About
I am writing a graduate-level physics textbook (linked at the bottom) aimed at answering the question where does theoretical physics come from?
, meaning I am trying to explain how we come up with the equations we use in physics by starting with the most basic and fundamental principles the entire field is based on. This is an wholly different approach than is used in a standard physics education. The subject is generally taught by just tellling you what the correct techniques to use in a given context are, with at best a terribly logically flawed accompanying derivation. In my book you will find many nonstandard justifications for standard results that I find much more satisfying than what you are likely to encounter in other textbooks or on wikipedia or stack exchange. The value of my book is that it compiles a bunch of hard to find (usually not original) but very useful derivations into one place and attempts to put that information in a natural narrative order flowing logically all the way from Newtonian mechanics to relativistic quantum field theory. At present, I am about 2/3's of the way done, and intend to finish over the next two or three years. Ultimately, I hope this book gets published physically in two volumes.
There comes a time in every physicist's life when they realize they learned everything in the wrong order. We tend to learn the most specific and least general models first (Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, etc.) and then later use them to derive
more general versions (Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics, Gauss' law) which we are led at least initially to believe are equivalent. We teach this way because this was the order things happened historically. However, the old versions and new versions are NOT equivalent. In physics education we tend to cling to these false equivalences by introducing misleading concepts (such as relativistic mass
) or ignoring true discoveries (such as incorrectly deeming the electromagnetic vector potential unphysical) to try to hold the old worldview together as long as possible. This becomes progressively more untenable as one gets deeper into their physics education. One day one is forced to abandon their original worldview and is left uncertain what the right starting principles actually are or how the old ones were selected. Some students give up trying to have a coherent picture of physics altogether and learn to be cynical; they learn to shut up and calculate
. I believe we can do better.
While a typical physics book would present theories as the final dishes of a master chef, hopefully this one can teach you what ingredients to use and how to use them to cook that dish for yourself. I strongly recommend reading the What is the point?
section before reading anything else.
The underlying philosophy and content of my book are strongly inspired by conversations with John P. Ralston.
Feedback & Support
This book is a work in progress! It has errors and typos. Please if you are reading and find errors or have feedback for improvements, let me know!
You can reach me by sending your message to my first name at my last name dot com. Or, you can find another mail for me on my AEI page
If you got something out of my book and want to support me, you can buy me a coffee here!.