[FRIAM] Penrose: The Road to Reality

[Günther Greindl]

Dear Owen,

I am actually reading it at the moment, I am at around page 300. It is 
my second go, the first one was before I had CompSci Math under my belt 
and I got lost.

This time is much better, although he of course employs a rather broad 
sweep of mathematics, most of which you will only hear as a physics 
student (like Riemannian geometry etc) But the going is quite nice, 
though you have to  believe him some stuff.

I have also bought Needham's Visual Complex Analysis (excellent book!!), 
and concepts somewhat thin in Penrose's book make sense after going 
through a chapter in the Needham book. (Penrose loves complex analysis, 
and I am beginning to share his fascination :-))
Also for the later math chapters some additional mathematical literature 
is recommended.

I can really recommend this book - I have of course already made "sneak 
reads" into the physical sections, and if you work through this book 
(instead of reading it casually and ignoring the parts you don't 
understand) I guess there is no quicker way to be informed about 
modern/foundational physics at a considerably more than superficial 
level (the next step is to study physics, really).

But it will take work - that is the question you have to ask yourself: 
if you are willing to "tackle" the book instead of just "reading" it, I 
give it a serious thumbs up :)

Cheers,
Günther



Owen Densmore wrote:
> OK, I admit it .. I find the book kinda fascinating.  This review by  
> Jaron Lanier, is quite enthusiastic:
>    http://tinyurl.com/2kb5f8
> 
> Has anyone on the list actually read most of the critter?  It's a bit  
> daunting at 1099 pages!
> 
>     -- Owen
> 
> 
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-- 
Günther Greindl
Department of Philosophy of Science
University of Vienna
guenther.greindl at univie.ac.at
http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/

Blog: http://dao.complexitystudies.org/
Site: http://www.complexitystudies.org