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Summary: what physics is all about
Review: a nice approach to quantum mechanics. Historical quantum mechanics is a superficial theory which makes philosophy out of mathematical
ignorance. This work helps rethink a rational theory of quantum mechanics as the presocratic physicists would have liked.
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Summary: As Niels Bohr might have said: "Very, very interesting..."
Review: Carver Mead is the guy who got us all started on VLSI technology, so all Silicon Valley types owe him a big favor: Clearly a technologist of vision and genius! By the way, he recounts in the introductory chapter how he got started on this issue: this part is definitely worth reading.That said, I did not find that this book presented anything like a systematic presentation of electrodynamics or quantum mechanics. His main tool for connecting different results and ideas of electromagnetism is a superconducting loop, which he uses in various "thought experiments." It's interesting and novel, but not enough to really provide a foundation for a complete framework for one of the great theories of classical physics. His criticisms of the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics are not new, and generally seem to me to have been adequately discussed and refuted during the scientific consensus-building on quantum mechanics during the 1930's. Perhaps the strongest new piece of evidence that he brings to the table on this point, that some folks (Barut & Dowling) have recently provided a derivation of the energy levels for the hydrogen atom which is compatible with something like the original Schroedinger interpretation (of the amplitude squared as charge density) is only quoted, not described: you'll need to look up the article in Physical Review A (1990, Phys.Rev.A 41, pp. 2284-2294) to see if you can understand or believe it. This is very disappointing, since Mead's book is only 135 pages long: it seems to me that he should have made more of an effort to at least sketch what seems to be the key touchstone for his proposed approach. My impression is that he ended the book in a bit of a rush; but that's not an adequate excuse. In summary, this book can be interesting, especially if you know some E&M and can follow the equations: there are some cute connections that may be fun to check out more carefully. But in the end, I don't think this is going to make any substantial impact on the way most physicists will think about electrodynamics or quantum mechanics.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Carver Mead provides concise explanations that make sense. I was pleased with his treatise on neuromorphic systems, and nothing has changed with this. His interaction with Feynman provides an amazing historical context. He credits Feynman and Einstein for having great insights, for which the scientific world will benefit tremendously. I think Carver should have added himself to that short list.
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Summary: Pioneering Research
Review: Carver Meade is a Pioneer. Like Einstein, he recognized that Maxwell's Equations (ME) are not correct because they are based on the assumption that the electron is a point particle. This myth was handed down from the Greek Democritus. Like Milo Wolff before him, Meade deduces that the electron is quantum wave structure, as proposed by Schroedinger. Wolff's book is also sold here at Amazon.com.
Meade uses the properties of a wave structure to provide new equations for the analysis of electronic engineering ciruits - very useful in the design of micro chips. He also shows how the collective behavior of waves is the cause of low-temperature behavior.
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Summary: Collective Electrodynamics--Carver Mead's book
Review: Despite his preface upbraiding physicists for their work of the past 50-75 years, the main text makes reasonable claims based upon well-founded experimental and theoretical results. The book endorses earlier work of Einstein, Feynmann, Reimann, Lorentz, Maxwell, Planck, and others while making computational and conceptual adjustments to accommodate modern experimental results. Also in the text, Bohr and other die-hard quantum statisticians are continually under attack for their poo-pooing of possible phenomena, algorithms, and concepts behind the observed quantum behavior. Bohr and his clan, apparently, claimed that the statistics made up the whole baseball team of quantum physics--and that we should not, and could not, look further. In refuting this micro-labotomic approach of Bohr, Dr. Mead makes reference to systems--macroscopic in size--that exhibit quantum behaviors. While he mentions lasers, masers, semiconductors, superconductors, and other systems in the text, the primary results of the book hinge upon experimental results from the field of superconductors. He points out that physics can be split into several areas: Classical Mechanics explains un-coherent, uncharged systems such as cannon balls, planets, vehicles, etc.
Classical Electrodynamics explains un-coherent, charged systems such as conductors, currents, and their fields.
Thermodynamics explains how macroscopic statistics, such as temperature and entropy, guide the time evolution of systems.
Modern Quantum Mechanics tries to explain coherent, charged systems. Here 'coherent' refers to quantum coherency, where many particles/atoms march to the same drum such as the photons in a laser, or the electrons in a superconductor, or any isolated one or two particles. Another description of coherency is that the states are quantum entangled; their time-evolution depends upon each other. The thrust of Carver's book: QM applies to all matter--not just small systems or isolated particles--is well made. He brings up experimental data from superconductors to illustrate that the phenomenon of coherent quantum entanglement can, and does, occur at macroscopic scales; and that such behavior is very quantum. Thus he proves, quite convincingly, that quantum mechanics applies to all coherent systems. He then closes by making some very important points. (1) He shows that quantum behavior of such systems can be expressed in quantum language (wave function), relativistic language (four-vectors), or electrodynamics (vector potential, scalar potential) in an equivalent fashion. This is important, as it proves that a superconductor is macroscopic, exhibits quantum behavior, and that these quantitative results agree with those found from the other approaches. (2) He makes the point that the quantum and relativistic equations show that electromagnetic phenomena consist of two parts: one traveling forward in time; the other backward in time. Feynmann and others have said this for a long time, and he shows how thermodynamics (or un-coherent behavior) forces what we see as only time-evolution in one direction in un-coherent systems. (3) He illustrates, modeling single atoms as tiny superconducting resonators, that two atoms that are coherently linked will start exchanging energy. This causes an exponential, positive-feedback loop that ends with each atom in a quantum eigenstate. Thus quantum collapse is neither discontinuous, nor instantaneous; and in fact makes a lot of sense. (4) He explains, using four-vectors, that all points on a light-cone are near each other in four space. This point--together with (2)--shows that there's no causality contradiction between relativity and quantum mechanics. For example, he explains that two entangled particles, such as photons light years apart, can affect each other immediately if one falls into an eigenstate, since the four-dimensional distance between them (R1 dot R2) is zero. Although separated in three space, they're neighbors in four space. Through these demonstrations and proofs, he successfully suggests that there is a way to further develop the 'behavior of charged, coherent systems' such that quantum mechanics and relativity will agree--but the conceptual changes he suggests are necessary and must be further developed. Also, he admits that a better, more appropriate mathematical and computational methods will be needed, since the complexity of coherent systems runs as n^2. Pleasantly, then, the book makes elegant, defensible, mathematical and conceptual steps to resolve some nagging points of understanding. Also, the narrative gives the best introduction to electrodynamics and quantum mechanics that I've ever seen. Since the theoretical criticisms and experimental data are quite valid, his proposed resolutions are eye-opening and valuable. The methods he suggests greatly simply thinking about complicated quantum/classical problems. New approaches for future theoretical research are also suggested. Despite the dark tone in the preface, the book is positive, enlightening, and well anchored to accepted, modern experimental results and theoretical work. It's a short book, about 125 pages, and well worth the read. Familiarity with classical and quantum physics, and special relativity, is required to get the most out of it. As you can tell, I enjoyed it tremendously.
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Summary: Successor to Feyman's Red Books
Review: From time to time I ask people if there's been anything better than Feyman's "Lectures in Physics," and the answer is generally no, that's about all there is...
Seems to me this beautiful book is at least the start of the current generation's canonical physics text set.
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Summary: Successor to Feyman's Red Books
Review: From time to time I ask people if there's been anything better than Feyman's "Lectures in Physics," and the answer is generally no, that's about all there is...
Seems to me this beautiful book is at least the start of the current generation's canonical physics text set.
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Summary: First Shot Across the Bow!
Review: If you have an interest in physics, and you're sick of all those books that include "Schroedenger's Cat" in the title, then this is the book for you. The author, well versed in the field, proposes a simple alternative to all the dogma collectively referred to as "The Copenhagen Interpretion" (shouldn't that be a clue?) and the resultant path physics has taken toward increasingly bizarre and UNPROVABLE theories involving quantum dynamics. I think of this book as a glimmer of hope, and it's worth reading.
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Summary: Rationality Restored in Quantumland
Review: In Collective Electrodynamics, Carver Mead claims that the pure wave phenomena discovered since the Bohr-Einstein debates such as the laser, the currents in superconducting rings and the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms proves that quantum phenomena are exclusively wave phenomena. It is experimentally evident. Mead then proceeds to use the equations for magnetic flux in terms of the scalar and the vector potential to explain and unify electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. (He dispenses with Maxwell's equations for electric and magnetic fields as an incorrect way of conceiving these fields.) Thus, Mead liberates physics from the irrational reign of the Copenhagen School of Bohr and Heisenberg who explicitly denied that the logical law of noncontradiction applied in quantum theory. Why did a scientist as brilliant as Bohr fall into such a pit of irrationality? I would venture to say it was because he didn't share the faith of the founders of modern science like Galileo and Newton in a rational Creator whose name is the "Logos" or Word, aka Jesus Christ.
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Summary: Disappointing contents in grandiose package
Review: This book has an exciting and promising title and it starts with an interesting discussion about how Feynman and other great physicists inspired the author. One therefore starts reading with great expectations. Unfortunately these are soon gone. There is no coherent exposition of electromagnetism to be found in the book. A few specific areas are treated in an original but non-convincing way. The author conveys some scattered insights but does not produce anything useful in the way of a new and better theory of electromagnetism. I happen to agree with the author that the vector potential is an important concept which perhaps sometimes is not given the full attention it deserves in some texts, but that is about it. I cannot recommend the book as textbook on any level of education. As an historical document it might have some interest. The author says that Feynman smiled in an embarassed way when he told him that he was the reason he had gone into physics. I now understand why Feynman was embarassed: Carver Mead may be a brilliant inventor and engineer but he does not have a clue as to what one would mean by "foundations of electromagnetism" in the way Feynman would have understood these words.
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