Addicted To Nature

I was studying electrodynamics today. Apparently, I find again and again how small I have ever been and how small I am gonna be for a long time. I had no idea that electrodynamics was such a huge field! And it will probably take me forever to learn everything, it seems at least from some of the books I flipped through.

I thoroughly thought Griffiths was the end to all of electrodynamics. I really did believe that time that there couldnt possibly be anything harder, I was already overwhelmed wif the differential calculus in it.

Till I checked out some of the “classical electrodynamics” in section QC631. Griffiths was indeed an “introduction”. Before I read Griffith, I read the freshman calculus books.

And one of the things I realize or more like I can’t understand, is why are all the freshman books so horribly simplified? Why do they make so many special cases for electrodynamics and explain on irrelevant “philosophy” for thousands of pages? Why did they not give me a general enough, mathematically powerful, theoretically logical concepts at the very start? I went through so much pain to resolve all the unconvincing stuff written. I had little idea, “why” this particular topic was being pursued due to the lack of generality.

Heck, they could have asked me to read griffiths! I wouldn’t have mind. I could have coped with the vector calculus. And last year, they only taught until Gauss’ Law, thats only ONE chapter of griffiths, add one more magnetostatics chapter, and voila, Tiddwaylll would have been happy beyond his dreams.

But of course, back to topic. Electrodynamics is really a wonderful subject, I really like the way where so few equations (only 4 literally) could expand out into such a huge field of study. The power in Laplace’s equation, one equation to describe nearly everything. But sadly, I won’t learn any of this, not now anyway. For my course omitted it and solving Laplace wasn’t a priority.

Checking out Schwinger’s lectures on electrodynamics showed me again, how far I would be away from knowing any physics, so insanely and frighteningly far. So far that I have fears on ever reaching the finish line (a virtual one, of course theres no finish line). I have barely scraped the top of physics or mathematics. And I think its wonderful to have the humbleness and humility than the wicked, twisted arrogance I had after I read Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking on their “laymen” books, thinking that I know everything that starts with q already.

This semester has not been kind to me in telling me about the vastness of human knowledge. I am bound to fail nearly all my modules, or at least I would pass with a C (I really hope so). But it has invaluable lessons I could not learn anywhere else, that I am small, that I am REALLY REALLY small, that truely nothing worth having in this world comes easy (forgive the cliche?). Was it worth it? I think only time could tell.