Friday, August 30, 2002

Looking for another book in the small but exceptionally well-stocked Penn Book Center, I bumped into the new paperback edition of Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin. I am just in Chapter 2, but so far it is very promising. Smolin writes simply and clearly. He also draws connections between cosmology and logic (what is the right logic for knowledge bounded by the speed of light) that I was not expecting to see here but that I have wondered about before. But the real reason I am posting is that much of his technical bibliography includes links to e-prints in arXiv.org. This is a revolution in scientific writing. At home tonight I have immediate access to further technical reading on any of the topics discussed. I can immediately explore the intriguing application of topos theory to the logic of spacetime. Thank you, Paul Ginsparg and Lee Smolin! 11:21:55 PM