Learning and relearning

[chickenfeet]

It's been a really long time since I did any serious mathematics though I occasionally play around with stuff to discover whether I've forgotten everything I once knew or not. I used to be pretty decent at it. I have a 2(i) from Durham in the subject but it was a long tome ago. Also I specialised fairly heavily in probability theory and certain areas of pure mathematics so, even back then, I had the barest minimum of mathematical physics and then there's all the stuff that has become mainstream since I was a lad. So I'm challenging myself to refresh and update by working through my newly acquired copy of Penrose's The Road to Reality. It's neat. It starts with Euclid and works through to twistor theory. I am very interested to see at what point I turn into a gibbering wreck but for now it's fun to realise that I can still prove Pythagoras' theorem or derive Playfair's axiom from Euclid's parallel postulate.

Comments

[violetsaunders.livejournal.com]

Good for you! Do you or your son have any recommended reading on Philosophy of Physics?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Do you or your son have any recommended reading on Philosophy of Physics?

I guess it depends what one means by "Philosophy of Physics". I'm not sure anymore where the boundaries of physics, mathematics, philosophy of mathematics (is that the same as mathematical philosophy?) and philosophy of physics lie.

[violetsaunders.livejournal.com]

I really don't know, but found an Introduction to same by somebody at WashU today (Lange??) and have passed it on.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I did some digging around and I guess I found what I expected. The research interests of people who were working in "Philosophy of Physics" ranged across a wide range of problems in modern physics plus what we used to call "Foundations of Mathematics". There is a cynical point of view that "philosophy of Physics" is what physicists do when they get too old to hack the mathematics. I remember talking to a friend who is a rather distinguished chemist at my old university and asking him what one of my old profs was doing. His reoly was "I don't think he really does physics any more. He just writes articles on The Arrow of Time, that sort of thing."