Maths and Physics #1: Early Period
You can’t do physics without maths. It’s been that way since Newton. But has it gone too far, many have asked, to a point where physicists fall in love with “beautiful” mathematical theories and stop caring if it aligns with the real world? Phrases like “fairy tale physics”, “not even wrong”, and “lost in math” capture that sentiment. Farmelo Graham’s book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers , traces the history of the relation between physics and maths. The story starts with Newton ’s theory of gravity – the equations matched observations, but, complained the critics (even back then), it didn’t describe the physical mechanism behind gravity. This was also a case of Continental envy – the British worshipped Newton, while the Continent felt he was a mathematician, not a physicist. A generation later, the roles reversed. Frenchmen like Laplace advocated and advanced physics via maths, while the British dismissed such an approach as “flowery regions of algebra”. Not jus...