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Originally Posted by Cougar
I know you think of Peter Woit as largely inconsequential, but I must say, his book went into more of the "math" than any of the hundred or so other fairly current books attempting to describe what's going on in quantum physics or cosmology or astrophysics that I've read over the past several years. Why had I never heard of representation theory??  I thought Woit, being mainly a mathematician, explained a lot of the abstract algebra and symmetry utilizations pretty well. Most everyone else just made passing reference to this whole area, if at all... |
Yeah, most of the basic "baby stuff" he talks about is pretty reasonable. Although there is the occasional weird confusion or misconception or something. It's not until he talks about things that haven't been known for 50 years that he goes off the deep end
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In fact the other LQG people are similar. I've read reviews of some "talks" the LQG people have given, and they typically spend a great deal of time going over "baby stuff" which is mostly accurate, and then spending a hilarious 70 or so percent of the talk stumbling through intermediate to advanced grad stuff before jumping off the deep end for the remainder of the talk.
In terms of the actual math involved in real physics, it is absolutely fantastic. The modern geometric structure of these kinds of theories is very unbelievably beautiful. Much more so IMO than the typical traditional way physicists like to write things out, where things tend to just look odd, random, and mysterious.
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Most everyone else, which includes Gell-Mann, Weinberg, Lederman, Guth, et al... all complain about the publishers not letting them include "math."
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Yeah, that's definitely a problem. Although Penrose's "road to reality" includes a great deal of math, and I've heard it's pretty good, aside from the last chapter or two which contain a few mistakes.
It's even a problem with textbooks containing insufficient levels of math. It's a very unfortunate problem, and is in fact related to what people're talking about over in the "what good is math" thread
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