Fundamentals

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1. kaycebasquesJan 2025
   My best books of 2024:

   * Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Atkins. Now that I'm into physics I had a hunch that I would now also appreciate chemistry. This book delivered.

   * Philosophy of Mind: A Very Short Introduction by Barbara Gail Montero. I recall it just being a really well-written overview of an interesting field.

   * Systemantics by John Gall. Very entertaining musings on why systems fail.

   * Hard-Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami. Read this while in Japan. A very strange and interesting noir detective story.

   * All Systems Red by Martha Wells. <3 Murderbot <3

   * Desert Oracle Volume 1 by Ken Layne. American southwest folklore. Read it while in Joshua Tree.

   * There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm. Biggest brainfuck I've read in a long time, probably ever.

   * Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek. Physics musings from a Nobel winner.

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2. kaycebasquesJan 2025
   That Fundamentals book by Wilczek that I mentioned is a good start. I'm also reading through the pop-sci classics now (A Brief History Of Time, Feynman's stuff) and they're not disappointing.

   I really like the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press. I've read 30 of them so far (just counted). At this point they basically have a book on every aspect of physics that has interested me at one time or another: black holes, gravity, quantum theory, waves, time, thermodynamics, chaos, etc. Really love being able to literally put the book in my back pocket and read a few pages whenever I have a spare moment. Each book can be very hit-or-miss, though. Some of them are badly written and fail at their basic value proposition (providing a concise and reasonably complete overview of a field).

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3. kaycebasquesNov 2024
   Fundamentals: Ten Keys To Reality by Frank Wilczek (winner of 2004 Nobel in Physics)
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4. ThomasBHickeyOct 2024
   'Fundamentals' by Frank Wilczek explores this: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554034/fundamentals...
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5. sercanovDec 2021
   Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek

   Great intro to particle physics even for an ordinary, non-science person. Blew my head by the very basics of reality is literally a simple formula. Like a codebase.

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6. credit_guyJan 2022
   You can flip this, and look like the bright side: all that huge complexity means lots of things to discover. Nobel prize winner Frank Wilczek writes in his last book "Fundamentals" that learning physics is like being born again.

   Kids have a lot of fun playing with water when they are around 3-5. Fluid dynamics is complex, and it takes our brains a long time to observe and get an intuition of it. All that observation, experimentation, (subconscious) hypothesis formulation, testing, adjustment, retesting is a rewarding experience.

   After we are about 7, we pretty much finish understanding the world around us. Leaves fall from trees, but not straight, sometimes they go this way and that because of the wind -> all this would have produce a sense of wonder in someone who's only 3 years old, but when you are 7 it's just old news. We switch to learning about the human world, via school. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes not, but whatever.

   But when you encounter quantum mechanics, or special relativity, or generalized relativity, or any number of topics in Physics, your intuition fails you big time. You need to go through a new learning process, just like when you were 3 years old. And that's a tremendous lot of fun.

   Now, here's the sad part: a person like Frank Wilczek probably knows everything about physics. All the ins and outs of all the physical theories out there, quantum field theory, quantum chromodynamics (he's basically one of its inventors), general relativity, you name it. For him the number of times he can experience the euphoria of such an intellectual rebirth dwindles by the day. But who knows, maybe that's what it looks like from our vantage point, maybe the world at the frontiers of knowledge is still full of wonders for Frank.

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