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From: lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: concrete electrons
Message-ID: <1225@ihuxr.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Nov-84 00:41:27 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxr.1225
Posted: Fri Nov  9 00:41:27 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 08:49:28 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 24

From Patrick Wyant's FTL article:

> 			...  If you consider that theories in
> physics can be organized in a hierarchy, from the very concrete such as
> electrons to the very abstract such as unified field theories ...

So it's "concrete electrons" is it?  Patrick, you've seen too many little
black dots with arrows through them. Now you think they're real! 

I've always clung to the notion that it was worth six years of graduate
school to be able to think of an electron as a basis for a spinor
representation of the Lorentz group, so I'm very touchy on this point.

Actually, I was similarly seduced into believing that I knew what a
photon was by those pictures of milk cartons coming off a conveyer belt.
I wasn't disabused of the notion until I read the first chapter of
Sakurai's ADVANCED QUANTUM MECHANICS, where the necessary apparatus for
approaching this difficult abstraction is lucidly set forth. Only then did...

	Hills peep o'er hills
	And alps on alps soar!


		Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew