Having finished my talk at Threadfest for nonphysicists (see two posts back), and having returned hone from Dallas to Scottsdale, my self-appointed task this week, during this break of otherwise calm especially after the recent election, is to devote myself at last to the delayed task of writing a scholarly physics article for the proceedings of the conference I attended last summer in Prague.
This is a monumental task for me, to write my first real scholarly article in a quarter century. Among other things, I have to relearn the typesetting language for physics and mathematics articles, of which I was once an expert at using back in 1997. I bit the bullet and relearned it, because I cannot do such technical things on a computer while also thinking about nature in the deep way demanded to be a physicist.
I need to get the paper out fast. The deadline has already passed, but Martin (who is in charge) assures me I still have time. He has not lined up the referees yet. I have known him long enough to know that I can get in a paper, but I want to do it swiftly as it is bothersome to him to have "herd cats" with the attendees to get their submissions in. Over time I have earned a reputation of being one of the few who bothers to reply to his emails, and to heed deadlines. If I run over, I want it to be worth it. I want to say something meaningful. Fast and meaningful means my paper must be short and to the point. This is the challenge--to say what I need to say in as direct manner as possible. I have no idea who the referee will be. They could be friendly, or they could be hostile, even within our small sect of heretics outside the physics establishment. In principle it should be no problem getting my paper accepted as part of the proceedings, as it will in part report on my talk last June. But I'm addressing big issues. The wrong referee could lose his mind seeing the citations I am going to use. I go on worst case scenario, This my argument must be impeccable.
At home I pace around, then go to the computer and write. I take long breaks when needed to walk out doors in the desert. I take breaks not when I am hard up for thoughts---I have too many to use. Rather I take breaks when the ideas and thoughts are coming too swiftly. I take walks to cool them down. I bring a physics book on advanced theory, on the very subject I am writing about, from the standpoint of its conventional accepted presentation. The book is one of the most well-known on the subject, written four decades ago but still used as a standard reference on the theory of particle physics.
I barely cared about the material in the book for much of my time in graduate school and after, in the twilight when I still did physics, or thought I could. Now, many years later, I return to these sources. I have kept all my books on physics and they are now in sight of me on the shelf as I write this. This particular book is one that had been missing in my library back int he day. I had other well-known books on the subject, and I could not make my way through them, and my budget did not allow for purchase of all the books I wanted. But in returning to physics I acquired this one, using spare income that barely mattered to me now. It arrived in the mail last year, a paperback reprint. As I opened the package, it reeked of scented laundry detergent that had been spilled along its pages, staining them. I could have demanded a refund from the seller, but I decided this was the copy I was meant to have. It still reeks of scented detergent, but less so. As I dig into the later chapters that have so-far escaped my obsession to learn, I smell fresh waves of scent being liberated from the paper.
The condition of the book allows me to take it outdoors without a thought of damage (I have since acquired another indoor-only hardbound copy of the same volume). On some days I walk through the parts of the undeveloped desert near me that still remains undeveloped after the recent park-building that took a chunk of it away, and which lasted over. a year and half, during which I shunned the desert entirely out of sorrow for what was being lost to me.
On this way I went into the park, which I have come to love. The sacrifice was worth it--the small lake which is part of the irrigation system, surrounded by green grass and with proper walking paths. On most days I find it empty, or with only a few other people (so long as I don't go out during prime dog-walking hours). The treasure of the park is a small ramada at its southwest corner, under which are two round metal picnic tables. They are almost never occupied, either one, and so I usually can count on being able to bring my book there, and to sit flipping through the pages, back and forth and all over the book, trying to push forward my understanding of this complex subject by a small amount, looking for some big breakthrough of understanding all of it, but in my wisdom anticipating that if I can walk home with even a small bit of the picture of theory added to my understanding, and have it be a permanent insight, then the time outside will have been well worth it.
I spent a half hour using what are now my methods for absorbing advanced material. One of the basic principles I have learned that saves a lot of time is to realize that you can't just pick up any physics book and read it like a book from the first chapter to the last. Even physicists who know the material don't read the book that way. Classes are taught that way to graduate students, but it doesn't work to do it sequentially.
The subject is a very hard subject, the core subject that gives rise most advanced in theories of particle physics, namely quantum field theory.
How do you learn a subject like that with a book like this? My method is to first memorize the table of contents. Do not memorize it in its detail sequentially, but approach it top down. If the book has sections, learn those first, then the chapters, then the subchapter, etc. If you do this, I guarantee you that you will a much better experience learning any advanced scientific topic, for example organic chemistry, microbiology, etc. The idea is to build an architecture of the knowledge of the subject in your mind, and then to slowly fill in the rooms of the architecture with details.
The ironic thing is that I had stubbornly refused to use my own method on this very book I was taking to park. I had been dong a preliminary "plowing through" of the first few chapters, doing it the hard way. In part I wanted to test my own method, and see what happened once I used it for real.
Sometimes, sitting at the picnic table or on my stool, I let the book (now getting well worn in my day pack) fall open to a random section. This is the most sporadic way possible to approach the subject.
On this day I decided to finally use my method. I was going to liberate myself. I was ready to understand quantum field theory. I needed to know it in a way that I had not known it. I was like Popeye taking the spinach.
The book, at almost six hundred pages (if I recall here) is divided into thirteen chapters plus an Appendix. The Appendix is actually the most important part, because that it where the author shoves the mathematical tools necessary to understand the rest of the material. For now I just memorize the sections, as the terms in the section headings are well familiar to me. It am memorizing them so my mind will associate them with the chapter headings I will now memorize.
I have been reading through various parts of the book for months, so the chapter headings aren't new to me. But until this moment, I could not have told you which chapter was chapter 5. Maybe I could guess. Now I will know, and it will be permanent knowledge.
To memorize the chapter headings, I decide to use the ramada itself, in particular the rectangular edge of the concrete patio on which it stands, which gives way on its various sides to either the gravel path, or the grassy lawn, or (on its rear side) the (relatively raw) landscaped desert portion of the park.
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