The hero of my college days studying physics. His methods in quantum mechanics are the best to this day. He had the modesty of the true sage, and moving to FSU was part of that charm, as well as improved weather for an 80 year old. I drove my Austin Healey to FSU to get him to sign a book, he was excited about the car and signed my book , we talked about Eddington as I recall.
I love the story that young Physics Department members at FSU opposed Dirac’s appointment (on the grounds he was too old) only to be told it was like the English Department opposing the recruitment of Shakespeare
Excellent presentation on Paul A.M. Dirac. I might add a couple of credible anecdotes regarding Dirac. A French physicist came to Dirac's home to discuss some cutting edge physics. The physicist was escorted into Dirac's study and he preceded for some time, trying with great difficulty to explain his work in English to Dirac. The physicist was clearly having considerable frustration with his limited spoken English. After quite some time, Dirac's sister, Betty, entered the study with some tea and biscuits, speaking fluent French, and wherein Dirac responded in fluent French. The French physicist who had spent considerable time frustrated in trying to express himself in English inquired of Dirac: Why didn't you tell me you spoke French. Dirac replied: You didn't ask. Another anecdote is from his days at Florida State University. The Physics Department held seminars which Dirac would often attend, sitting near the front row. He appeared to be dozing off throughout the presentations, but during the question & answer period, he would make brilliant comments and ask appropriate questions. He seemed asleep, but was all the while quite lucid.
Regarding the first anecdote, lol. Typical Dirac. His father was a teacher of the french language and for this reason Dirac learned to hate the language. But it makes sense that he was very fluent in it. Regarding the second anecdote, I suppose he'd do what I sometimes like to do. Was there, listening carefully with closed eyes. Sometimes vision distracts thought ;).
Pure mathematician , neither found of physics nor of historical science. Yet I read the rather thick book (The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom ) by Graham Farmelo . A great piece of work in which he shows the same clarity as in this video.
35:43 "Mathematics is a game where mathematicians invent the rules. Physics is a game where the rules are given to us by nature. What is interesting is that the rules of nature appear to be in the same mathematical rules as the mathematicians have concocted"
+David Watermeyer: not so! Matrix theory states that we are a quantum event where nature (the universe) is using us to explain to us what is happen! Think about it!
I’m sympathetic to Dirac’s notion of beauty or elegance as a guide, but I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt. We know of cases where aesthetic intuition about theories were viewed as sufficient grounds for their acceptance. For example, the Ptolemaic model of the universe as geocentric was regarded as true, due in part to its aesthetic appeal. Later, challenges to the model were viewed as heretical. Copernicus had to have his work published posthumously for that reason. I think it is important to be wary of overly strict adherence to any prescriptive approach, such as beauty as a guide to finding paths to truth and discovery. The same goes for received wisdom.
I believe the lecture mentioned at 35:18 is "The Relation between Mathematics and Physics". I understand it was given in Edinburgh, February 6, 1939 in relation to the JAMES SCOTT prize. I hope this text helps with finding a copy.The video description, or linked website could benefit from a list of references and maybe even trustworthy sources for the lectures and papers mentioned in this talk.
29:28 “the only equation in Westminster Abbey” I was about to object, when I realised this was filmed before the passing of Hawking. RIP to two Cantabrigian heroes
1971, at a conference meeting, Dirac expressed his views on the existence of God.[61] Dirac explained that the existence of God could be justified only if an improbable event were to have taken place in the past: It could be that it is extremely difficult to start life. It might be that it is so difficult to start a life that it has happened only once among all the planets... Let us consider, just as a conjecture, that the chance of life starting when we have got suitable physical conditions is 10−100. I don't have any logical reason for proposing this figure, I just want you to consider it as a possibility. Under those conditions ... it is almost certain that life would not have started. And I feel that under those conditions it will be necessary to assume the existence of a god to start off life. I would like, therefore, to set up this connection between the existence of a god and the physical laws: if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god.[62]
35:40 "Mathematics is a game where mathematicians invent the rules. Physics is a game where the rules are given to us by nature. What is interesting, is that the rules of nature appear to be [written] in the same mathematical rules as the mathematicians have concocted." -Paul Dirac
There is a simple reason for that. As Man is made in "the image of God," his mind must inevitably reflect the thoughts that God had when He designed His universe.
@@stephenphillips4984.. This is far more mathematically beautiful as it is simpler than the current bloated Standard Model and has intrinsic, quantised super-symmetry at its heart... Promotes the positron to its rightful place. It is cold, hard, materialist, realist and utterly godless, making it far more beautiful than any ugly old creation myth. God is an ugly character, a crux, an excuse, a lazy cop out. -- Bottom-up Thought Experiment... Constraints: As few base forces and particles as possible to form a coherent, integrated 4D multi/universe model -- Subspace Charge Field: +ve charge cells (quanta, +1) held together by free-flowing -ve charge. Matter-energy field conserves momentum -- Matter-Energy: Matter is focused energy.. Energy is mobile matter.. Momentum conserves velocity.. Force changes velocity and/or direction -- Positron/Up Quark/Graviton (p+): Free, out of place cell warps the field, radiating AC field cell vibration 'blip' spheres at C + 6 DC spin loops -- Electron/Down Quark (e-): Hole left behind warps the field, radiating AC field cell vibration 'blip' spheres of opposite phase at C + 6 DC spin loops -- Noton/Dark Matter (n+-): Exactly opposite phase close p+ and e- annihilate (ie. entangled pair created together (e_p) ), else a noton forms -- Nucleons: Proton: P=pep.. Neutron: N=P_e=pep_e.. Beta-: N-e>>P+e.. Beta+: P+e_p>>N+p.. Alpha: A=PNPN=PeP_PeP=(pep_e_pep)_(pep_e_pep) -- Heavier Fermions: Larger holes and chunks of subspace field rapidly disintegrate to p+s, e-s, n+-s and/or annihilate to regular = empty field -- Electrostatic Force: Recoiling blip spheres propagate. Opposite direction + and - blips form a vibrating AC bond, same sign=phase repel -- Instant-Off Long Force: AC (longitudinally blipping) subspace 'flux tube' as thin as 1 cell wide. Each cell and its -ve charge move in contrary motion -- Spin: e-s and p+s pull in the 12 surrounding cells, or -ve charge that pulls cells, that then bounce out, stabilising as a torus of 6 in/out (N/S) DC loops -- Strong Force: Spin loops merge and form flowing DC circuits between e-s and p+s -- Mass: Sum of the lengths of all strong force bonds + near electric field. Notons have compact strong force bonds, Protons' are long as 2 p+s repel -- Magnetism: Some spin-aligned atoms' p+s and e-s' strong bonds join in a shorter straight path. Energy conservation results in external force circuits -- Weak Force: Geometric structural charge balance instability. Possibly noton hits statistically tipping the balance -- Photon: Charged particles moving up and down (transmitter, atomic electron) form a radiating transverse wave blip pattern -- Double Slit: Laser light / particle centre's preceding, extended subspace distortion diffracts, interferes, forming wave guides observation destroys -- Dark Gravity: p+ traps 1 quantum of -ve charge so void cell size/gap grows (and matter's shrinks?) forming a macro -ve charge gradient -- Bang Expansion: Loss of -ve charge to the multiverse?.. Bang ejector velocity petered out, magnified in time by outward momentum conservation -- Gravity Wave: Longitudinal wave where the entire field in a large region is effected in unison for a duration -- Big Ping: A dark crystal universe collisions' intense gravity wave forms e- & p+ pairs inwardly at C that annihilate or form notons, Protons, Neutrons -- Big Bang: Ping wave collides centrally? Field blast forms matter + a large hole (then Big/Dark Refill)? Fast -ve charge loss? Noton crystal exploded? -- Black Hole: Absorbs matter and energy. Noton crystal (with a core returning to empty field)? Large hole in the field traps anything entering? -- Frame Dragging: Entire sphere of subspace cells rotating around a point in unison -- Time: Cell to cell blips take a constant time. Gravity shrinks cells so light slows but locally measures C as circuits lengthen in space & time, adding mass -- Makes more sense than making up bosons to carry force and mass, quarks that don't solve the anti-matter and dark matter problem, (anti) neutrinos, loads of fundamental fields, extra spatial and temporal dimensions etc, that ultimately don't tie relativity and quantum mechanics together properly or well... They should at least be honest and call their 'spatial dimensions' geometric/field dimensions or something.. Magic Space is not my cup of tea.
Im such a Big fan of Dirac and all of the these people Einstein , Bohr etc haw could you not!. Science is more important than ever especially for the young generations. It would be nice to hear about the road science has been at the last 400 years. So very important for us these stories. They can inspire young people to take on physics.
Problem is a load of Nazti Governmentalistsm (Uber-Libs/Sozialists/Commies/Republicans) took over from the 30s onwards, confusing the world with stupidly expensive high energy physics experiments that discover no new useful materials, deep space telescopes and probes that are of no use to man nor beast, Climate Control uber-science that blatantly flouts the very sensible Anti-Weather Warfare Treaty... -- 90+ failed Tokamaks, and still they want more, instead of Thorium Molten Salt Breeder Reactors, because the Scientific-Military-Industrial-Data Collection Complex is addicted to enriched uranium and Liberal Science doesn't know when to give up... blah, blah... Neutrino detectors, gravy train wave detectors... moon missions.. Sort out Earth first - without turning it into a climate-controlled weather war zone. -- I respect the old masters, the new lot have wasted trillion$ and trillion$, and so many of the best brains... plus Watts and natural resources... It's a disgusting Nazti Neo World Order Scientific Dictatorship!... It's a Waster's World...
According to a story by Abdus Salam, Dirac didn't believe in supersymmetry. He had said to Salam (after the latter had delivered a lecture on supergravity): " If supersymmetry is real, it would have been discovered a long time ago." Was that the reason why Witten forgot the details of the conversation with Dirac (how can you forget such a conversation?), as the speaker seems to have told us?
I lived in Tallahassee during Dirac's last years and I regret never attending one of his lectures. He was said to have stated, "When God designed the universe, He used beautiful mathematics."
@IggyDalrymple: While watching this documentary I realised why Richard Feynman appreciated - for lack of a better word - Paul Dirac. The latter climbed trees in professorial garb and the former played bongo's in a bathing suit. However, what is more, these were two BRILLIANT men whose work we have inherited and appreciate.
Beauty in Euler, in De Moivre, in Bayes, more beauty in Relativity, in Schrödinger, in Dirac's own equation. Symmetry is the root of such beauty, I think, and invariance in reference frame change, is the fruit of beauty too. Least squares equation -fitting is the whacking of a tulip with a club hammer.
So, I Re-cognise the parallels of educational development and the intuition put into words and back by the experience of Geometric Drawing and Perspective Projection Techniques made of making in terms of time-timing sync-duration motion Actuality. Magnetic Monopole Thought Experiments should be associated with BBT.
Dirac is my favorite because his theory fits my theory! Like he doesn't like quantum mechanics because I can't fathom who would. Thankfully it isn't that way but I like it because it allows us to do anything we like (time travel; pan jumping; and, so much more)!
Everything I've ever learned about math and physics (meaning, principles of the Universe), underscores for me that Dirac was correct to insist upon real beauty in equations, if they are to accurately convey the workings of God, or whomever you credit for Creation. There are simply too many countless examples of such proven beauty to ignore that this criterion is essential. -- I admire Dirac increasingly the more I study him.
You are wrong to infer that Dirac saw a God as a requisite to beauty in equations describing nature. You are injecting your own convictions here. Study him better.
@@f-xdemers2825 I understand that Dirac was agnostic. In my comment I allowed for "whomever" created the universe, and by that I also meant "whatever". I myself have no dog in the hunt, so am not injecting my own convictions, certainly not religious ones. So I would sit on the agnostic side of the fence too. Certainly something caused Creation, even if is just physics itself. From where did integrated physical law originate? What created physics and why is it so pointedly concisely mathematical? The point I was trying to make was that many, if not most, cosmologists and physicists are in awe of the astounding degree to which physical laws are so often characterized by great mathematical beauty often with an inexplicable degree of simplicity, concision, and inter-relatedness. To my knowledge, no one has explained this remarkable phenomenon.
What could be more beautiful than the fine structure constant? 1/((101)(e/2)) is the charge to mass ratio of an electron. The electron contains 101 unit particles of charge. But no you guys are looking in the mirror and appreciating the beauty of yourselves.
Interesting talk and nice to hear more about Dirac. Not sure if QFT is the true description of reality, but if a theory agrees with nature to 1 part in 10^12 (or of that elk) then it probably deserves attention and respect. Geniuses are still human, capable of mistakes. And I think his apparent obsession with beauty in theories may have been just that. I think a balanced approach is best. Whether that be from an individual or a community of individuals. Nature is nature, and just because someone thinks something is beautiful, doesn't make it right or wrong.
But that so respected theory may be the result of an underlying, yet to be discovered theory that is more beautiful. We are currently confused since quantum mechanics is not complete, but that doesn't make it wrong either.
It is strange to learn the timing of his brother's death in 1924 and how this preceded his productive period. This was the year in which logical positivism suffered a mortal wound at the tip of Gödel's pen, the results on Undecidable Propositions. Paradoxes. Leaving the goals of positivism aside where this thrust left them, I think it may have been the reason that Dirac eventually lost faith in his own original direction. The equivalence of linear algebra and analytic methods in harnessing the solutions of the wave equation points to the possibility of the arithmeticisation of analytic results, by the rational parametrization of the circle. Such a programme is obviated by the death of arithmetic; real number theory is what remains to the empirical theorist by way of metaphysical foundations. But a foundation on the contradiction of 'defining infinity' is not logically overcome by pragmatism. Only experimentally, as it were. It is clearly the arithmetical nature of linear algebra which suggests that analytic solutions in physics with quadratic foundations may very well be pointing to something structurally significant numerically that could be ordered in group-theoretical terms. Algebraic field theory complementing physical field theory. It's very exciting food for thought. But both in pure mathematics and applied physics, the preference for statistical models and abstracted quantities in floating point notation with standard deviations as a metric resolvent was buttressed by the apparent failure of arithmetical proof. Personally I do not blame Dirac for being disappointed. But as Pauli noted, Dirac was not actually religious; "There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet!" But a prophet he was nonetheless. For both physics and mathematics rely upon synthetic a priori mathematical principles which are by definition metaphysical. This metaphysics does not arise "after" or "out of" physics. It rather provides the only possibly sound logical foundation for scientific and mathematical, and indeed even religious metaphysics. Thanks for the pleasant lecture.
Later in life, Dirac's views towards the idea of God were less acerbic. As an author of an article appearing in the May 1963 edition of Scientific American, Dirac wrote: It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.[60]
Dirac fue un genio que no aceptaba la idea de un creador hasta que no descubrió la belleza de su descubrimiento. Mientras la gente común acepta la idea de la existencia del creador por medio de la belleza externa e interna de la creación, Dirac lo hizo cuando se descubrió que era un genio que había descubierto otra belleza diferente a la que para él era belleza 💕.
"Dirac was a genius who did not accept the idea of a creator until did not discover beauty of his discovery. While ordinary people accept the idea of the existence of creator through the external and internal beauty of creation , Dirac did it when was discovered to be a genius there was discovered another beauty different from that for him was beauty"
Fucking Amazing 🙌🎉🥰🤗thank YOU!!! I am as far away from this mathematician as they come (I use my fingers to count when playing cribbage 🤦🏼♀️) but one thing I have always felt since I was a young child, is the Beauty, sheer elegant beauty in reality. This really resonates ❤
Has it occurred to anyone Dirac was a synestete?? This would have been even more occulted then than it is now. Very recently read about earlier studies where synestetes would see geometry instead of numbers and Dirac's chaotic geometric note scribblings might support this notion
Consider this. Paul E=hv is Planck's equation in 1900, with Planck's constant representing the irrational units, making the equation rational by using rational n for the constant, is misstatement yet Mother Nature is pleased:?) E=nv-n/Tp, and then ETp=n is a rational revolutionary geometry that Dirac and Gauss would applaud:?) And it is valid for any observer. No renormalization is required:?) Gauss' least squares define its measurement variance. And lost in space takes on a beautiful irony for Carl Gauss:?)
If man is power, women are creation . Beauty.. aestheticism can bring both together . Men coms to a woman - women come to man, whereby WE come to God in perfection.
Bottom-up Thought Experiment... Constraints: As few base forces and particles as possible to form a coherent, integrated 4D multi/universe model -- Subspace Charge Field: +ve charge cells (quanta, +1) held together by free-flowing -ve charge. Matter-energy field conserves momentum Matter-Energy: Matter is focused energy.. Energy is mobile matter.. Momentum conserves velocity.. Force changes velocity and/or direction Positron/Up Quark/Graviton (p+): Free, out of place cell warps the field, radiating AC field cell vibration 'blip' spheres at C + 6 DC spin loops Electron/Down Quark (e-): Hole left behind warps the field, radiating AC field cell vibration 'blip' spheres of opposite phase at C + 6 DC spin loops Noton/Dark Matter (n+-): Exactly opposite phase close p+ and e- annihilate (ie. entangled pair created together (e_p) ), else a noton forms Nucleons: Proton: P=pep.. Neutron: N=P_e=pep_e.. Beta-: N-e>>P+e.. Beta+: P+e_p>>N+p.. Alpha: A=PNPN=PeP_PeP=(pep_e_pep)_(pep_e_pep) Heavier Fermions: Larger holes and chunks of subspace field rapidly disintegrate to p+s, e-s, n+-s and/or annihilate to regular = empty field Electrostatic Force: Recoiling blip spheres propagate. Opposite direction + and - blips form a vibrating AC bond, same sign=phase repel Instant-Off Long Force: AC (longitudinally blipping) subspace 'flux tube' as thin as 1 cell wide. Each cell and its -ve charge move in contrary motion Spin: e-s and p+s pull in the 12 surrounding cells, or -ve charge that pulls cells, that then bounce out, stabilising as a torus of 6 in/out (N/S) DC loops Strong Force: Spin loops merge and form flowing DC circuits between e-s and p+s Mass: Sum of the lengths of all strong force bonds + near electric field. Notons have compact strong force bonds, Protons' are long as 2 p+s repel Magnetism: Some spin-aligned atoms' p+s and e-s' strong bonds join in a shorter straight path. Energy conservation results in external force circuits Weak Force: Geometric structural charge balance instability. Possibly noton hits statistically tipping the balance Photon: Charged particles moving up and down (transmitter, atomic electron) form a radiating transverse wave blip pattern Double Slit: Laser light / particle centre's preceding, extended subspace distortion diffracts, interferes, forming wave guides observation destroys Dark Gravity: p+ traps 1 quantum of -ve charge so void cell size/gap grows (and matter's shrinks?) forming a macro -ve charge gradient Bang Expansion: Loss of -ve charge to the multiverse?.. Bang ejector velocity petered out, magnified in time by outward momentum conservation Gravity Wave: Longitudinal wave where the entire field in a large region is effected in unison for a duration Big Ping: A dark crystal universe collisions' intense gravity wave forms e- & p+ pairs inwardly at C that annihilate or form notons, Protons, Neutrons Big Bang: Ping wave collides centrally? Field blast forms matter + a large hole (then Big/Dark Refill)? Fast -ve charge loss? Noton crystal exploded? Black Hole: Absorbs matter and energy. Noton crystal (with a core returning to empty field)? Large hole in the field traps anything entering? Frame Dragging: Entire sphere of subspace cells rotating around a point in unison Time: Cell to cell blips take a constant time. Gravity shrinks cells so light slows but locally measures C as circuits lengthen in space & time, adding mass -- This is not an aether theory, it's a matter-energy field, a quantised, relativisitic subspace medium. Forces and matter emerge from and are part of the field -- Makes more sense than making up bosons to carry force and mass, quarks that don't solve the anti-matter and dark matter problem, loads of fundamental fields, extra spatial and temporal dimensions etc, that ultimately don't tie relativity and quantum mechanics together properly or well... They should at least be honest and call their 'spatial dimensions' geometric/field dimensions or something.. Magic Space is not my cup of tea.
as far as i concern, expressing anti religion,anti philosophy are not a proper words. i would rather use truth seeker of our reality and nature. some purposely concocted mathematically rules are not a true nature of maths and science of reality.
In Bristol there is a Dirac Trail, a route around his various locations. I've not yet followed it all, but it is in my plans for my next visit to Bristol (a fascinating and historical city well worth a visit)
The Unsuitability of the Unconscious Mathematics A Language For Physics - the need to add a mandatory baseline of consciousness to the Unconscious Mathematics - at least a checks-and-balances 'compiler' similar to compilers in software systems.
Dirac fue y será siempre genio porque descubrió una belleza matemática en la materia, en lo que da forma a las cosas; sin embargo genio es aquél que sin ser el genio hecho reconoce la belleza de la creación.
I suppose that if you can't build a time machine or fold space to travel vast distances, all that is left is to chatter about beauty. The misery of the quantum cult.
As one says in Dutch:: Food for psychologists. What a beautifull personality! Some friennds of mine tend to , what people call Authism. Well if so concerning Dirac; He chose the right spectrum of authism. There is no God and Dirac is his prophet!
I understand from this good elucidation, that I am correct in being with and more-I know ALL Physics. And he was on the way, was Paul Dirac. Einsteinium ideation got in his way.
Dirac was an eminent thinker but not in language, but in mathematics. How ever, he accepted the idea of religion as a guide of the nature beauty long after he spent many years refusing the God idea in the universe, unifying the bridge of relativity between he and the common people of faith. Dirac had to be a genius to accept the beauty of the creation, of the religion, things that common people used to accept without being genius.
If physics has to be beautiful to be true, is it also the case that, for example, politics must be beautiful to be true - here we have the unfortunate source of Utopianism ...
Dirac era un genio que no aceptaba que detrás de la creación hay un genio mayor que todos los genios humanos juntos. Sólo hay que contemplar la creación, cómo surge la vida, las formas que tiene la vida, el sentido de la bondad, de la humildad. del amor entre los hombres, ectc. Que Dirac se negaba a aceptar. Cómo negar la filosofía, la más hermosa de todas las disciplinas. Luego que hizo su descubrimiento entonces abrazó la filosofía, que su raíz filo- quiere decir amor, vida, y Sofía, de sabiduría. De un negador de la búsqueda de la sabiduría Dirac se convirtió en un filósofo de la belleza cuántica, de la naturaleza matemática de las cosas, y al final abrió su espíritu de genio a la belleza cuántica y física de las cosas, no al valor de las cosas por su contenido espiritual y humano.
