I don't have a "Theory of Everything." I won't ever have, or even attempt to devise, a "Theory of Everything." But lots of other people do, and they often present their crankery on the Web and send long manuscripts Proving It to professional physicists. I am constantly surfing physics sites and one of my favorites is the website of Gerard 't Hooft, a Nederlander who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1999. As you can see from this website, Dr. 't Hooft has a wry sense of humor as well as a genuine desire to explain his work to interested non-professionals. And the non-professionals write back to him. Recently, he added a new section to his Website, called How to become a GOOD theoretical physicist. He introduces it thusly:

It so often happens that I receive mail - well-intended but totally useless - by amateur physicists who believe to have solved the world. They believe this, only because they understand totally nothing about the real way  problems are solved in Modern Physics. If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws - and it is an exciting experience if you succeed! - there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it. All necessary science courses are taught at Universities, so, naturally, the first thing you should do is have yourself admitted at a University and absorb everything you can. But what if you are still young, at School, and before being admitted at a University, you have to endure the childish anecdotes that they call science there? What if you are older, and you are not at all looking forward to join those noisy crowds of young students?

What follows is an extensive curriculum plan, starting from beginning mathematics and moving into calculus, topology, classical mechanics, thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, advanced mechanics, and lots more. It goes on for pages.

I am pretty sure that 't Hooft created this section partly as an intimidation strategy for the cranks, in other words, "so you think you know physics, well, learn THIS before you bother me again." But I believe he is mostly sincere and that he is influenced by the MIT internet-based courses which have recently been made available. He has attached Internet and web resources for all of the sections he mentions, and stresses that this curriculum section is only at its beginning. The words which attracted me are the ones about someone who is older and not looking forward to joining crowds of young college students. That describes me. I don't know whether I will go back to university at some point in this quest, but right now I think it's unlikely. 't Hooft says:

This is a site for ambitious people. I am sure that anyone can do this, if one is gifted with a certain amount of intelligence, interest and determination.

Well, I think I have all three of those qualities, especially the last two. But we will see. 't Hooft continues:

Now, here begins the serious stuff. Don't complain that it looks like being a lot. You won't get your Nobel Prize for free, and remember, all of this together takes our students at least 5 years of intense study.

Five years?? In my case, it will probably take at least 10! When I am learning my elementary math and physics, I often feel as though I am mowing a lawn with a scissors. Nevertheless, I still want to mow the lawn. When it comes to Dr. 't Hooft's curriculum, I am only at the beginning of page 1. Fortunately, I am already an English speaker and I already know the Greek alphabet.

In gratitude for his Web curriculum efforts, I dared to write Dr. 't Hooft an e-mail explaining what I was doing and inviting him to look at my own Website. To my astonishment, he promptly sent me a reply! He commented positively on my site, and reminded me that his curriculum section was only at the beginning stages. Yes, this busy elite scientist took the time to send a reply back to a beginning student. This is a class act. I would call it nobelprize oblige.

Vector Detectors

The Red Spine Book's section on vectors proved to be confusing and poorly laid out graphically. It was about the same level of clarity as the old manual for Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 (for those ancients who remember this). So I had to resort to Ruritania again, where our little fantasy royal courtiers were happy to take me on a balloon ride over some rivers, and explain vectors in fairly clear diagrams and text.

My Friendly Mathematicians and Scientists are always telling me how valuable diagrams are. But I often find them confusing, because as an artist I see them as pictures or renderings of "reality" rather than symbolic representations. I have to remember that a vector diagram is not a rendering nor even a blueprint, and that the length and direction of a vector arrow is not meant to describe a three-dimensional reality like a trajectory or a piece of architecture. It is a symbol. I can only too easily over-visualize whatever I am diagramming, turning a simple rectangle into an elevation or a plaza, or a curve into a landscape. Just as with my synesthetic number-colors, I have to turn down my imagination in order to work with the basic elements. Perhaps later on, when I am further into Gerard 't Hooft's realm of theoretical physics, I can allow my imagination back in.

Posted at 11:04 pm | link