Talk:The Tao of Physics

Deletion proposal (not active)

The Tao of Physics was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP. 14 votes to keep, 1 vote to delete. Postdlf 05:18, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nomination: I actually own a copy. It's a book, and not great. Wikipedia is not a library catalog. — Bill 23:33, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. I'd be inclined to keep a decent article on even a minor book, but that's not the question here. This book was a bestseller and remains popular. I've added indicia of notability to the article (publication in 43 editions in 23 languages, according to [1]). It always looked like schlock to me so I haven't read it, but widely read schlock is notable. JamesMLane 06:45, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep
• Keep It's a very famous book. Which of the criteria for deletion does it meet? I wish people would stop listing stuff like this because they personally don't think it should be in here. There are criteria - let's use them.--Tomheaton 18:51, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, and deal harshly with deletion trolls. Intrigue 20:21, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Does not meet Wikipedias definition for vfd criteria. (surprise surprise) GRider 21:22, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Reasonably notable book. Amazon.com sales rank 9166. First published 1972, still in print (thirty years!), in fourth edition. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:55, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC) (Note: article says published in 1975, but abebooks claims to have one published in Boulder, CO. in 1972) [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:58, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I added the "1975" based on several sources. One source, perhaps a comment on Amazon, said that it was originally published by a small publisher and did well through word of mouth, after which it was picked up by a bigger company. Conceivably it was obscurely available in 1972 with first "real" publication in 1975. I didn't happen to run across any such reference, though. JamesMLane 23:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • 1975 is probably right. Library catalog search of local library network shows 1975 as earliest date. FWIW here's the Abebooks search, on publication date of 1975 or earlier. There's only one listing for 1972 and it could easily be a misprint. [2]
      • Misprint seems likely. The 1972 entry is a first edition published by Shambhala, and just below it is another first edition published by Shambhala dated to 1975. (Somebody tell Slashdot that we're not the only ones who make mistakes.) JamesMLane 15:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. I read it in 1976, if that's any help... Fire Star 22:48, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Reluctant keep. It's enough of a bestseller to qualify, but it's lousy book. What little is worthwhile in it wouldn't make up a 5-page essay. Even in its slightly dubious genre, there is a better book called The Dancing Wu Li Masters. -- Jmabel | Talk
• Keep. Should never have been listed on VfD. -- Decumanus 19:05, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)
• Keep. The book may be lame, but it was a best seller and remains popular (particularly among the New-Ageily inclined). — Gwalla | Talk 19:45, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Pretty well known, at least enough so that it rings a bell with many literate folk. - Lifefeed 20:06, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. It's kind of like Godel Escher Bach in terms of public visibility, even if it's not nearly as good a book. --Improv 14:07, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep c'mon now, stop wasting our time —siroχo 22:55, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep -- Cabalamat 22:07, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Tesla

Nikola Tesla is also noted as having embraced the similarities between science and Vedanta. Please don't delete the Tao of Physics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JadeBuddha (talk • contribs) 19:19, April 4, 2007 (UTC)

No worries. It is an old discussion. --Blainster 18:47, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Summary

There isn't any summary/synopsis of the actual book. This article isn't very useful 72.177.115.251 08:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Removed quote

The Tao of Physics is criticized (along with The Dancing Wu Li Masters) in Peter Woit's 2006 book, Not Even Wrong, in the section on S-Matrix approaches to Grand unification theory.

The foreword to the second edition of 1983 claims, "It has been very gratifying for me that none of these recent developments has invalidated anything I wrote seven years ago. In fact, most of them were anticipated in the original edition," a statement far from any relation to the reality that in 1983 the standard model was nearly universally accepted in the physics community, and the bootstrap theory was a dead idea. The afterword includes truly bizarre and counterfactual statements such as, "QCD has not been very successful at describing the processes involving strongly interacting particles."

The text above was in the article, and I removed it. The reason is that the quote is now very dated--- the standard model is not incompatible with the bootstrap ideas (nowadays synonymous with string theory), it is a complementary approach. Perturbative QCD describes high energy scattering where quarks are visible, while the bootstrap/string theory describes low energy confinement phenomenon. In principle, QCD could describe everything, but that would require heroic calculation.Likebox (talk) 17:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the quote is dated, the book does discuss the fact that the S-matrix approach is used in string theory so Woit was obviously aware of it. But more important, I think it's essential to Capra's philosophical ideas that the bootstrap idea actually be fundamental, the "explanation" for why particles have the masses they do and other properties, rather than just a tool for making calculations that works as an approximation to some more precise high-energy theory. Hypnosifl (talk) 16:10, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

References

External links modified

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