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Not to mention ideas that bore striking parallels with QM. It's been a while and I cannot recall the book that suggested this to me, so I have no hope of provid
by PeterWhittaker 13y ago
Not to mention ideas that bore striking parallels with QM. It's been a while and I cannot recall the book that suggested this to me, so I have no hope of providing a reference, but after Democritus and the atom, there were arguments around the might-bes and maybes of atomic time and space.
I love my life and times, I really do, but there are times I wonder what might have been had the theory-and-practice Greeks prevailed over the copy-and-perfect Romans.
Of course that whole Dark Ages thing was a bit of a bitch as well, but....
(Bought Infinitesimals just before posting, looking forward to bedtime reading tonight!)
(Yes, geek. Why do you ask? :->)
- judk 13y agoAre you thinking perhaps of Scott Aaronson's Quantum Computing since Democritus? Even if not, that's a great book, free online.
- PeterWhittaker 13y agoNo, a much older book that was much more on the history of mathematics. My undergrad was in physics and I recognized a lot of parallels between modern math and QM on the one hand and what the Greeks were doing on the other. Aaronson's book is in my pile. I love his work, but that for popular audiences and the more technical stuff. While we're here: Read Valiant's Evolvability.