←back to thread

81 points pykello | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.268s | 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. lewtun ◴[] No.45147923[source]
“QED and the Men Who Made It” [1] might be close to what you’re after for quantum theory at least. Unlike other popular accounts, it gets quite technical and covers a lot of the historical dead ends that people had during the development of quantum field theory.

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691033273/qe...