Comment on September 2016 Media Thread

Sat, 10 Sep 2016 22:50:40 GMT

Just adding this to my booklist, by Carlo Rovelli, the LQG guy.

The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy

https://www.amazon.com/Anaximander-Carlo-Rovelli/dp/159416262X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

A history of philosophy and science.

"Most of the book is on the history and philosophy of science as well as the nature and evolution of religious thought. In fact, the book's main theme is how scientific thinking was liberated from mythic-religious thinking. This is centered on Anaximander since it is believed that he played a key role in this revolution, having lived in the appropriate period."

And an interview

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-philosophy-of-guessing-has-harmed-physics-expert-says/

One of his more amusing papers on Loop Quantum Gravity, is about building a framework of the universe without time.

"Following a line of research that I have developed for several years, I argue that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role. I summarize here this point of view, explaining why I think that in a fundamental description of nature we must "forget time", and how this can be done in the classical and in the quantum theory. The idea is to develop a formalism that treats dependent and independent variables on the same footing. In short, I propose to interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time. "

http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3832

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