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Feynman refers to "renormalization" as a dippy process on p.128 of his book "QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter".
His words are: "The shell game that we play to find n and j is technically called renormalization. But no matter how clever the word, it is what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. .... I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate."
If what Feynman wrote is true, then why do they still teach "renormalization" as being a useful method in universities?
His words are: "The shell game that we play to find n and j is technically called renormalization. But no matter how clever the word, it is what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. .... I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate."
If what Feynman wrote is true, then why do they still teach "renormalization" as being a useful method in universities?