Other What are you reading now? (STEM only)

[Demystifier]

While the "effectiveness" of philoosophy in maths seems to be confined to logic, set theory and the foundations of maths. Things most mathematicians are not even aware of.

I think the same can be said about physics, most physicists are not aware of Bell inequalities and stuff like that.

 

[martinbn]

I disagree. The hole argument was Einstein's disability to view the metric as a gauge field. That's at least partially mathematical. Mach's principle was an important inspiration for Einstein to regard gravity geometrically, although later on he realized GR is not fully Machian. Finally, his emphasis on the equivalence principle and that it was a mere curiosity in Newtonian gravity can be considered philosophical (although its demarcation with physics remains blurry from my point of view.)

This shows that it is at the very least not so clear cut whether it is philosophy, nor whether it is useful. But if the Mach principle and the hole argument are so useful and effective, why are they not in every GR book?

I am still convinced that there is nothing even close to the effectiveness of mathematics in physics along the lines of "effectiveness of philosophy in physics and maths".

 

[martinbn]

I think the same can be said about physics, most physicists are not aware of Bell inequalities and stuff like that.

Exactly, but all physicists are aware (more than aware) of a lot of mathematics.

 

[Demystifier]

This shows that it is at the very least not so clear cut whether it is philosophy, nor whether it is useful. But if the Mach principle and the hole argument are so useful and effective, why are they not in every GR book?

Because philosophy is useful in the process of construction of new theories, not in their final formulations.

 

[martinbn]

Because philosophy is useful in the process of construction of new theories, not in their final formulations.

Then shouldn't your book be titled "The unreasonable effectiveness of philosophy in construction of physical theories."?

 

[vanhees71]

I disagree. The hole argument was Einstein's disability to view the metric as a gauge field. That's at least partially mathematical. Mach's principle was an important inspiration for Einstein to regard gravity geometrically, although later on he realized GR is not fully Machian. Finally, his emphasis on the equivalence principle and that it was a mere curiosity in Newtonian gravity can be considered philosophical (although its demarcation with physics remains blurry from my point of view.)

Interestingly enough this "hole argument" seems to have survived the philosophical debate although it's solved since 1915. As with all philosophical debates, this apparent "problem" stays unsolved for so long, because it lacks clear mathematical and/or scientific definition. Just yesterday, there was another paper about it on the arXiv. It's amazing, how much thought can be used to solve solved problems ;-)):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.04943

 

[Demystifier]

Then shouldn't your book be titled "The unreasonable effectiveness of philosophy in construction of physical theories."?

Yes, it should. But not the book, just a short essay.

 

[haushofer]

Interestingly enough this "hole argument" seems to have survived the philosophical debate although it's solved since 1915. As with all philosophical debates, this apparent "problem" stays unsolved for so long, because it lacks clear mathematical and/or scientific definition. Just yesterday, there was another paper about it on the arXiv. It's amazing, how much thought can be used to solve solved problems ;-)):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.04943

Oh, yes. I see the hole argument as historically curious. I tried to read the papers by Norton, Stachel, Weatherall, Landsman and others about this thing called "spacetime substantivalism", but I don't see why people are so excited about it.

What I like about the hole argument is that you can confuse a good deal of high energy physicists with it, even people working on SUGRA or string theory. That's why I added it to my own PhD-thesis (which was, quite suitably, about gravity as a gauge theory).

 

[haushofer]

This shows that it is at the very least not so clear cut whether it is philosophy, nor whether it is useful. But if the Mach principle and the hole argument are so useful and effective, why are they not in every GR book?

I am still convinced that there is nothing even close to the effectiveness of mathematics in physics along the lines of "effectiveness of philosophy in physics and maths".

Because a lot of books tend to neglect such historical or conceptual stuff, because...a lot of other books do too? I don't know the precise sociological reason.

D'Inverno is a nice exception to this.

 

[Demystifier]

Today appeared a paper arguing that Einstein's philosophy was often wrong, but his equations, being smarter than himself, were always right. https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.06831

 

[martinbn]

Today appeared a paper arguing that Einstein's philosophy was often wrong, but his equations, being smarter than himself, were always right. https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.06831

Which parts do you disagree with?

 

[martinbn]

I feel I derailed the thread, so I will post something on topic. I wouldn't say that I am reading, I am just looking through it and reading those parts that I like, but I came across "Compact Riemann Surfaces" - R. Narasimhan. I knew about the book, because it is often in the bibliography of textbooks, but I have never actually looked at it. I have to say that it is very nice. It is realtively short about 120pages. And it covers a lot of good complex geometry (and algebraic). If someone is going to study Griffiths and Harris, this might be a good start.

 

[Demystifier]

Which parts do you disagree with?

I'm not saying that I disagree. For making a true progress in science, it's almost necessary to be often wrong.

 

[vanhees71]

The only exception is Pauli, according to himself. There's this story about Weisskopf, who made some mistake in calculating some one-loop result for scalar QED and then went to Pauli reporting the mistake. Pauli replied that all physicists make mistakes in their calculations all the time, with the only exception being himself ;-)).

 

[martinbn]

I'm not saying that I disagree. For making a true progress in science, it's almost necessary to be often wrong.

It goes against your view about the unreasanble effectiveness of philosophy. It says that philosophy lead him to those mistakes.

 

[Demystifier]

It goes against your view about the unreasanble effectiveness of philosophy. It says that philosophy lead him to those mistakes.

Philosophy has a double role, it causes both progress and mistakes. Think of philosophy as a source of intuitive insights. In addition, the mistakes themselves often teach us a lot.

 

[atyy]

I think the same can be said about physics, most physicists are not aware of Bell inequalities and stuff like that.

Undergrads learn them nowadays.

 

[vanhees71]

Yes, even 30 years ago we learned about them, and without all the confusion we spread in this forum about the meaning of the word "local", because even moderators insist on the unclear use of other than physics communities, but that's another topic...

 

[haushofer]

Zee wrote another QFT book, apparently:

https://www.amazon.nl/dp/0691174296/

Disclaimer: I'm not from the future, so I haven't read it yet.

 

[malawi_glenn]

I'm not from the future, so I haven't read it yet.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ply-as-possible-upcoming-publication.1012544/

on topic:
I am reading - Axler: Measure, Integration & Real Analysis. It is an open source book by springer, but I decided to buy it hardcover. Pretty good, it is not easy material (for me at least) but the author is trying to be very pedagogical and structured. Colored boxes on basically every page.

 

[vanhees71]

Here's the link:

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33143-6

 

[haushofer]

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ply-as-possible-upcoming-publication.1012544/

on topic:
I am reading - Axler: Measure, Integration & Real Analysis. It is an open source book by springer, but I decided to buy it hardcover. Pretty good, it is not easy material (for me at least) but the author is trying to be very pedagogical and structured. Colored boxes on basically every page.

Ah, I missed that one. In the past, that is

 

[Mondayman]

I have been out of school for a few years and sadly haven't studied much since then. I feel like I've lost/forgotten most of what I've learned in the two years I spent at Uni.

I am leaning towards doing a electrical engineering degree, or even a technician/technologist diploma. I decided to start studying E&M again from the ground up, starting with University Physics (Young) and Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Serway).

Also bought a few science books over the last year to add to my already big library:

Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists

A Mind Over Matter: Philip Anderson and the Physics of the Very Many (highly recommend, written by Andrew Zangwill)

Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age

 

[ergospherical]

I picked up Black Holes and TIme Warps by Kip Thorne and am enjoying it a lot. Especially liked reading about the backgrounds, motivations and styles of key physicists throughout the history of GR, which is an angle I didn't know much about beforehand. Things like Landau deciding to publish his neutron cores paper at just the right time to make enough of a splash to save himself from the great terror (didn't work), or the stark contrast in teaching styles between the three great mentors of the "golden era" - Wheeler, Zeldovich and Sciama.

 

[WWGD]

Great terror??

 

[PeroK]

Great terror??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

 

[romsofia]

Got 3 books recently, 2 by T.D. Lee: Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory (an oldie, but hoping for some random insights on topics I'm looking at again) and Symmetries , Asymmetries, and the World of Particles.

Also got Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics by Bell, which I am enjoying more than I would've expected.

 

[haushofer]

I'm reading Clayton's "Bernoulli's Fallacy" now,

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/bernoullis-fallacy/9780231199940

Reviews say it's a bit biased about the Bayesian point of view, but apart from nice insights about Bayesian inference it's also a nice historical overview of statistical inference.

 

[gmax137]

"Physics the Human Adventure" by Holton & Brush
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0813529085/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Slow reading, I'm at page 200 after more than a month. But I don't dip into it every day and don't read more than one chapter at a sitting. I like this book and don't want to rush through it. It's history, with a lot of physics detail. The authors missed the advice about not including the equations - which means this is perfect, IMO.

 

[gleem]

I just finished listening to a discussion with Aubrey Clayton about the ideas expounded in his book, Bernoulli's Fallacy. It might be worth a listen before reading his book or thinking about reading it. It is an hour long.