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Title: Feynman Lectures on Computation by Richard P. Feynman, Robin W. Allen, Tony Hey, Anthony J. G. Hey ISBN: 0-7382-0296-7 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: July, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $38.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Computers a la Feynman
Comment: This reference is derived from Feynman's lectures at Caltech between 1983-1986 for the course 'Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines'. This small volume introduces computers as a file clerk performing his tasks, moves on to show how the 'file clerk' can be built out of simple gates, how the gates can be built out actual transistors, discusses essential issues in computation theory such as computability and Turing machines, and then discusses essential issues in information theory such as data compression. The physics of computing from a thermodynamics context is then considered. If the general reader ignores the gas equations, this chapter is fairly easy to read and enlightening. The next chapter continues with a discussion of quantum mechanical computers. The final chapter discusses how real transistors function at the atomic level and fabrication techniques for real integrated circuits. Lectures given by invited experts on computer science topics such as vision, robots, expert systems, etc, are not included. Although this reference does not discuss alternative architectures for computation, such as the ones found in the brains of animals, this reference is ideal to introduce the motivated general reader to the concept of computation and the techniques used in commercial computers.
Rating: 3
Summary: Dissapointing is correct
Comment: We physicists want a readable book on computability, degrees of computational complexity, and the like. Feynman would have been the writer to provide us with that. We're fortunate to have anything at all of what Feynman thought about the subject, but this book (taken from Feynman's rough lecture notes) does not do the job. E.g., in the first chapter we're presented with a description of RPF's joy in discovery and corresponding philosophy of how to understand anything: don't read about it, just work it out by yourself in umpteen different ways (nothing new about Feynman there!), but the examples provided of how Feynman actullally worked it out can be compared with some of Arnol'd's presentations of how he worked out mechanics problems in his text on Classical Mechanics (state the problem, then state the final result). So we still need a SYSTEMATIC 'written-for physicists' text on computability. Neverthless, we can be grateful to Hey and Allen for putting together these stimulating Feynman fragments for us, especially since they stem from his last days of life as a physicist.
By the way, Feynman certainly would not have agreed with S. Weinberg's extreme reductionist philisophy that asserts that once we've understood quantum theory and quarks then we've understood physics/nature, that 'the rest is mere detail'. On the other hand, he surely would have horselaughed the holists who proclaim that reductionism is dead, that physics will become more like 'poetry'. The lie in the latter nonsense is exposed by the entire field of genetics and cell biology, which is where the 'real' complexity in nature is to be found. Every physics student should be required to take a good class in molecular biolgy these days, a subject that's a lot more important and a lot more interesting than string theory (which, as Feynman more or less said, has degenerated into mere philosophy in the absence of experiments to test the ideas) .
Rating: 3
Summary: Dissapointing
Comment: I find this book dissapointing. It doesn't compare with the insight, clarity, and beauty found in the famous "Feynman lectures in physics". Basically what Feynman does in this book is simplify and coaches one though complex Computer Science/ Information Theory Concepts. The book may have the small size of a novel, but I find it to be more like a textbook; because it has many equations (even exercises in the first chapter), and also one has to be quite attentive while reading. I'm not saying this is a bad book, only that, if you liked the "Feynman lectures in physics" it doesn't automatically mean you'll like this book. This book is different, obviously in the sense that it doesn't deal much with physics, and secondly in the fact that it is not passionatly written, I think. Why is this book so expensive anyways?
Now that you got my warning. I can definitely recomend this book for people intereseted in things like:
-theoretical limits of computers (enthropy, energy)
-physical realizations of logic gates (transistors)
-quantum computers
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Title: Feynman Lectures On Physics (3 Volume Set) by Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0201021153 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: June, 1970 List Price(USD): $101.10 |
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Title: Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time (Helix Books) by Richard Phillips Feynman, Gerry Neugebauer, Roger Penrose ISBN: 0201328429 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: QED by Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0691024170 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 October, 1988 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (Helix Book) by Paul Davies, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands, Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0201408252 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0393320928 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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