Comments on: ‘The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead’ by Marcus Chown http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/31/the-never-ending-days-of-being-dead-by-marcus-chown/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:21:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Dougal http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/31/the-never-ending-days-of-being-dead-by-marcus-chown/comment-page-1/#comment-273 Dougal Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:58:27 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/31/the-never-ending-days-of-being-dead-by-marcus-chown#comment-273 <p>Damn you physicists, usurping all the interesting non-organic stuff! But seriously, there must be some fun chemistry going on that fun chemists want to talk about. I don't even see any chemistry bloggers around the place. Or maybe they're all really boring. ;-)</p> <p>I've read a few of John Baez's articles, though I can't remember what it was about. Possibly the applications of category theory to physics. Quite intense, though not nearly as hard as <em>n</em>-Category Café.</p> <p>Yeah, the animal rights terrorists probably have quite a chilling effect on people who would otherwise embrace that kind of publicity. But there's still some really funky stuff that's worth explaining. (I spent a night earlier this week reading about heritability of traits and diseases in Helen's molecular genetics textbook. Interesting stuff, with some excellent pictures. Maybe we should just encourage booksellers to sell introductory textbooks as "popular science"?)</p> Damn you physicists, usurping all the interesting non-organic stuff! But seriously, there must be some fun chemistry going on that fun chemists want to talk about. I don’t even see any chemistry bloggers around the place. Or maybe they’re all really boring. ;-)

I’ve read a few of John Baez’s articles, though I can’t remember what it was about. Possibly the applications of category theory to physics. Quite intense, though not nearly as hard as n-Category Café.

Yeah, the animal rights terrorists probably have quite a chilling effect on people who would otherwise embrace that kind of publicity. But there’s still some really funky stuff that’s worth explaining. (I spent a night earlier this week reading about heritability of traits and diseases in Helen’s molecular genetics textbook. Interesting stuff, with some excellent pictures. Maybe we should just encourage booksellers to sell introductory textbooks as “popular science”?)

]]> By: Lawrence http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/31/the-never-ending-days-of-being-dead-by-marcus-chown/comment-page-1/#comment-272 Lawrence Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:27:10 +0000 http://www.dougalstanton.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/31/the-never-ending-days-of-being-dead-by-marcus-chown#comment-272 <p>There is space for science on the shelves (the ever expanding number of scientific journals demonstrates this), just not in popular science books. As you say, it's hard to present stuff rigourously without mathematics. These days you need some really serious maths to do cutting edge physics. Certainly all the field-theoretic stuff in extensions to the standard model and category theory and lie algebras needed for loop quantum gravity are over my head and I've had somewhat more than the average amount of exposure to physics.</p> <p>Hence, you find that people tend to write completely without maths: they can't go the whole way and do the stuff for real, and faking rigour while simplifying things isn't and option.</p> <p>Physics-wise, a nice place to see what's going on in the particle physics based math-phys community is John Baez's "This week's finds". Not weekly, and some of it is pretty hard-going (maths, topology, group theory bla bla bla) but he usually throws in some pretty pictures and is generally good at explaining things.</p> <p>As to why biology and chemistry don't get so much of a look-in: chemistry probably because the physicists have usurped all the really interesting non-organic stuff (high-T superconductors, photovoltaics, and so forth), and also labcoats, really?! Biology not so sure about, clearly lots of interesting stuff if going on. Perhaps it's seen as ripe for the peta/anti-gm lot to attack (even if not even slightly relevant).</p> <p>Lawrence (biased due to excessive training in one of the disciplines)</p> There is space for science on the shelves (the ever expanding number of scientific journals demonstrates this), just not in popular science books. As you say, it’s hard to present stuff rigourously without mathematics. These days you need some really serious maths to do cutting edge physics. Certainly all the field-theoretic stuff in extensions to the standard model and category theory and lie algebras needed for loop quantum gravity are over my head and I’ve had somewhat more than the average amount of exposure to physics.

Hence, you find that people tend to write completely without maths: they can’t go the whole way and do the stuff for real, and faking rigour while simplifying things isn’t and option.

Physics-wise, a nice place to see what’s going on in the particle physics based math-phys community is John Baez’s “This week’s finds”. Not weekly, and some of it is pretty hard-going (maths, topology, group theory bla bla bla) but he usually throws in some pretty pictures and is generally good at explaining things.

As to why biology and chemistry don’t get so much of a look-in: chemistry probably because the physicists have usurped all the really interesting non-organic stuff (high-T superconductors, photovoltaics, and so forth), and also labcoats, really?! Biology not so sure about, clearly lots of interesting stuff if going on. Perhaps it’s seen as ripe for the peta/anti-gm lot to attack (even if not even slightly relevant).

Lawrence (biased due to excessive training in one of the disciplines)

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