Category Archives: Uncategorized

String Theory and the Real World

Posted on October 6, 2021 by woit

I just noticed that Gordon Kane has recently published a second edition of his 2017 String Theory and the Real World. Columbia doesn’t seem to yet have full online access to the second edition, but one can already compare the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Various Math and Physics News

Posted on October 4, 2021 by woit

First some items on the mathematics side: The latest AMS Notices has some memorial pieces about Vaughan Jones and Robert Hermann. I contributed a piece to the Hermann memorial, for more about him, see here. If you read French you … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

Some Math Items

Posted on July 30, 2021 by woit

Some math items that may be of interest: Zentralblatt Math has a review of Mochizuki’s IUT papers, by Peter Scholze. Scholze explains the problem with the proof claimed in these papers. For more details, see his manuscript with Stix, or … Continue reading →

Posted in abc Conjecture, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

The Problem of Quantization

Posted on July 12, 2021 by woit

I’ve been watching Witten’s ongoing talks about geometric Langlands mentioned here, and wanted to recommend to everyone, mathematician or physicist, the first of them, on The Problem of Quantization (pdf here, video here, the question session is very worthwhile). For … Continue reading →

Posted in Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Theory: The Book, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Various Math Items

Posted on June 6, 2021 by woit

Some math-research items: Mura Yakerson has been doing a really wonderful series of interviews with mathematicians, available at her math-life balance web-page or Youtube channel. I’ve just started listening to some of them, including ones with Peter Scholze and Dustin … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Non-empirical Physics

Posted on June 2, 2021 by woit

I haven’t been paying much attention in recent years to the philosophers of science studying “Non-empirical” or “Post-empirical” physics or theory confirmation. At various times I did write fairly extensively about this, see for instance here, here and here. By … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 27 Comments

The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature

Posted on May 24, 2021 by woit

Reading this Nautilus article about Julian Barbour led me recently to something I don’t think I’ve ever read before, Dirac’s 1963 Scientific American article The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature. There is a very famous quote from this … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Some History

Posted on April 29, 2021 by woit

I’m heading out soon for a 10 day vacation in the Rocky Mountains, blogging likely to change from sparse to non-existent for the next couple weeks. I’ve come across the following things that people with an interest in the recent … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Finished Some Things

Posted on April 13, 2021 by woit

I’ve now finished with two things that I’ve been working on over the last year or so: The paper explaining my proposal for “Twistor Unification” is now done and uploaded to the arXiv, see here. I’ve finished lecturing for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

The Future of Fundamental Physics

Posted on March 24, 2021 by woit

IAS director Robbert Dijkgraaf will be giving the CERN colloquium tomorrow, with the title The Future of Fundamental Physics. Here’s the abstract: The reports of the death of physics are greatly exaggerated. Instead, I would argue, we are living in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments