IN Search of Mandelstam's Holy Grail

There are two posts that reflect the purpose of this post today. One is Clifford's linked through Lee Smolin's comment and the other, at Backreaction. Good Physics is Conflict

A lot of you may never understand the significance of the mystery that follows the thinking of the Holy Grail. Yet is it more the knowledge that can be gained from all soul's day, that on this occasion we may have called it Halloween.

We celebrated the past, in the living of today? You philosophize, while you become the thoughts of models created by science leaders shared? I do not think any have a "personality disorder" like I do:)

Lee Smolin:

Here is an example of the kind of question I found I needed a book to explore: what to think of the problems that arise from the need for higher dimensions in string theory, such as the problem of moduli stabilization and the vast number of static solutions. To approach this I read books on the early history of GR and unified field theories and learned that higher dimensional compactifications were explored many times between 1914 and 1984 and that close to the beginning these problems were appreciated and discussed by Einstein and others. I weave this story into my book because I find it useful when trying to judge how serious the present issues in string theory are to know how Einstein and many others struggled with the same issues over decades.

So of course when we think of the persons of science who walked before us (shoulders of giants), what are their whole stories, but what is evidenced to us as we read those words? So you compile your data accordingly, and from it, we say at certain spots, how are we to react to the challenge now facing us?



Stanley Mandelstam, Professor Emeritus, Particle Theory

My present research concerns the problem of topology changing in string theory. It is currently believed that one has to sum over all string backgrounds and all topologies in doing the functional integral. I suspect that certain singular string backgrounds may be equivalent to topology changes, and that it is consequently only necessary to sum over string backgrounds. As a start I am investigating topology changes in two-dimensional target spaces. I am also interested in Seiberg-Witten invariants. Although much has been learned, some basic questions remain, and I hope to be able at least to understand the simpler of these questionsStanley Mandelstam-Professor Emeritus Particle Theory

As a lay person watching the debate it is difficult for me to discern the basis of these arguments. But I strive to go past what you think is surface in conduct in science's response, as some may show of themself in a reactionary pose. Should we all be so perfect, that the human condition is not also the example by which we shall progress in science?

Dealing in the Abstract



A sphere with three handles (and three holes), i.e., a genus-3 torus.

Of course the thinking may seem so detached from reality that one asks for some reason with which to believe anything. It required, that the history of this approached dust off models in glass cabinets, that were our early descendants of the museum today.

Sylvester's models lay hidden away for a long time, but recently the Mathematical Institute received a donation to rescue some of them. Four of these were carefully restored by Catherine Kimber of the Ashmolean Museum and now sit in an illuminated glass cabinet in the Institute Common Room.

How many of you know how to work in such abstract spaces, and know that what you are talking about has it's relationships in the physics of today? Or that, what satellites we use in measure of, have some correlation to how one may have seen "UV coordinates supplied by Gauss?"