NOT EVEN WRONG: THE FAILURE OF STRING THEORY AND THE CONTINUING CHALLENGE TO UNIFY THE LAWS OF PHYSICS
Book ID/图书代码： 0716.0005B10243
English Summary/英文概要： Not Even Wrong tells a fascinating and complex story about human beings and their attempts to come to grips with perhaps the most intellectually demanding puzzle there is: how does the world work at the most fundamental level and what is the role
of mathematics in its description? The author’s perspective on this story is unusual since he has worked in both leading physics and mathematics departments and holds very sceptical views about ‘strIng theory’, the subject that has dominated research in this field for the past twenty years.
The book begins with an historical survey of the experimental and theoretical developments that led to the creation of the phenomenally successful so-called ’Standard Model’ of particle physics around 1975. Despite its successes, the Standard Model does not answer all questions that one would expect it to address, and for the last thirty years physicists have been trying to come up with a better theory. What the remaining questions are is explained in detail, together with the history of attempts to answer them, including the spectacular new mathematics that has arisen from these efforts. Lacking guidance from new experimental results, physicists have followed the principle that one should be looking for more ‘beautiful’ theories, and here, Peter Woit considers what the role of beauty may be in mathematics and physics.
In recent years string theorists have found that the theory seems to lead to an unimaginablY large number of possibilities and may be inherently unable to make predictions. The author explains what physicists’ hopes have been, why they haven’t worked out, and what may be more promising directions for investigation. Not Even Wrong puts the reader in a position to follow this increasingly controversial story as it continues to develop in the years to come.
Peter Woit is a physicist and mathematician who is currently a Lecturer in the Mathematics Department at Columbia University. He graduated in 1979 from Harvard University with Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics, then went on to get a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University. He has been postdoc at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook and at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley. Since 1989 he had been teaching at Columbia where in recent years he has taught graduate courses in quantum field theory, representation theory and differential geometry.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： NOT EVEN WRONG讲述了一个非常有趣而复杂的故事，有关人类如何破解那个让人绞尽脑汁的大难题：这个世界到底是怎么运作的，以及数学在其中的作用？作者本人的观点相当独特，因为他在很多重要的物理和数学系中工作过，对“超弦理论”始终持怀疑态度-----“超弦理论”在这个领域占到相当重的比率。
作品的开头是从历史地角度审视了诞生了所谓的粒子物理的标准模型的实验性和理论性的发展状况。尽管标准模型取得了巨大的成功，但它还是无法解开所有大家期望它可以解开的问题，所以三十多年来物理学家一直在努力希望能够想出一个更了不起的理论。那些尚未被解开的问题被一一详细地阐述了，同时也了解到了历史上有多少聪明人企图解开这些问题而付出的辛苦努力以及为了解开这些问题而衍生出来的新数学学科。
最近几年里，超弦理论学家发现这个理论可以推广出无限多的可能性，而且本质上讲是根本不可能预测出的。作者阐述物理学家究竟期盼些什么，为什么他们无法破解迷团，以后研究的方向该是哪些。这部作品则让读者同步了解这个故事。
Awards/获奖情况：
About the Author/作者介绍： Peter Woit是物理兼数学家，现在是哥伦比亚大学数学系的讲师，1979年毕业于哈佛大学，取得了物理学的学士和硕士学位，然后继续去普林斯顿大学深造获得理论物理学的博士学位。他还是斯托尼布鲁克大学的理论物理学院的博士后，以及伯克利大学的数学科学研究所的博士后。1989年开始他就在哥伦比亚大学担任老师，最近他开始教授量子场论、表征理论、微分几何。
Format:HARDCOVER
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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