Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics

作者: Peter Woit 作者

出版社: Vintage

出版时间: 2007-06

ISBN: 0099488647 或 9780099488644

定价: 75.00

装帧: 平装

开本: 其他

页数: 304页

正文语种: 英语

原版书名: 连错误都不如

分类: 外文古旧书>英文书>文学

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Not Even Wrong tells a fascinating and complex story about human beings and their attempts to come to grips with perhaps the most intellectually demanding puzzle there is: how does the world work at the most fundamental level and what is the role of mathematics in its description? The author's perspective on this story is unusual since he has worked in both leading physics and mathematics departments and holds very skeptical views about string theory, the subject that has dominated research in this field for the past twenty years. The book begins with an historical survey of the experimental and theoretical developments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful so-called Standard Model of particle physics around 1975. Despite its successes, the Standard Model does not answer all questions that one would expect it to address, and for the last thirty years physicists have been trying to come up with a better theory. What the remaining questions are is explained in detail, together with the history of attempts to answer them, including the spectacular new mathematics that has arisen from these efforts. Lacking guidance from new experimental results, physicists have followed the principle that one should be looking for more beautiful theories, and here, Peter Woit considers what the role of beauty may be in mathematics and physics. In recent years string theorists have found that the theory seems to lead to an unimaginably large number of possibilities and may be inherently unable to make predictions. The author explains what physicist's hopes have been, why they haven't worked out, and what may be more promising directions for investigation. Not Even Wrong puts the reader in a position to follow this increasingly controversial story as it continues to develop in the years to come. Peter Woit is a physicist and mathematician who is currently a Lecturer in the Mathematics Department at Columbia University. He graduated in 1979 from Harvard University with bachelor's and master's degrees in physics, then went on to get a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University. He has been a postdoc at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook and at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley. Since 1989 he has been teaching at Columbia where in recent years he has taught graduate courses in quantum field theory, representation theory and differential geometry.
内容简介:
Not Even Wrong tells a fascinating and complex story about human beings and their attempts to come to grips with perhaps the most intellectually demanding puzzle there is: how does the world work at the most fundamental level and what is the role of mathematics in its description? The author's perspective on this story is unusual since he has worked in both leading physics and mathematics departments and holds very skeptical views about string theory, the subject that has dominated research in this field for the past twenty years. The book begins with an historical survey of the experimental and theoretical developments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful so-called Standard Model of particle physics around 1975. Despite its successes, the Standard Model does not answer all questions that one would expect it to address, and for the last thirty years physicists have been trying to come up with a better theory. What the remaining questions are is explained in detail, together with the history of attempts to answer them, including the spectacular new mathematics that has arisen from these efforts. Lacking guidance from new experimental results, physicists have followed the principle that one should be looking for more beautiful theories, and here, Peter Woit considers what the role of beauty may be in mathematics and physics. In recent years string theorists have found that the theory seems to lead to an unimaginably large number of possibilities and may be inherently unable to make predictions. The author explains what physicist's hopes have been, why they haven't worked out, and what may be more promising directions for investigation. Not Even Wrong puts the reader in a position to follow this increasingly controversial story as it continues to develop in the years to come.
作者简介:
Peter Woit is a physicist and mathematician who is currently a Lecturer in the Mathematics Department at Columbia University. He graduated in 1979 from Harvard University with bachelor's and master's degrees in physics, then went on to get a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University. He has been a postdoc at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook and at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley. Since 1989 he has been teaching at Columbia where in recent years he has taught graduate courses in quantum field theory, representation theory and differential geometry.

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Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics

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