"Theoretical physicists share a common reverence for the accomplishments and capabilities of the leading practitioners - for example, Newton, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Landau, Feynman - and derive a common joy of soul from the understanding gained by the representations and interpretations of the empirical data put forth by the great theorists." p.xv

The old QED only agreed with experiment to first order in perturbation theory. Higher order terms were infinite.

US WWII attitude: theory is only a tool for producing numbers that agree with experiments.

Shelter Island, 1947 - turning point.

"Dyson's criterion" is that renormalizability is a selection principle for good field theories. This strongly influenced Weinberg in developing the electro-weak unified field theory.

Feynman, in his own mind, failed because, in the end, he had to rely on renormalizability which he repeatedly described as a shameful "shell game". [Sarfatti note: Feynman said this to me directly.]

Feynman's space-time picture "all physical measurements and interactions can be considered as scattering processes" (p.xiv)

"Styles of reasoning" (e.g., symmetry, renormalizability, gedankenexperiments...)

Introduction

What is matter made of? (quantum mechanics)

What is space and time? (relativity)

Back From The Future

the return action by the charges in the absorber reaches the source by advanced waves as well as by the ordinary retarded waves of reflected light, so that the law of interaction acts backward in time, as well as forward in time

There is a phase shift of the advanced waves at the absorber in the future with no shift in wavelength. The action of the advanced waves at the source charge in the past will give the correct force of radiation resistance independent of the future properties of the charges in the absorber.

Feynman's

successful reformulation of classical electrodynamics, which excluded self-interactions, had made a deep impression on him. Wheeler and Feynman's mechanism for radiation resistance - as stemming from the advanced interactions of the absorber particles with the charge emitting the radiation - had given him "a greater appreciation for the possibilities"...