Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
It all really boils down to your definition of simplicity and beauty. What most of these theoretical physicist call simplicity, would for most of us be a completely jumbled complex mess. Mostly unintelligible. However it's not too difficult to appreciate the beauty in many of their equations, especially when you reduce the workings down to the final answer. It's those answers, like E=MC^2, that hold the beauty within them. The simplicity of an equation like that, yet it holds so much power (literally) in describing reality. Fractals...what could be more beautiful than those equations. Nothing to them, yet they describe such complex patterns. Patterns that you can find anywhere in nature. They are the outcomes which you can appreciate, although the workings behind the equations are anything but simple...witness string theory. Simple and elegant in it's description of reality, yet so complex mathematically.
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Yes the mathematics is very complicated and messy, even to a theoretical physicist. This highlights one of the major problems with modern day physics, is the increasing intrusion of pure mathematics into that discipline.
String theory and Gauge theory require algebraic topology as a minimum prerequisite.
In my days at Uni algebraic topology was taught in third year and honours Pure Maths.
These days it's common for theoretical physicists to work in conjunction with mathematicians as the physicists do not have the necessary mathematical knowledge.
Regards
Steven