QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman Book 30 of 2022

 

At the beginning of his third lecture/chapter in the book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Richard Feynman says:

Most of the phenomena you are familiar involve the interaction of light and electrons--all of chemistry and biology for example.The only phenomena not covered by this theory (QED or Quantum ElectroDynamics) are phenomena of gravitation and nuclear phenomena; everything else is contained in this theory.

And QED is a theory because it predicts the behavior of light and electrons better than any other theory. That's how a conjecture becomes a Theory.

Everything about science is contingent. A new discovery submitted to rigorous testing can and will replace the previous understanding.

In his inimitable way, Feynman walks the reader through adding arrows of probability and showing how these probabilities are behind all of matter, everything we see and touch and all the processes that keep living beings alive.

The final chapter of the book is about nuclear physics--the particles inside atoms surrounded by clouds of electrons and photons that hold atoms together and give them their chemical character. And in one last paragraph, Feynman says gravity is something else entirely, vastly weaker the electromagnetic forces which are vastly weaker than nuclear forces.

By then end of the book, I could see the oak table next to me as swarming with energy and activity. Uncountable electrons around and between and among billions of nucleii. And these hard, heavy centers of atoms, while held in a rigid grid also vibrate with activity, exchanging baryons, muons, mesons, and other particles while held rigidly together.

Even a glimpse into the mind of Feynman is as exciting as a story of discovering a new world.

First 29 books of 2022:

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen