Slow­ly div­ing into Physics and Math­e­mat­ics

I was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in sci­ence and es­pe­cial­ly in physics for al­most as long as I can re­mem­ber. And I al­ways used to read ar­ti­cles and a lot of books about it.

But I al­ways strayed away from going into the math­e­mat­ics of it. But that has changed since last au­tumn.

I start­ed read­ing a lot of physics books, that not just de­scribe things in terms of text de­scrip­tions but also in math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las.

And I am slow­ly get­ting a tee­ny-tiny glimpse of the depth, the math­e­mat­i­cal rea­son­ing and the con­nec­tion(s) be­tween math­e­mat­ics and our phys­i­cal re­al­i­ty.

It is only a very first small step – but I get a deep sat­is­fac­tion from learn­ing and think­ing about it.

The in­ter­est­ing thing for me is, that the im­pulse for me to do it, is the same one, that mo­ti­vates me to de­sign or to write code:

Aes­thet­ics — The deep feel­ing of a con­nec­tion to beau­ty and (by all com­plex­i­ty) to sim­plic­i­ty.

Leonard Susskind and "The the­o­ret­i­cal min­i­mum" se­ries

For starters, I am read­ing the "The­o­ret­i­cal Min­i­mum" books se­ries by Leonard Susskind.

I don't re­mem­ber wear­ing out books like this. It's not that I read every­thing once and be done with it — I read every­thing over and over again, work­ing through it, get­ting a lit­tle bit of bet­ter un­der­stand­ing every time.

There are three books of the se­ries (as of now):

• Clas­si­cal Me­chan­ics
  
• Quan­tum Me­chan­ics
  
• Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­i­ty and Clas­si­cal Field The­o­ry
  

These books are based on cours­es that Leonard Susskind gave in Stan­ford for "nor­mal" peo­ple. You can find all these cours­es on Youtube for your own view­ing plea­sure. And there are a lot more and deep­er cours­es than the books.

These are not easy by any means, but Leonard Susskind makes them very en­gag­ing, in­ter­est­ing, often funny and very human. In his own words: He's try­ing to make it as sim­ple as pos­si­ble but not sim­pler.

And I ap­pre­ci­ate the prag­mat­ic way he tries to teach physics to us non-physi­cists.

Roger Pen­rose

The other books I am work­ing through are by Roger Pen­rose. One es­pe­cial­ly:

• The Road to Re­al­i­ty
  

He's a very deep thinker, a much dryer char­ac­ter than Susskind and has a much more math­e­mat­i­cal­ly for­mal way of pre­sent­ing things. (He is also much more eng­lish.)

A lot he writes about is very much fur­ther down the road from what I am able to un­der­stand at the mo­ment. But it's a very worth­while chal­lenge, try­ing to wrap your head around.

And what I also find in­ter­est­ing: He has a very geo­met­ri­cal think­ing mind and il­lus­trates a lot of math­e­mat­i­cal ideas through il­lus­tra­tions.

I think his deep con­nec­tion be­tween vi­su­al think­ing and math­e­mat­ics is just beau­ti­ful!

Frank Wilczek, Physics and Beau­ty

A third book that fits into the cat­e­go­ry aes­thet­ics and physics is A Beau­ti­ful Ques­tion: Find­ing Na­ture's Deep De­sign by the Nobel lau­re­ate Frank Wilczek. I ac­tu­al­ly read it al­ready in 2018 and this is not math­e­mat­i­cal.

But it is about the con­nec­tion be­tween physics and beau­ty and maybe it will get you hooked too, to take a deep­er look into what lies at the base of our uni­verse.

Ad­di­tion­al read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions

If you don't have the time to read books or watch Youtube lec­tures, but you are nonethe­less in­ter­est­ed in sci­ence:

I warm­ly rec­om­mend to read the quan­ta­m­agazine.