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Roger Penrose and the Road to Reality
Flipping through the eleven-hundred pages, you notice the gratuitous inclusion of mathematical formulae and the chapter titles on the page headers -- "Quantum algebra, geometry, and spin," "Gravity's role in quantum state reduction," "Calculus on manifolds" -- suggest a far more exclusive audience than yourself, a lowly paper-pusher with a four-year degree. "But then, what's this doing in the popular new releases?" you ask yourself, "Shouldn't it be hidden away in the darkened corner of the store's physics section?" But that's where you're wrong, you realize, glancing through the author's preface; this book is for you: Penrose has, it seems, composed a mathematical physics book for the general audience -- and not merely an introductory one, but one that takes you to the frontiers of modern theory.
The trouble with the common popular-science books that propose to illustrate modern physical theories is in their implicit premise of avoiding mathematical notation and concept in favor of plain English. This works to an extent, but ultimately breaks down when the nature of the subject matter itself is mathematical. Indeed, after reading the wonderful Dancing Wu Li Masters, the reader is no more prepared to plunge into a textbook on modern physics or to comprehend even the titles of the latest mathematical physics papers on Arxiv.org. Physicists know about the fundamental particles or the nature of space only through the mathematics that model the phenomena. Which is not to say that such English language renderings are useless, but they skillfully devise to distance themselves from what physicists actually do, as well as to reenforce readers' natural aversion to numbers and formulae.
Penrose's approach is not to dive head-first into the most strenuous material or to assume a proper background for the comprehension of advanced physics; instead, the first several chapters are devoted to building the necessary mathematical subtext for the remaining bulk of the book. The volume's length is not, as is often the case, a result of lengthy diversions or pedantry (needless complexity); Penrose keeps his eye on the ball throughout, consistently informing the reader how the topic at hand is related to the over-arching theme and infusing the more well-known pedagogy with creative insight, so that even a talented math major may learn from the introductory chapters on number systems or geometry. What's more, the careful organization of the disparate topics permits a fluid drift from one to the next. The effect is a single cohesive book and not a collection of notes or essays.
With 390 illustrations and a generous supply of endnotes and bibliography entries, it's clear that Penrose didn't consider the work completed with the text alone. The inclusion of short problems within the footnotes hints to the reader what concepts are important to understand. The usual footnote-commentary is withheld for the endnotes at the end of each chapter.
It's probable that the name "Roger Penrose" might excite some memories you may have of his previous works, published over a decade ago, both of which explore the mind-brain relationship. At least one of these (Shadows of the Mind -- the other is the more popular The Emperor's New Mind) proposes a quantum theoretical explanation for consciousness which was perhaps too liberal to have been taken seriously by neurologists. Penrose's efforts in quantum theory have, however, been more successful than those in neurology: in 1988 he was awarded the Wolf Prize, one of the very highest honors in mathematics (perhaps second only to the Fields Medal), along with Stephen Hawking, and has made invaluable contributions to quantum physics for the past several decades, proving himself to be one of the finest scientific minds of our day. In consequence to his stature, it's certainly a treat for laypeople that Penrose has donated the time and energy to the creation of a monumental expository work for general consumption.
Whereas the average pop-science journalist reaches upwards to accrue a book's material, Penrose's acknowledged expertise on the subject forces him back towards the ground again. If you think about it, I suppose this is as difficult a task, since much of what Penrose describes he's known for forty or fifty years (he was born in 1931). He apologizes in the final chapter for the necessity of handpicking among the dozen or so "theories of everything," sometimes according to his own professional biases. Today's leading theory, "String Theory" along with the theory of "Loop Quantum Gravity," and the little known "Twister Theory," are all covered in the later chapters; the first portion of the book builds the mathematical foundations for the succeeding chapters, which give an indepth treatment of quantum physics and quantum field theory. These topics are followed by the previously described "theories of everything."
A glance at the table of contents may make or break your purchasing decision; chances are, if you find the mysteries of the terms somehow galvanizing, then you'll enjoy the book. On the other hand, if the eclectic terms frighten you, you should perhaps look at the preface (where Penrose gives solace to anxious readers), or it may be best to avoid the book altogether.
As I mentioned earlier, little has been done for the general audience to explore the wide expanse between physics and mathematics. The Road to Reality is, in this respect, a virtually pioneering effort, and given its size, scope and quality, I would venture to guess it will remain the de facto text in its area for many decades to come, and may safely be placed on your bookshelf next to E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, or Benjamin Yandell's recent (*highly* recommended) The Honor's Class: Hilbert's Problem's and Their Solvers.
I am fortunate to have had some mathematics education and so am familiar with the basic principles of complex numbers, calculus, and geometry, making the first several chapters, while still insightful, less toilsome than it might've been. I suspect that the average bright high school graduate would have no trouble with Penrose's quick treatment of these concepts. I would recommend the reader have at least some familiarity with the basic terms of mathematics and physics (i.e. when Penrose mentions "set" you know he's referring to a particular mathematical structure) or the book could overwhelm you quickly. Additionally, readers would be at an advantage having read "English-based" modern physics books such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Michio Kaku's Hyperspace, Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe or a similar book about 20th century quantum physics. Either way, it's safe to say that despite the virtuosic readability of the text, it's still going to take an intellectual commitment on the part of the reader to reap all of the available knowledge."
You can purchase The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
There's an article about what I suppose I would describe as his own flavor of decoherence.
Is this a book review or a Choose Your Own Adventure novel?
GEB was mentioned above, and I just had to post about it.. It's one of the best books I've ever read. If you've never read it and you're a geek, and at all interested in how the mind works, you'll absolutely love it. I've read it three times, and the last time I even almost understood the whole thing.. :)
It's an absolute classic, I can't recommend it highly enough.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
If you spell it correctly, and then do a web search, you'll see that it isn't as obscure as you might have thought. It's also beautiful stuff.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Is this the same Roger Penrose that patented a pattern (The Penrose Tile) and then sued a toilet paper company for having a similar pattern printed on their toilet paper?
:)
And then sued the chair of my painting department, Clark Richert for using the same pattern in a *painitng*
And then lost that case, learning that my chair figured that pattern out years before him - by accident? The proof being a photo of the painting - on the side of a bus. The license plate was used as the evidence for date.
I'm not quite sure if I like this guy
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
I saw him when he came to Seattle recently. It was hard to believe that he wrote such a book, especially after he gave the most disorganized presentation that I've ever seen. Nevertheless, I got an autographed copy.
☠
Too often I see people reading these "physics for the general public" books that simplify so much they're almost misleading, and then the people who read them assume they're experts and walk away drastically mislead, repeating silly things like the idea that the schrodringer's cat metaphor is meant literally or string theory literally means there's all these dimensions right next to us. Unfortunately some of the things in modern physics-- like strings or quantum mechanics-- if you don't at least sort of understand the math, you don't understand it at all. It's nice to see someone at least attempting to do a "general public physics" book that actually tells it like it is rather than trying to give silly zen koans.
I just hope this book doesn't do anything like imply that there's any evidence whatsoever for the veracity of string theory.
You are in a dark room. You see exits to the north, south and west.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
...but this is the exception to that rule. It's sitting on the corner of my desk, and it's been calling to me since I got it.
I'm actually just taking a couple of months off to finish it properly. Like TAOP this is one of those books you need to read with a notebook to hand. Reading it in the bath could prove hazardous...
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
You've had a long, tedious day at work. You have some money in the bank and decide that you need to spend some of it on yourself rather than hand it over to the Man.
but if this were me described above, I'm spending it on alcohol, or something to give me a cheap thrill.
A geek book that's going to "take an intellectual commitment on the part of the reader" isn't on my top 10 list.
And people wonder why geeks don't get laid more often.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
[
I just got it -- only through the prologue so far. I look forward to working through this over the next say, year or so. I'm thinking this is like GT4, I spent $40 on it and I'll spend a lot more time with it then anything else I could have bought.
The Tao of Physics by FRITJOF CAPRA, which, I think, predates The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This reminded me of another book that I liked for much the same reason: Inward Bound by Abraham Pais (1986). It's basically a history of modern physics, but unlike most such books does not shy away from the mathematics (without which the physics would make little sense). In fact, I just pulled it off of my shelf and see that one of the testimonials on the back is from none other than Roger Penrose...
Joe, a frustrated writer, was writing a book review. He should have been content to convey the qualities of the book, but he couldn't contain his literary aspirations. After struggling through a massive tome on the nature of the universe he deserved to indulge his one vice. No editor would stand in his way. No simple slashdot user could thwart him!
-Peter
Does anyone have an informed opinion on its failings?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I've been a fan of Penrose for a while. Somewhere along the way I ran across the title and concept of this book and put it on my Amazon wish list. But before I ordered it I decided to try checking it out at Barne's and Noble (I know, I'm a bastard).
So here I am looking across the P shelf, and I see The Emperor's New Mind, but not The Road to Reality. Then I realized that thing I thought was a dictionary next to it was the book I was looking for. Thus began my inner debate as to just how much time I was planning on devoting to the subject. After flipping through though, I confirmed that this was in fact the book I had been looking for for so long, the one that would finally bring me up to speed on all the subjects requisite to actually understanding modern research. So, it's on order.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
He's talkin' bout that twister what done torn up mah trailer park!
everything sucks
or in its alternate form
everything is a load of shite
Needless to say this quite brilliant encapsulation of everything has sparked some debate as to whether the shite is real or metaphysical.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'm gonna go pick this one up ASAP! I've been looking for something readable, yet fully useable in light of how much I gained in the desire to learn more of mathematics and physics from Brian Green's The Elegant Universe. Unfortunately, I haven't come across anything nearly as beautifully written as Brian Greene's work yet. This book review makes this book sound downright fun for the nerd in me!
Penrose's take on the universe is a pretty amazing one, but a very difficult one to grasp. The main point is: we just don't know enough about the world yet. Not enough mathematics, and our experiments are nowhere near adequate to get final answers.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Slightly off topic but bear with me. I recently started a new job which gives me about an hour (half hour each way) of reading time on public transport each day. I had gotten out of the habit of reading over the last few years (mostly the fault of my job) and am now hoping to re-educate myself.
The sort of books that I am looking for are readable texts rather than college type text books (pretty much the way this book is described). I have already stuck this one on my public library order list and would like suggestions from slashdotters on other books in the science realm that would be suitable for reading in half hour chunks on a New York subway.
I have already read "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson and although it was a pretty good broad ranging read, I spotted at least one thing I knew was incorrect and reviews I read on Amazon afterwards commented that there were mistakes in the book.
So I am hoping that you can come up with a few suggestions that I can be confident are factually correct as well as readable.
Pointers to lists already on the web are also welcome.
I have a bs in physics and I picked this book up hoping that it was going to be a complete view of physics (without being dumbed down, which it does succeed at) only to find that it's basically a complete guide to untested theories and speculations.
I was hoping it would be a complete guide to physics from newtonian physics to relativity, but it completely skips traditional mechanics in favor of whiz-bang theories that sound cool but don't necessarily have much scientific rigor.
a thouroughly well written, explicit and enticing view of a book, which, judging by your superb detailed description will not only interest geeks, but other broad-minded people. Excellent, cheers ! will order it asap.
...what's still used in university physics courses? Not most of the books mentioned by others. What is? Another extremely weighty tome (and those who've held it know it could be used to bludgeon Governor Arnold in one whack) called Geometrodynamics. I tossed it casually back on the shelf at Borders recently and nearly broke the shelf.
If it's a choice of someone giving me their POV based on their understanding of the math and having an encyclopaedia sized copy of the math which I can work with to get my own POV, well that's a matter of whether I'm overachieving and truly engrossed or looking for coffee table material in which case, sure, I'll look at this book.
But not one more thing by Kaku and those in that stripe. I'm tired of popular crap about "this is really how the universe works" and at the time of first printing it has already been contradicted by seven different Discover articles which themselves descend from thirty plus serious physics journals. A one page pamphlet would do that says, "We have no farking idea. We THINK it goes this way, but we don't really know. Here's a an artist's rendering and some fancy quotes. They've not been fact checked because there are no facts, only suppositions. You can get books with serious formulas at your local college bookstore."
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I saw this book at the store the other day. I couldn't find anything else that looked interesting, but still, the book seemed a little watered down. Not intense enough, no challenge, and not because it was so expertly written that anyone could understand it. The section I glanced at looked primarily theoretical with a peppering of math, not a comprehensive view both theoretically and mathematically.
A friend of mine looked over it after I put it back on the shelf. She's a gifted writer, but couldn't pass high school algebra. She also couldn't get through the first chapter of this book for her life. Seeing her difficulties frustrates me, she and millions of others want to be able to grasp the more complex theories of physics while avoiding calculus. I hope that one day a truly gifted teacher/writter will be able to write a book for this helpless audience.
The book isn't for those fed up with other "quick guides to physics," but more for people who want one that's jam packed with modern physics and will serve their general education well.
"Man, I am so unbelievably stupid."
I betcha the oil is bubbling away at it's boiling point right about now....
Last summer I read a clutch of books attempting to define life. After reading Sex and the Origins of Death by W.C. Clark, I decided to restrict my readings to authors born in the 1930's. I did this because people of this generation seemed to be in a position to sum up a lifetime of scientific investigations in their respective field. Sir R. Penrose is coeval with people of this age group and I suspect his book represents a unique opportunity to review Physics as his generation came to know it. Younger authors, like Lee Smolin might better present the bleeding edge.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Do not read this review and MUD at the same time.
You have been warned. =P
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Flipping through the eleven-hundred pages, you notice the gratuitous inclusion of mathematical formulae and the chapter titles on the page headers... ...suddenly, the lights go out.
You have been eaten by a grue.
*** YOU HAVE DIED ***
Score 0 of 12
Play again?
Wow.
:(
I was clearing out boxes of my childhood toys/books at the weekend and came across the Choose your own adventure book "Inside UFO 54-40".
(The only reason I can quote the title is that I saved it from the local dump and have it here right now). Been flicking through it all day.
Loved this particular book as a child, since I found (and was very proud of the fact aged 9) that the only really good ending has no pages linking to it.
The only way you get to page 101/102 is if you cheat
Working man's guide to pseudo-science?
He is, after all, just a tiler.
There are some very smart people like Daniel Dennett who dismiss Penrose...This is a mistake. Pay attention to Penrose. He knows more about how everything in reality works than I think anyone alive today.
I think you've misspelt the title of the book. Surely you meant: The Honor's Clas's: Hilbert's Problem's and Their Solver's, a classic in the field of egregiou's misu'se of apostrophe's.
"If you look 'round the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." -- Quiz Show
I can't claim to be pi-lingual but it's a fun concept...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Come on. Be honest.
Scattered throughout the book are sections that speculate on Platonism, and half-dead cats, and astronauts orbiting black holes and anthropic principles.
The rest of the book is math. And some of it is hard. Maybe iI was supposed to learn about "Clifford Algebra" from juvenile stories about a Big Red Dog. And maybe, I somehow missed the high school geometry lessons about fiber bundles. Perhaps I've simply forgotten my nursery school lullabies on algebraic topology, but I've found that if you actually read the book for the content, and not for the "mindblowin' shit", it's a tough read. Not impossible, mind you. It's just less literary than Goedel Escher Bach.
A nice review, but I just want the score from 1 - 10.
After working through about a sixth of the tome, I discovered that I do not have the free time this text requires. The only other book I ever had to set down because of its length was "Don Quixote." I plan to finish both books in due time - which may have to wait until I retire.
What's up with such a big book? Does he have Stephen Wolfram syndrome or something?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Does anyone else find it strange here that almost everyone identifies first person writing with Zork and/or CYOA? Or am I the only English major in the house?
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
I'll wait for the paperback. (Or the Infocom game.)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
A deity that would deceive me is a sadistic, sociopathic motherfucker.
I saw that, you little git.
Well, I'll deceive you no more; I *am* that deity, and you're right- I'm one sadistic, sociopathic motherfucker. I've hacked this user's account ('Dogtanian' seemed appropriate because it had my name in it backwards.... ha ha, just my little joke. LAUGH you pitiful humans, or I'll smite you with that plague thing again).
Why? Just to let you know that pissing me off is a *really* bad idea; when the DEITY hates you, you're *really* in the shit. Muwahahahahah! We're talking Old Testament-style punishment here.
You wait till I find you. Hang on.... Anonymous Coward?.... ANONYMOUS COWARD??! You little #$$^#^!!!!!!!! When I find out who you are, I'm gonna wring your damn neck...
What do you *mean* "If you're really ominpotent, you should be able to find me easily?"
Think you're clever, huh? Anonymous Coward.... uh... hmm.
I'll figure out who you are. Eventually.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
...the paperback version comes out in the UK this summer and this autumn (er, fall...) in the US.
I had second thoughts when I saw the hardback price; but I'll probably go for the paperback version.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I am a theoretical physicist finishing my MSc thesis, and have bought the book (over six months ago). I like it very much, for me it just gives a good, mathematically approached overview of everything I've learned in the past few years.
However, I do not feel that just anybody with an interest in the subject can just pick up the book, read and enjoy. It's not that easy, some deep concepts are introduced in just a few sentences. It helps if you do the excercises, but it's still pretty hard. Fortunately, Penrose continuously references back to the relevant chapters when using some material developed earlier. But, like all mathematics, definitions follow each other very quickly, and by no means is it straightforward to remember and comprehend them.
Summarizing: if you want to know more about real physics this book is for you, but be prepared to spend a lot of time and effort, and regard it as studying, not reading.
But maybe it's like the LOTR movies: if you've read the book, they're going amazingly fast, otherwise they progress tediously slow.
Physicists know about the fundamental particles or the nature of space only through the mathematics that model the phenomena. Which is not to say that such English language renderings are useless, but they skillfully devise to distance themselves from what physicists actually do, as well as to reenforce readers' natural aversion to numbers and formulae.
Mathematics is just another language that has a certain felicity in explaining "structure". What you can say easily in mathematics may be considerably more complicated in another language. What do I mean by structure? Given a set you can apply structure to it - be that a topological or geometrical structure via concepts like open sets, or distances (metrics), or an algebraic or categorical structure via operations and mappings. Mathematics is all about describing and explaining that structure in a simple and compact way. The difficulty is that layer upon layer upon layer of abbreviation and compact notation has been built up so there's a lot of language to learn. At the same time the concepts it is describing are often exceedingly abstract - at times well outside anything you could experience - which makes it a difficult language to learn. In the end though, it is still just another language, and given its strengths a language well worth learning.
You can write haiku in languages other than japanese (and many people try) but without the syllabic structure and the tidy succinctness of the language itself it just isn't the same (though I have wondered about writing haiku in finnish). You can explain the deep structures of the universe in a language other than mathematics (and many people try) but without the many layers of abbreviation and the level of abstraction it will be an unbelievably long work that would take decades to read let alone write.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
...but if we're going to bring it down to a level that's approachable by more people, we can at least make the attempt to do it with accuracy. The Tao of Physics, What the bleep do we know etc. is full of just plain old BS. People who know better have a duty to call them on it.
Finding God in a Dog
Watson retorts:
Hey. Why'd somebody steal the expired tag off this old bus in the junkyard?
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Not knowing what you said, you said it. "First person writing," indeed.
Here is a really fun lecture given by penrose in 1999 (slides+audio). In it he talks about some of his pet theories of consciousness, but also a really cool example of transcendental induction.
Simon.
An English major who finds the second person (thou, you) to be indistinguishable from the first (I, We)? Inconceivable!
In order to fake a photo for evidence in a patent suit of course.
'You' is second-person. And other than Zork or CYOA, there isn't much popular literature written in the second person.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
As I posted elsewhere, Penrose needs to be taken VERY seriously. This is plain in Andrew Hodges' [Turing's biographer] extremely interesting lecture on Turing's struggles with the same problems that Penrose points out in ENM.
Turing and Penrose.
What do the slashdot people think of writing such a book for a subject outside of pure physics. I always thought the average person would be quite interested in a dummied down version of electrical or computer engineering.
He was interviewed about the book a few months ago on NPR's Science Friday. Listen to the archived show here:_ 022505.html
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Feb/hour1
Ecce potestas casei!
I bought his book "The Emperor's New Mind" in 1990 because it was rumored to be an argument for why conventional computers could not 'do real AI' - I wanted to read something that cut across the grain of my own beliefs.
:-) but search for "Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics" for interesting reading material.
The ironic thing is that now I very much agree with what he wrote in "The Emperor's New Mind": I have attended enough "Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics" type conferences to finally start to believe in the connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics.
I definitely used to believe in the idea of 'strong AI' on convential computers, but not now.
I don't have time right now to dig up links (it has been a really long work day, and now my wife and I are going to party
-Mark
not to read, but to bend a few pages and put it on my shelf to give me a level of 'apparent knowledge' others could not comprehend.
If my boss asks too many question, I'll use my white board to copy some of the formulas.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This popularizing of "tough" physics and "hard" math is all hogwash.
We all know, deep inside, that the world is run by pixies.
Unfortunately Penrose's forays into the mass-digestion medium of popular science aren't nearly as successful as his contributions to hard science decades ago were. The phrase "resting on his laurels" comes to mind.
When one of my students asks me to explain a question that has no solid answer in capital-P Physics it's almost trivial to invent a theory that sounds convincing, but will it hold up under scrutiny? No. For the average enthusiast, at least familiar with the buzzwords and even some rigorous formalism, the same process can be entertaining but entirely misleading.
This is where I'm critical of Penrose. He's not elitist in the usual sense physicists are. However, his books are about as far from self-effacing as they can be. And they are specious to the nth degree.
As some other posters have said, read Hofstadter's GEB instead. He is the son of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and his book received the Pulitzer Prize. It's a fantastic read.
This is a nerd book, for nerds. Smart people with a slightly unhealthy interest in taking an intellectual commitment in a subject they enjoy.
A geek likes to wear penny-arcade t-shirts and play games while talking about technology they have no hope of truly comprehending.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then what the hell are you doing here? You must have missed the signs on all the doors saying that this is the Secret Dork Lair, where people would rather learn something new than impair themselves with alcohol and bang their fuckin' skulls together.
Oh, I see. You came here to lay your stunning wit on the unsuspecting Slashdot masses, who've been long enough without a real troll that they forgot what the word really means. "Geeks don't get laid." Oh, the hilarity!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Maths is the art of finding what must be true within a system often expressed in liguistic form, but whereas a language is a local (though often approximately copied) utilitarian structure that binds meaning together; mathematics is a one-to-one mapping of a structure that is found to be the same by all practicing mathematicians (which is pretty close to objectivity if you ask me) onto an agreed linguistic form. When mathematicians use different symbols and reasoning, they still find the same things to be true as they find when they use the original set. That is: the linguistic element is arbitary to a high degree; it is not the important thing; rather: the underlying structure that exists before it is expressed symbolically is what is important.
If you believe maths to be, rather than having a language, you will not be a very competent mathematician, for you will be inclined to engage in symbolic manipulation as an arbitary and bizzare exercise without intuiting the underlying nature of mathematical truth.
When I say that maths can be viewed as being less than a language, I mean that the above-mentioned structure is highly restrictive. The potential of using mathematics for conveying "human meaning" (to do with day-to-day judgement and decision-making) is extremely poor. Insofar as mathematics is used to help in everyday matters, it does so by analysing a system that is intuited to have the right properties. Normal language and reasoning is then used to build an analogy with the phenomenon under consideration, but common language and understanding build the bridge, not mathematics.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I remember one epsiode of "The Nature Of Things" where he discussed pseudo-science. Instead of taking this opportunity to explain the difference betwen true and junk science, he trotted out hoary old arguments about how "the establishment" was keeping these people and their ideas down. It was an appalling episode, and I cannot respect the man.
Once upon a time "The Nature Of Things" was a great program - back in the good ol' days.
am I the only English major in the house
On Slashdot? Probably.
After you finish reading about the Hilbert Problem solvers, you might want to pick up John Derbyshire's excellent _Prime Obsession_ that goes thru the Reimann hypothesis that neatly fuses calculus and number theory. If you've studied either, the notion of putting both under the same umbrella is truly psychodelic.
pedantry: from pedant, a boring and repetitive teacher, giving more weight to book learning than is merited.
My advice to anyone writing reviews is that they strive to avoid needless complexity . . .
1100 pages, christ, I'll strain my neck muscles trying to read that on the can...
At the risk of drifting off-topic, I disagree with your comment. That's a reinterpretation of definitions based on 'geek-chic' and all those 'cool' people who decided it was okay to be a bit of an individual - with uniform thick-rimmed glasses, stupid tee-shirts and a cocky attitude that made them feel smarter then they actually were.
Geek -> comes from 'Genius' and 'freak'. It means a smart social outcast, an intelligent person who is eccentric, etc...
Nerd -> is a social outcast, usually obsessive in some way. They can be smart, but the word is also associated with dull people. They can be addicted to sex, puzzles, television, computers...anything as long as it's too an unhealthy degree.
Concrete analysis...
I thought geek meant fool....
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
I always find it fascinating how much is known about 'god', when there is so little proof that he exists (maybe like Santa Claus?). How do you know that a being with the order of intellegence of human^2/ant wouldn't be able to do things that you think only a being 'outside' of physics can do? What we are able to do certainly is not in any way something that an ant can conceptualize.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Whoops....the one time I decide to extoll a deep-rooted belief of both myself and my friends without checking facts and I'm so totally(and I mean 180 degress here) wrong! I bow in humility and beg forgiveness.
Okay, I know I deserve to lose karma for being a twanny, but I honestly thought that ours was the correct definition. It's times like this I wish I'd posted anonymously....
Concrete analysis...
Aww, I wasn't first to mention Wolfram, but this reviewer writing of a "massive new book" is certainly reminiscent of that tome "A New Kind of Science" (I read through it, found it somewhat interesting, but thoroughly enjoyed reading the reviews on amazon, the web, and here on Slashdot), and having read "The Emperor's New Mind" back when it came out, I can't help but wonder about comparisons between these two tomes.
I enjoyed "Emperor's New Mind" as a re-reading on the history/emergence quantum physics that I had previously read about in earlier popular science books, but didn't and still don't believe his conclusion that quantum mechanics is an essential part of the operation of the human mind. Whether "Strong AI" is possible is another argument, and I'm agnostic on that.
So how does this compare? Did he really need to write such a large book, especially after having written "Emperor's New Mind"? Does he rehash much from that book, or is it "all new material" from Penrose?
I'll sooner or later read this, but I still don't feel I know enough about it to know whether I should read it 'sooner' or read it 'later'. And while I actually hope it's a really good book, I must admit to looking forward to a book that generates a lot of satiric reviews as did "A New Kind of Science."
Tag lost or not installed.
The "quantum mind" idea was definitely the theme in his books of a decade or so ago, but this one is really more an argument for re-thinking the direction the majority of physicists seem to be going in trying to come up with a "theory of everything".
The "quantum mind" idea had, at its base, the concept of some new kind of physics that links quantum mechanics and general relativity together, in a way very different from the supersymmetry/string theory take of recent years: Penrose thinks gravity is more fundamental, and quantum mechanics really just an approximation. And he has some strong arguments in this book on why there is something fundamentally wrong with quantum mechanics - particularly the time-symmetry fundamental to the theory. Except for those messy reduction processes embodied in the Schrodinger cat, which few physicists other than Penrose treat as any sort of serious problem.
The other aspect of it is more a philosophical thing (though related to the Godel argument) that somehow our minds have a relationship with the platonic world of logic and mathematics that cannot be explained by ordinary physical processes. But this is book is a very serious one, and he doesn't get into that stuff at all.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Eclectic -- the most overused, misused, differently-understood, stupid word in the English language. Boycott it for your good.
Like most physicists, he suffers from the illusion that he knows everything about everything. His theories of intelligence and conciousness are so bad they are not even wrong.
As far as I can tell, his argument was "quantum physics is complicated. The brain is complicated. Therefore it can only be explained as quantum physics".
The beginning of Winnie-the-Pooh, being addressed to Christopher Robin, is written in the second person.
Maybe that's too esoteric to count as popular literature?
Only in America could an English major writing specifically to complain about the person a text is written in confuse First person with Second person. Gotta love our educational system.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Although I tend to agree with his former grad student in terms of philosophies on scientific theories, I have always been impressed with Penrose. This books sounds like one that deserves a place in the library of Alexandria.
I've an Master's degree in Electronic Engineering and consider myself pretty good at Maths but I found the introduction to maths in this book tough going. The first 10 or so chapters were fine as I'd studied a lot of the material before but he almost lost me when he started talking about manifolds which I'd never studied properly. It took about three or four rereads before I could start to really grasp the concepts.
If I found it that tough, I don't think your average layperson has much of a hope.
For me, it's now on to the actual physics. Wish me luck!
If I hadn't seen such riches, I could live with being poor.
Go to http://feynmanonline.com/ for videos of the master educating on QED with the use of only one mathematical formula. Hard to do hand waving in a book though I guess.
Its one damn thing before another. (Dick Bird 1999)
Funny thing about me... when I get off work and want to spend some money on myself, I either A. Walk over to a section where I want to buy books (since I work in the cafe of a bookstore) or B. Walk outside Barnes and Noble, down a few stores to EB Games. The fact of the matter is they are both places for nerds and I get good discounts at both. =)
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Ahem...there's at least two.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
...I already saw "What the (bleep) do we know?".
It explained everything.
I think.
From the story:
That's a misleading definition of the word "pedantry". Wordnet's definition is better:
:-)
It really is that bad. Nature called it "a masterpiece of psuedoscience".
AI as a field has its own problems, but these guys aren't helping.
Some things do remain. I may never be able to look up at a clear dark sky again without thinking "Ah, look, the Riemann Sphere", for one.
Incidentally, anyone with 45 minutes of spare time and a something capable of playing Real-media files can hear Penrose's own views on some fundamental cosmological questions on the BBC or more specifically here . Martin Rees and Carolin Crawford (a Cambridge-contemporary of mine) are also participants.
So I'll be putting the damn thing aside until I've gotten through some hyperbolic geometry courses and algebra. The writing is clear and enjoyable, the contents get my noodle in a knot.
He should have been content to convey the qualities of the book, but he couldn't contain his literary aspirations.
.... Yay, Slashdot.
Jeez, the guy writes well, that's a problem?
We see so many moronic and contentless articles posted that are written in dumbed down US street-cred speak, and they pass without criticism. Add a small amount of literary flair, and it suddenly stands out from the usual burps and grunts and needs to be put down
The Road to Reality is a ferociously difficult book if you only did high school math. My feeling is that at least the mathematical introduction should have been at least two times as long. As it is, you often get the feeling that so much is left out that it might as well have not been written. For instance, this is how Penrose deals with linear algebra: he starts out with explaining what matrices are, deals with linear trafo's, determinants, traces, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and finally introduces Lie Algebra's... all in 15 pages (including some illustrations). Unless you already know this stuff, forget about understanding it.
Be prepared to do a lot of digging on mathworld, wikipedia and some trips to the library.
What works for me is reading this book with a couple of friends, one of whom is mathematically educated. Your mileage may vary.
Being well balanced is overrated. -- John Carmack
The trouble with Penrose (and yes I have read some of his books, and I am scientifically minded) is his absolutely hardcore anti-religion, and particularly anti-Christian stance, and his belief that he is absolutely right no matter what.
One man versus many billions of people throughout history who have gained so much from following God. Penrose is a vainglorious fool, whose life's works are to a large extent nothing but unproven theories.
The trouble with a lot of people who choose not to follow God is they actually believe the crap Penrose comes out with. Hopefully one day they will all learn the Truth.
The fallacy of his computability argument can be summed up as follows:
What's the catch? The hypothetical algorithm described the mathematician's understanding of mathematics, but only on the assumption that the mathematician is not informed of the algorithm and told that it is sound as a system for generating mathematical truths.
The "proof" is a more sophisticated version of the following argument that human behaviour is not predictable according to the laws of physics:
It would appear that Penrose's understanding of complex analysis etc is better than his understanding of logic and computability.
And just in case Penrose is not wrong, I launched a new mathematical journal titled The Algorithmically Unbounded Journal of Mathematical Truths.
Music: a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality. Musicality: a perceived aspect of speech.
There are at least two.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
I'm an English Brigadier does that count?
Hehehe, I remember that one, found it in my school's library :) It had me baffled for ages before I thought of looking for links to that page in the rest of the book...
Quantum effects of the sort proposed by Hameroff and Penrose are based the folding configuration of tubulin dimers, protein components within the microtubule. Simulations of microtubule excitations suggest topological error correction of global states which may be resistant to local decoherence, independent of any nuclear spin 'tickling' induced by an externally-applied electromagnetic field.
Note also that MRI induced quantum coherence of a different sort has been experimentally observed in the brain.
Nevertheless, you are correct in positing that the burden of experimental proof remains upon those who would advocate any revision of prevailing theory.
This is not entirely accurate: cf. these references.
Are you the very model of a modern major general?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Tom Robbins did an entire book in second person. It's called Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. It was a weird read for me, as "you" are a chinese woman in this book, and I'm not.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Then, of course, there's the tack taken in Stephenson's In the beginning, there was the command line which is that geeks did create the universe by tweaking constants. But at least he was writing an essay, with metaphor, not a serious-minded text.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Not at all, but it (and the Tom Robbins book mentioned below) are rather rare examples. I'm currently writing a research white paper in the second person, but it's not something that's very common as a literary device.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I'd just finished reading Italo Calvino's "If on a winter night a traveler..." a novel written partly in the second person, when I wrote the review. Gao Xingxian wrote some of Soul Mountain in second person. Bright Lights, Big City, a popular novel in the 80's, was entirely in second person. I'd completely forgotten about Zork, to be honest, but the comparisons are funny..
Oops! I meant to write "second," honest!
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Jay McInerney also did one, Bright Lights Big City, which is much better as a book than the Michael J. Fox movie they made from it.
It's a charming story of a coke-addled businessman in 1980's New York, with the reader as the main character.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
h-bar.
Decoherence and biological feasibility. Computer simulations, experimental results and suggestions.