[HN Gopher] When Feynman met Dirac (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
When Feynman met Dirac (2020)
Author : jorgenveisdal
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-04-05 10:25 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cantorsparadise.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cantorsparadise.com)
| dzdt wrote:
| Site seems to be hugged to death. Backup link?
| wunderflix wrote:
| The site is hosted on medium. I doubt that it can be hugged to
| death?
| ddeck wrote:
| https://outline.com/KGVKhy
| pseudolus wrote:
| Great article with a number of well-known references to
| biographies of Feynman. For those interested in Dirac, some
| excellent biographies have emerged over the years including: "The
| Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom"
| and "Dirac: A Scientific Biography ". [0][1].
|
| [0]
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002LDM8QS/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Dirac-Scientific-Biography-Helge-
| Krag...
| devgoldm wrote:
| It's fascinating reading about giants of academia, that I've
| personally never thought to link together, interacting and
| disagreeing with one another in such a relatable way.
|
| I wonder if anyone's written about a younger Dirac and any
| interactions he got into with his heros, and so on and so forth
| back as far as possible? I'm sure there's an amazing story to be
| told through following this "thread of knowledge" through time...
| punnerud wrote:
| Look at Jorgen Veisdals other submissions on HN; 95% is articles
| he have written himself:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jorgenveisdal
|
| I think this is impressive compared to most users in here.
|
| Yes, this article is both written and submitted by Jorgen.
| sebastialonso wrote:
| It is impressive.
|
| To add information, Jorgen's Cantor Paradise is a paid
| subscription (a very good one) with occasional free articles.
| So what you identify as a prolific submission history can also
| identified by others, as self-marketing.
| iamgopal wrote:
| When I read those papers, I feel, How much relaxed (less
| stressed) one must be to create this. Current dopamine inducing
| attention grabbing world makes it really difficult for such deep
| studies.
| wsowens wrote:
| There were many attention grabbing things (Cold War escalation,
| civil unrest, etc.) in the world when Feynman wrote those
| papers. I can't find the exact clip, but I remember seeing an
| interview where an older Feynman reflected on that time. He
| described a sense of hopelessness and impending doom hanging
| over him for years after his involvement with the Manhattan
| Project. Here's a similar quote to that effect[1]:
| ...I can't understand it anymore but I felt very strongly then.
| I'd sat in a restaurant in New York, for example and I looked
| at the buildings and how far away, I would think, you know, how
| much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth.
| How far down there was down to 34th Street? All these
| buildings, all smashed, and so on. And I got a very strange
| feeling. I would go along and I would see people building a
| bridge. Or, they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're
| crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why
| are they making new things, it's so useless?
|
| Our times are certainly challenging, but I hope we can muster
| the strength and focus to keep building as others did in the
| past.
|
| 1.
| https://books.google.com/books?id=WO9D_BaDDhkC&pg=PA91&lpg=P...
| chevill wrote:
| In addition to all of the craziness going on in the world at
| the time his wife was hospitalized and dying of tuberculosis
| while he was working on the Manhattan project.
| munificent wrote:
| There's a certain category of people who cope with stress
| by becoming absorbed in work so that they can shut
| everything else out. Those people likely do their best work
| _because_ of the tragedies surrounding them.
| chevill wrote:
| There definitely is. I'm not sure if that was the case
| with Feynman, but he sure did produce some great work
| during this era.
|
| I used to be like that when I was in my 20s, but as I get
| older if I get depressed it significantly reduces my
| productivity.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I'm totally on board with this, and I've heard that quote
| too. But I think the OP was talking more about how our
| "distraction environment" today prevents us from having even
| 5 minutes of continued focus, unless we go through herculean
| efforts. Thus limiting our ability to do deep thinking,
| create deep work and make deep choices.
|
| But for sure there were many EPIC distractions of a more
| general nature in that time.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Yeah but we're worse today. On top of all the impending doom
| we have vastly superior weapons of mass distraction in our
| hands and every computer/phone screen. Our attention spans
| have decreased.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| You should read deep work. It's had a profound impact on how I
| consume social media.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work
|
| Behaviors related to smartphones, email, social media etc
| should be evaluated by their holistic impact on our life In the
| same way we do with alcohol, drug use, and other addictive
| behaviors.
|
| The effect it's had on my state of mind is profoundly positive.
| I don't even hear notifications anymore and I am far more
| productive.
| amirkdv wrote:
| Nitpick worth exploring on your valid point about our times:
| while stress can definitely be disruptive to deep cognitive
| work, it's a very different neuro/physiological processes than
| attention/focus (as you say: "attention grabbing world")
|
| One can be quite relaxed but not at all focused and vice versa.
| Jolter wrote:
| Anyone with a link that isn't behind an auth-wall?
| aborsy wrote:
| This comment is not very popular, especially in America, but
| Feynman was by and large a showman. His most celebrated
| publication is path integral approach. Dirac had a paper earlier
| (known as Dirac's little paper), so did Norbert Wiener in a
| different context, on this approach. They didn't pursue path
| integrals, as they could not (and still people can't) make sense
| of them rigorously. Feynman looked up that paper and expanded on
| it.
|
| He also drew useful diagrams, but you know ... :)
| elteto wrote:
| He was definitely a showman, but Schwinger and Tomonaga were
| definitely not. Being a larger-than-life character type does
| not detract from his contributions.
| EngrRavi wrote:
| Oppenheimer's opinion of Feynman seems to have vastly
| diminished after the Shelter Island and Pocono conferences.
| According to Dyson [1]:
|
| "When after some weeks I had a chance to talk to Oppenheimer, I
| was astonished to discover that his reasons for being
| uninterested in my work were quite the opposite of what I had
| imagined. I had expected that he would disparage my program as
| merely unoriginal, a minor adumbration of Schwinger and
| Feynman. On the contrary, he considered it to be fundamentally
| on the wrong track. He thought adumbrating Schwinger and
| Feynman to be a wasted effort, because he did not believe that
| the ideas of Schwinger and Feynman had much to do with reality.
|
| I HAD KNOWN THAT HE HAD NEVER APPRECIATED FEYNMAN, but it came
| as a shock to hear him now violently opposing Schwinger, his
| own student, whose work he had acclaimed so enthusiastically
| six months earlier. He had somehow become convinced during his
| stay in Europe that physics was in need of radically new ideas,
| that this quantum electrodynamics of Schwinger and Feynman was
| just another misguided attempt to patch up old ideas with fancy
| mathematics."
|
| [1] Dyson F. Disturbing the Universe. Henry Holt and Co, 1979
| ISBN 9780465016778.
|
| This quote and an earlier one I made are from Oliver Consa's
| 2020 paper: "Something is rotten in the state of QED".
| wunderflix wrote:
| This all sounds an awful lot like a standard telenovela
| drama.
| da-bacon wrote:
| If only. Dirac and Wiener did not understand the significance
| of the action appearing where it did. Feynman gave it meaning.
| An analogy for what you are saying is that Einstein _just_
| rederived Lorentz's equations. That's one of the most
| interesting characteristics of physics, it's not just math and
| computation, meaning is hugely significant.
|
| I'd also say the path integral is not what he is most known for
| among practicing physicists, but that's another story (I
| recommend "QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman,
| Schwinger, and Tomonaga@).
| wunderflix wrote:
| So he was awarded the Nobel Prize for being a "showman"?
| jorgenveisdal wrote:
| Wouldn't be the first. Bob Dylan, Winston Churchill, Barack
| Obama etc
| sokoloff wrote:
| It seems reasonable to hold Nobel Prizes in advancing
| science to a different level than Nobel Prizes in
| influencing people. Though both are valuable for society,
| the latter essentially _must_ include elements of
| showmanship.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Henry Kissinger
| morelisp wrote:
| There is a tendency for such awards to go to those in the top
| 10% of both the field in question and the top 10% of ability
| to sell themselves, rather than those in the top 1% of the
| field in question.
| nabla9 wrote:
| That can be true for Literacy or Peace Nobel's but not for
| physics.
|
| The amount of cynical consipratory thinking in HN horrifies
| me.
| morelisp wrote:
| 10% is a drastic overestimate for Literature or Peace. I
| would be shocked if Peace is better than random.
|
| Your optimism concerning the Nobels for sciences is
| adorable.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Do you believe that all Nobel prizes are equivalent ?
| aborsy wrote:
| For contributions I noted in my comment. I wouldn't say he
| didn't deserve it (he was a good popular expositor).
|
| You should not neglect the role of politics and presentation
| in academia.
|
| As science became increasingly a valuable commodity, it
| attracted a lot of people with perverse incentives:
| politicians, administrators, research managers, status-hungry
| individuals etc. I see what's happening and it's not pretty.
|
| Frankly, I think it's not a healthy environment and this
| academic system would not last too long. Smart people will
| leave, as they realize this has become an industry not
| different from banking or any other, except the currency is
| fame and reputation, and stakes are so low. It's no longer
| like 1930s, and people like Feynman helped set the stage for
| a new eta.
|
| And it's not surprising at all, once you learn that politics
| and showmanship actually pay off.
| auggierose wrote:
| There are a lot of politicians, administrators and managers
| in academia. To say that Feynman is responsible for them,
| is pretty ridiculous. And to say that Feynman wasn't a
| great physicist makes words basically meaningless.
| morelisp wrote:
| Without looking it up, can you name the other two people
| who won the Nobel with him? Were they lesser physicists
| than Feynman? If not, why so much focus on his life but
| not theirs?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| S. and T., didn't take half a second's thought.
|
| Being a showman doesn't mean that Feynman was _only_ a
| showman. Indeed, one can hardly be an effective educator
| without a strong touch of showmanship in presenting
| ideas.
| morelisp wrote:
| You don't normally win a Nobel for being an effective
| educator or communicator either - and nominally he
| didn't.
| madhadron wrote:
| I have several friends who personally knew Feynman. He was a
| problematic individual in many ways. One of them remembers
| being in an elevator with his girlfriend, and Feynman getting
| on the elevator and immediately hitting on her. Another recalls
| being dragged along to crash parties at Caltech for free food.
| That same one commented that, yes, he was super careful about
| his legacy and all the stories published about him.
|
| But they spent time around him in a working context, and they
| are all absolutely clear in their minds that, beyond the
| showmanship, he was a genius.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Okay, I'll rephrase what I said in the flagged reply.
|
| Could you please rephrase what you wrote here, but without
| using the word "problematic" when describing a person? Thank
| you very much.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Here. You have used that word.
|
| PROBLEMATIC.
|
| You know, not "asshole". Not "womanizer". Not "arrogant" or
| even "abrasive". Not "his feet stank". No. PROBLEMATIC. A
| very nice umbrella term. Very vague. Very accusatory at the
| same time.
|
| Can't wait for the news where reeducation facilities are
| being built for the PROBLEMATIC individuals and measures
| being taken so that no PROBLEMATIC individuals ever remain.
|
| Another problem is, who's going to be the ultimate arbiter of
| who is PROBLEMATIC and who's not?
|
| (Oh, I probably am DEEPLY PROBLEMATIC by misvirtue of even
| talking about this. Keep 'em downvotes coming, but I'd rather
| see people eradicate this word from their vocabularies and
| say instead things like, "some people had reasons to dislike
| him". More, you know, honest that way.)
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. Getting
| provoked by one word and making a flamewar reply out of it
| is definitely not in the set of response patterns we want
| here. We want the kind that lead to more interesting / less
| predictable discussion.
|
| To do this requires resisting this sort of provocation in
| oneself--i.e. waiting until the activation dies down, and
| then either moving on to something else or finding a more
| interesting response to share. More on that here: https://h
| n.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
|
| Also, please don't use allcaps for emphasis and please
| don't go on about downvotes. These things are all in the
| site guidelines--would you please review them
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and
| stick to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it,
| because we're trying to avoid the internet hell in which
| everything becomes consumed by the never-ending flamewars.
| jandrese wrote:
| I've read Feynman's autobiography and at least half of the
| stuff in it reads like someone embellishing the story to make
| it more interesting.
|
| There are parts where he goes totally /r/redpill that would
| get him in trouble today if he were still alive.
| egocodedinsol wrote:
| This comment may be unpopular because it's not tremendously
| useful.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Feynman was a showman but he was also a good physicist. Not
| among top 10 or 20 in the 20th century as many popular polls
| put him, but still really good physicist.
|
| He had great teaching ability. That justifies his fame. Just
| like Gilbert Strang deserves his fame.
| matthewh806 wrote:
| I would say its not a very popular comment because its
| deliberately contrarian and not the full story. Yes, Feynman
| was a showman (amongst many other things) but he was also a
| truly gifted physicist. You can be both those things at the
| same time. And he was.
|
| "Feynman looked up that paper and expanded on it", yes, science
| doesn't happen in a vacuum? Standing on the shoulders of giants
| etc
| [deleted]
| ElFitz wrote:
| Not American, but I would argue that his greatest contributions
| weren't necessarily in exploring the fundamental laws of
| physics but in making physics more accessible, easier to
| understand, and more pleasant to study.
|
| The fact he got his Nobel prize in part thanks to a way of
| _representing_ interactions between particle is quite telling.
|
| His books, and even more so his BBC interview (have yet to dive
| into the Physics lectures) completely changed my perspective on
| science.
|
| I liked it, and wanted to love it, but watching him talk about
| fire and photosynthesis finally made it all click together.
|
| Those weren't abstract formulas, or curious and amusing
| concepts. All of it was deeply tied to everything around me,
| and somehow managed to make it all much more fascinating. I
| didn't know the formulas, or the exact rules, but I got a
| general understanding of each of these processes and, feeling
| like a child once again, _actually wanted_ to know more.
|
| It was suddenly so obvious, and yet... why did it take all this
| time? And why couldn't anyone else help me realise that
| earlier?
|
| I certainly could blame the French education system, which
| isn't really fond of making itself likeable or giving meaning
| to what it teaches, but still... it seems much more widespread
| than that.
|
| So... I wouldn't be surprised if he is both directly and
| indirectly responsible for many other physicists actually
| getting into research and developing this _" intuition"_ that
| comes with truly understanding.
|
| Edit: Also, his explanation is the first satisfying one I've
| ever gotten to "What _is_ fire? " since I started asking the
| question over a decade ago.
| darkerside wrote:
| I've found that my deepest understanding fire has come from
| building communal fires time and again over the course of the
| pandemic, seeing (and causing) the chain reaction grow from
| nothing into a continuous reaction.
| kevinwang wrote:
| Although I wasn't around during the 50s, this comment seems
| likely to be revisionist history to me. The article itself
| quotes Oppenheimer as writing (unsolicited): "He is by all odds
| the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows
| this." and 'Wigner said, "He is a second Dirac, only this time
| human."'
|
| I wonder if perhaps this opinion of Feynman as a showman has
| gotten more popular over the decades as Feynman and the
| physicists who knew him passed away, and more and more of us
| are exposed to him only through his lectures and books. (If
| you'll excuse an aside: a bit like Bill Simmon's thesis on the
| basketball greats Bill Russell vs. Chamberlain -- those of us
| looking back on history, with only artifacts, may draw
| conclusions that would be ridiculous at the time.) I don't know
| if this is the case, but it's a fun speculation.
| Radim wrote:
| Your assessment, while phrased provocatively, isn't all that
| controversial (except maybe in some pop-sci worship circles).
| Feynman shone in popularizing physics, and physicists.
|
| Freeman Dyson, one of Feynman's closest friends (and a
| prodigious scientist in his own right; died last year)
| regularly described Feynman as a "fast calculator rather than a
| particularly deep thinker".
|
| IIRC Dyson picked Fermi as the greatest physicist he'd ever met
| - much to the dismay of reporters, who of course expected Dyson
| to name his buddy Feynman :-)
| morelisp wrote:
| > Your assessment, while phrased provocatively, isn't all
| that controversial (except maybe in some pop-sci worship
| circles)
|
| HN is therefore likely a good place to remind people of
| such...
| EngrRavi wrote:
| The following is Serge's account of Dyson's account of
| Fermi's opinion of QED [1]:
|
| ''' "When Dyson met Fermi, he quickly put aside the graphs he
| was being shown indicating agreement between theory and
| experiment.
|
| His verdict, as Dyson remembered, was "There are two ways of
| doing calculations in theoretical physics. One way, and this
| is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of
| the process you are calculating. The other way is to have a
| precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have
| neither."
|
| When a stunned Dyson tried to counter by emphasizing the
| agreement between experiment and the calculations, Fermi
| asked him how many free parameters he had used to obtain the
| fit. Smiling after being told "Four," Fermi remarked, "I
| remember my old friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with
| four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can
| make him wiggle his trunk." There was little to add." '''
|
| [1] Segre G., Hoerlin B. The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi
| and the Birth of the Atomic Age. Henry Holt and Co, 2016 ISBN
| 9781627790055
|
| This quote is from Oliver Consa's 2020 paper: "Something is
| rotten in the state of QED".
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I recall that fitting example from undergrad physics.
| Nowadays, with deep learning going on with billions of
| parameters being fit, it probably makes somewhat more sense
| to recall that bit of humor.
| Radim wrote:
| Since we're trading Dyson anecdotes, here's a similarly
| awkward one, about how Dyson met Wolfgang Pauli for the
| first time [0]:
|
| > _I remember the very first time I met [Pauli] at a
| conference in Zurich. He was talking with a whole group of
| people about Julian Schwinger, who had just come to
| Switzerland. Schwinger was a brilliant young American who
| had done some very fine work. He was a rival of Feynman;
| they were the two geniuses then. Pauli was saying that
| Schwinger told us all this stuff that actually made sense,
| not like that nonsense Dyson has been writing. At that
| point I came walking up with a friend of mine, Markus
| Fierz, who was also a Swiss scientist. With a twinkle in
| his eye, Fierz came up to Pauli and said, "Please allow me
| to introduce you to my friend, Freeman Dyson." Pauli said,
| "Oh that doesn't matter. He doesn't understand German."
| Which of course I did. That was a good beginning and we
| were friends right from the very first day._
|
| [0] https://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/my-life-with-the-
| physics-d...
| lalalandland wrote:
| Murray Gell-Mann talks about Richard Feynman
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE
| adrian_b wrote:
| I agree that his original contributions might not be so
| important as believed by those who actually do not know them in
| detail.
|
| On the other hand, as a child I have enjoyed very much the
| Feynman Lectures on Physics, much more than most other similar
| books.
|
| I am certainly very grateful to him, because his work had a
| very positive influence on me, when I was young.
| signa11 wrote:
| are there similar books on lev landau ?
| sn41 wrote:
| Not a biography, but a collection of memorial articles and
| reminisces:
|
| https://www.elsevier.com/books/landau-the-physicist-and-the-...
|
| Also, I found the autobiography by Sagdeev (one of the <50 who
| finished the "Theoretical Minimum" of Landau) to have some nice
| anecdotes about Landau:
|
| Roald Sagdeev, "The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Adventures
| in Nuclear Fusion and Space"
| signa11 wrote:
| thank you kindly!
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| such simpler times. nowadays one of them would be busy cancelling
| the other. judging from the replies, some are tempted to do so
| retroactively
| racl101 wrote:
| Feyman has some post mortem heat on him under the lens of
| revisionism. Namely, as it pertains to his treatment of women.
|
| In short, some people think he was sexist at best and an abuser
| of women at worst.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| That is terrifying. I learned physics from his textbooks -
| ussr samizdat. I googled allegations against him and all I
| saw was a wall of vague text from a cardboard cut, predatory
| sensationalists, all cross referencing each other
| morelisp wrote:
| > all I saw was a wall of vague text from a cardboard cut,
| predatory sensationalists, all cross referencing each other
|
| I assure you his FBI file -
| https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-
| america-10/fbi... - is not vague, predatory,
| sensationalist, and does not cross-reference any discussion
| you may find on the web today.
|
| _His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several
| occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his
| calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during
| which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac
| about and smashed the furniture._
|
| Feynman's autobiographical writings about women are also
| disgusting enough by modern standards.
|
| I don't understand why you would think having developed an
| excellent physics course is incompatible with that (or vice
| versa).
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| what do you think would be the worst, most shocking
| revelation in your own 300pages long FBI file? especially
| one that includes a deposition from a former spouse who
| was seeking divorce settlement at the time, plus
| depositions of everyone you broke up with? i can only
| speak for myself, but my hypothetical file would have
| made considerably more interesting read than feyman's
| morelisp wrote:
| You could take issue with the accuracy or provenance of
| the file (which we can then discuss if you actually _do_
| rather than merely insinuate you _could_ ) but
| nonetheless it is none of "vague text from a cardboard
| cut, predatory sensationalists, all cross referencing
| each other" which is what you originally claimed.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless
| you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated
| controversies and generic tangents._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| As an ex-physicist, these were the golden years of physics.
| Studying and then doing your PhD at that time must have been
| fascinating.
|
| Today's physics really bland. Either we look into some fantasy
| worlds we will never test (quantum foam & co), or extremely niche
| ones.
|
| My sons are fascinated by science and I am lightly driving them
| towards biology (biophysics, bioinformatics, ...) because I feel
| this is where the revolutionary changes happen and will happen.
| leephillips wrote:
| As a physicist, I would say that physics is still and will
| always be beautiful and fascinating, but I also believe that
| biology is where it is happening now.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Physics IS beautiful and fascinating. I am so glad that I
| studied that and went though a PhD.
|
| It is especially fascinating during the first 3 years, when
| you slowly discover some unexpected links between the
| disciplines. When I discovered Noether's theorem I was in
| awe.
|
| Then it gest more and more abstract, drifting away from the
| reality (I do not have QM here in mind but rather its
| evolution).
|
| Thanks to the confinement we have in France due to COVID, I
| had the opportunity to take over a part of the duties of the
| National Education services :) Telling my children about
| mechanics and all basic topics was awesome. I got over
| excited several times and they had to cool me down.
|
| Physics will always be my first love, but the future is
| elsewhere.
| leephillips wrote:
| "When I discovered Noether's theorem I was in awe."
|
| The same thing happened to me. Many years later, I thought
| that it should be more popularly known, so I wrote this:
|
| http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/05/the-female-
| mathematic...
|
| And now I am writing a book about it.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| This is really an interesting article. I will be watching
| for the book as I also find that her works is really
| unappreciated despite blowing student's minds when
| learning about the theorem.
| domnomnom wrote:
| Why not computer science?
| leephillips wrote:
| Computer science is not science, it is mathematics. Great
| stuff, but quite different stuff.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Computer science is not science
|
| Disagree profoundly.
|
| And if perchance you got to that conclusion because you
| believe you can't apply the scientific method to CS (as in:
| formulate a theory about how the world "is", design an
| experiment to test the theory, run the experiment, rinse,
| repeat), you are mistaken: when dealing with systems of
| exploding complexity (which is, btw and imo, what physics
| is all about as well), this is a very fruitful attack
| strategy.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I think that the theoretical aspects of CS are
| interesting, this is lots of math (especially crypto) and
| lots of formal proofs (algorithms).
|
| Being able to predict how complex and long simulations
| will be is great as well.
|
| BTW I think that "Computer Science" is interpreted
| differently in different countries. In France for
| instance we have _informatique_ which means "things with
| computers" and usually is understood as "development" or
| "system/network administration". _
| sudosysgen wrote:
| As a francophone, is informatique not supposed to be
| lexically close to other sciences in -ique to denote it
| being closer to Computer Science in meaning?
|
| As the academie put it: "science du traitement de
| l'information"
| leephillips wrote:
| I think you only think that you disagree. But I could be
| completely wrong.
|
| The method that you describe is used in exploring
| mathematical landscapes, including CS. But, still, some
| people (like me) find it useful to distinguish between
| mathematics (including CS) and science, by which we mean
| empirical science. But I would agree strongly that the
| boundary is very fuzzy.
| sebastialonso wrote:
| It seems in different countries (and universities)
| Computer Science mean different things.
|
| In my country, Computer Science is exclusively
| theoretical study of some areas of mathematics. You don't
| go into CS to run experiments, just like in mathematics.
| You go to study theorems and complexity theory.
|
| Anything related to the act of developing software is
| called Software Engineering/Informatic Engineering.
| Totally different things: as different as a mathematician
| and a bridge builder. In the real world there's an
| evident intersection between CS and SE, but in academia
| (in my country), CS _is_ math.
| zoolily wrote:
| Computer science is a combination of fields, including
| mathematics (theory of computation, cryptography),
| empirical science (empirical software engineering, HCI,
| etc.), and engineering.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Why computer science?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| They are not sufficiently interested in the theory of
| computation for this to work out.
|
| They are more into applied science (applied to everyday
| life). Theory of computation is certainly interesting,
| though.
| [deleted]
| gerikson wrote:
| I really need to re-read Gleick's "Genius".
| drummojg wrote:
| It's my favorite work of nonfiction.
| zoolily wrote:
| It might be more interesting to read a different Feynman
| biography. I read Genius first, then Mehra's The Beat of a
| Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, which
| I liked better.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-05 23:01 UTC)