answers to related questions that might come up later. It educates the questioner in more a valuable way than a direct answer would. But sometimes you just wanted a quick answer.

I don't plan to argue anything From First Principles here, but I like the concept and I found the domain name available.