{"id":4,"date":"2008-02-28T22:28:37","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T03:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/2008\/02\/28\/sidney-on-progress-in-t"},"modified":"2008-02-28T22:30:03","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T03:30:03","slug":"sidney-on-progress-in-theoretical-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/2008\/02\/28\/sidney-on-progress-in-theoretical-physics\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidney on progress in theoretical physics."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[This edition is for the <strong>tribe<\/strong>. I will elaborate this so that even those who have not taken calculus will understand it. In short, I will cause the blind to see and the deaf to hear. To those of you in need of such miracles, y&#8217;all come back now hear?]<\/p>\n<p>Half way through Physics 253, Quantum Field Theory, after introducing vacuum diagrams Sidney would observe:<\/p>\n<p>In Classical Mechanics, you can only solve the two-body problem exactly. The rest is approximation. In General Relativity, you can only solve the one-body problem exactly. The rest is approximation. In Quantum Field Theory you can&#8217;t even solve the no-body problem exactly. This is progress?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know when he started telling this story. Probably before String Theory had its Cambrian explosion of vacua. I think I heard him ad lib on this point, but I never heard it worked into his routine. Maybe somebody else did?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This edition is for the tribe. I will elaborate this so that even those who have not taken calculus will understand it. In short, I will cause the blind to see and the deaf to hear. To those of you in need of such miracles, y&#8217;all come back now hear?] Half way through Physics 253, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/theguywhomakeswindows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}