←back to thread

81 points pykello | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.27s | source
Show context
pkoird ◴[] No.45146435[source]
Nice effort. As far as textbooks for QM, Electrodynamics, and any sufficiently complex field of study goes, I always feel that these have been written using abstractions that people have developed much later retroactively. I understand the advantages: it makes the entire content concise, structured, and basically straightforward. However, what I crave is a technical book that is based upon the history of the subject. Something that doesn't start immediately with Hilbert spaces but starts off by talking about why Max Plank did what he did, how did Einstein improve upon it, what mistakes were made, what misguided hypothesis were later corrected in what manner, how were different things then unified... you get the point. I think this narrative based approach would motivate me much better than something that's condensed and distilled.
replies(10): >>45146488 #>>45146592 #>>45146824 #>>45146872 #>>45147923 #>>45147928 #>>45148064 #>>45148364 #>>45151771 #>>45153477 #
1. abdullahkhalids ◴[] No.45146592[source]
Most Physics undergraduate programs have a course on Modern Physics, which is often taught in the way you are asking for. Though only up to the origins of quantum mechanics. This textbook, for example does this [1].

The problem is that after the basics of QM, there were literally hundreds of papers by dozens of important scientists developing the subsequent theory. And you can no longer teach the subject in a linear historical fashion.

[1] https://www.cengage.com/c/modern-physics-3e-serway-moses-moy...