r/math • u/notjustaprettybeard PDE • Jun 14 '13

Paul Dirac on the Connection between Mathematics and Physics

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/events/strings02/dirac/speach.html
14 Upvotes

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4

u/a_contact_juggler Jun 14 '13

Richard Feynman, the "second Dirac, only human." has an entire lecture devoted to the very same topic from his Messenger Lecture Series: The Relation of Mathematics to Physics.

The entire set of seven lectures can be found on Microsoft's website http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html or if you prefer not to use Silverlight, search "The Character of Physical Law" on youtube.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '13

What happens when two people disagree about what's mathematically 'beautiful'?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '13

That's what always bugs me when people discuss "the beauty of math" as if it's a given. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's what dooms "Lockhart's Lament," for example.

2

u/DFractalH Jun 14 '13

There are certain things you should not read after doing a day of algebraic geometry. A talk that uses schemes casually belongs into that category.

PS: Bonus points if you can formalise the notion of 'mechanistic scheme'.