"Quantum Field Theory, as Simply as Possible" upcoming publication

[StevieTNZ]

I came across this upcoming book -- https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174297/quantum-field-theory-as-simply-as-possible -- peer reviewed as it is published by Princeton University Press, which is due to be published in October. I've already ordered a copy coming from the UK. It should be an interesting read!

Thought I'd share in case others are interested.

 

[jedishrfu]

Thanks for sharing. The book looks quite interesting. Zee is an accomplished author of some very tough books on GR and QM. Perhaps our university library will get a copy soon.

To be clear though published books university or otherwise are not considered peer reviewed. I know that sounds odd but its true. The publisher provides content editors to help the author with their English presentation but it remains the authors responsibility to write accurate and truthful content. I'm sure Zee will do that well.

Also Princeton Press has not said in their writeups that it is peer-reviewed which would be a good selling point for graduate level texts.

Remember the intent of any academic book is to educate students but ultimately the prof who uses the book in class decides whether it meets his/her standard for the subject.

Peer reviewed means that experts in the field have reviewed a paper for a scientific journal.

 

[weirdoguy]

Well, he tried to make group theory as simple as possible and it turned out tragically I hope this one will be better.

 

[vanhees71]

He also tried with QFT "in a nutshell"... We'll see!

 

[berkeman]

Wow, to me it's hard to take a textbook seriously with that glaring of a grammatical error in the title. Maybe there just was not enough room for that one missing word...

OTOH, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those that can fill in the blanks,

 

[StevieTNZ]

I guess I get the peer review comment from this webpage -- https://press.princeton.edu/about/mission-values
I have no evidence to question their statement. I can only take their word for it.

But I'm looking forward to the book! October please come soon!

 

[fresh_42]

I guess I get the peer review comment from this webpage -- https://press.princeton.edu/about/mission-values
I have no evidence to question their statement. I can only take their word for it.

But I'm looking forward to the book! October please come soon!

We publish peer-reviewed books is logically not the same as all our books are peer-reviewed. If the above was peer-reviewed, then the title would have been most likely a correct one.

 

[dextercioby]

There is no grammatical error in the title, the comma stands for "presented" or "written" which is a verb participle. Omitting verbs and replacing them with a comma is common in many languages. This comma/explicitely written participle obviously draws the adverb "simply" as a complement, instead of the adjective "simple". The phrase "as... as possible" is fixed, "possibly" is not an option.

Leaving linguistics aside, I cannot imagine what this text could fool the readers with. He had a chance to write a QFT text, did not particularly fail it, but, hey, no book is perfect by providing all the answers...

 

[berkeman]

There is no grammatical error in the title, the comma stands for "presented" or "written" which is a verb participle. Omitting verbs and replacing them with a comma is common in many languages. This comma/explicitely written participle obviously draws the adverb "simply" as a complement, instead of the adjective "simple". The phrase "as... as possible" is fixed, "possibly" is not an option.

Leaving linguistics aside, I cannot imagine what this text could fool the readers with. He had a chance to write a QFT text, did not particularly fail it, but, hey, no book is perfect by providing all the answers...

Huh, really? Is that common in English (and I've missed it all these years), or just in some other languages? I'm always fine learning new things.

 

[jedishrfu]

Yeah, along with the em-dash

 

[fresh_42]

Either it should be with a verb to which the adverb refers to e.g. "explained" or "simply" should have been an adjective: "as simple as possible". Adverb without verb is a mistake, an adjective is allowed since QFT is the noun it refers to.

 

[berkeman]

There is no grammatical error in the title, the comma stands for "presented" or "written" which is a verb participle. Omitting verbs and replacing them with a comma is common in many languages.

Also, per PF normal procedure, if you could post a link to a reference about that substitution standard, that would help a lot.

 

[dextercioby]

@berkeman It is called "journalese writing/style" which you can apparently use for textbook titles, not only for news titles:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/452929/can-i-replace-is-with-comma-in-a-sentence

 

[fresh_42]

@berkeman It is called "journalese writing/style" which you can apparently use for textbook titles, not only for news titles:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/452929/can-i-replace-is-with-comma-in-a-sentence

This is a completely different case and does not apply here. Simply requires action, and there is none. So either you add action or replace the adverb with its adjective simple.

 

[berkeman]

@berkeman It is called "journalese writing/style" which you can apparently use for textbook titles, not only for news titles:

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/452929/can-i-replace-is-with-comma-in-a-sentence

And the very first answer to that question says:

>In Journalese writing, yes. In academic writing, no:

In any case, the title alone would keep me from purchasing this text. I can't imagine what negligent editor at that publisher is allowing this.

We spend a lot of time and effort at PF cleaning up thread titles to make them clear and not cause any confusion (hopefully for anybody reading PF). This would get corrected as soon as it was posted, IMO.

 

[fresh_42]

In any case, the title alone would keep me from purchasing this text.

Indeed! It is a click bait, or buy bait in this case. Simplicity automatically implies a reduction, a projection. And these have significant kernels. I think one can explain higher mathematics or physics in a way that uses intuition and aphorisms, but if you drop the math it becomes wrong. Hence if this book doesn't have at least 2,000 pages you're probably better off with a real textbook.

 

[dextercioby]

This is a completely different case and does not apply here. Simply requires action, and there is none. So either you add action or replace the adverb with its adjective simple.

Not really, "simply" is a manner adverb which needn't describe an action, but also the result of it (participle). Compare: "write it simply" vs. "Written simply" or "simply written". Here, in the books's title, by mimicking the title of a CNN piece of news, the author writes "QFT (written) as simply as possible" by putting a comma instead of the assumed (but not entirely obvious which one) verb.

 

[berkeman]

Not really, "simply" is a manner adverb which needn't describe an action, but also the result of it (participle). Compare: "write it simply" vs. "Written simply" or "simply written".

Oh look! Verbs!

Here, in the books's title, by mimicking the title of a CNN piece of news, the author writes "QFT (written) as simply as possible" by putting a comma instead of the assumed (but not entirely obvious which one) verb.

So textbooks are mimicking CNN story titles now? I think your intellectual position in this thread is untenable. Best for you to cut bait, IMO...

 

[fresh_42]

Not really, "simply" is a manner adverb which needn't describe an action, but also the result of it (participle). Compare: "write it simply" vs. "Written simply" or "simply written". Here, in the books's title, by mimicking the title of a CNN piece of news, the author writes "QFT (written) as simply as possible" by putting a comma instead of the assumed (but not entirely obvious which one) verb.

This is rather far-fetched, even within the reduced environment of journalism. You cannot really expand it by yourself. Is it written, explained, or presented? Each one of these has a different meaning. But you have the option to use the adjective: so why make a mistake by calling a questionable context that might not even apply, if you can write it correctly by simply changing one letter? Makes no sense to me. Your explanation is a shot from behind through the breast into the eye.

 

[fresh_42]

And btw.: Your example on stackexchange used a comma as a substitute for "is", in which case it would have had to be "QFT is as simple as possible"; the adjective version.

 

[PeterDonis]

Is it written, explained, or presented? Each one of these has a different meaning.

In the context of a book title, they all have similar enough meanings. Indeed, the book title could even be taken to be implying all three, since all three are appropriate in context.

I would agree that this book title is very informal, which might rub a significant portion of its target audience the wrong way. But that's a matter of judgment, not grammar.

 

[fresh_42]

In the context of a book title, they all have similar enough meanings. Indeed, the book title could even be taken to be implying all three, since all three are appropriate in context.

No.

simply written = easy vocabulary
simply explained = requires three times the space it usually has
simply represented = poorly written

I assume the last one is appropriate.

The difference between a falsely used adverb and an adjective is a matter of grammar.

 

[PeterDonis]

No.

No what? All three of the things you list (which are not, btw, the definitions I would think the book's author would be intending by those three words, but let that pass) could easily be true of the book. In which case the title would be perfectly fine implying all three.

I understand that you find this particular kind of informality in a book title distasteful. But that is a matter of personal preference. If you don't like the title, don't buy the book.

The difference between a falsely used adverb and an adjective is a matter of grammar.

"Simply" is an adverb that is modifying an implicit verb. Having some words be implicit and deduced by the reader from context has been a feature of languages for at least a few millennia; you can find many classical Latin and Greek texts that use it (and I had to translate plenty of the Latin ones when I took Latin in high school).

 

[berkeman]

I would agree that this book title is very informal, which might rub a significant portion of its target audience the wrong way. But that's a matter of judgment, not grammar.

Would you publish a book with that title? Why not?

 

[dextercioby]

I agree about the the ambiguity created by just implying the verb, instead of spelling it, but, particularly in this case, the most appropriate missing word would be "described".

To end my stance here on this language issue, I can only say that even by starting debates over grammatical accuracy 6 months before printing it, the publisher has reached one of his marketing goals. People assuming it has a grammatical error in the title might wish to buy it just to see whether grammatical errors are also within the text...

 

[PeterDonis]

Would you publish a book with that title?

With that particular title? Probably not. But then I'm not necessarily a fan of the particular kind of informality that Zee seems to prefer, at least if his previous popular books are an indication. But, as I said, that's a matter of judgment, not grammar.

 

[fresh_42]

No what? All three of the things you list (which are not, btw, the definitions I would think the book's author would be intending by those three words, but let that pass) could easily be true of the book. In which case the title would be perfectly fine implying all three.

I understand that you find this particular kind of informality in a book title distasteful. But that is a matter of personal preference. If you don't like the title, don't buy the book."Simply" is an adverb that is modifying an implicit verb. Having some words be implicit and deduced by the reader from context has been a feature of languages for at least a few millennia; you can find many classical Latin and Greek texts that use it (and I had to translate plenty of the Latin ones when I took Latin in high school).

I disagree with all of that, except with your translations in high school. All those justifications sound to me like a desperate attempt to cover a clear mistake. 'e' instead of 'y' would have solved all this without any need to find excuses. Stackexchange and journalism isn't Webster.

 

[berkeman]

Well, the ironic part of this thread is that @StevieTNZ started it as a passive-aggressive protest of his recent temp ban for claiming that textbooks were valid peer-reviewed references. They are generally not, and the example that he found is a clumsy attempt at a textbook that clearly has not been peer reviewed.

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