Ars Mathematica

For anyone who finds the Connes-Marcolli paper we recently linked to heavy going, Lieven Le Bruyn recommends some lighter reading: an interview with Alain Connes himself from the conference in Tehran where the paper was presented. In the interview Connes talks about physics and noncommutative geometry. He also has some sharp criticisms with how mathematics research works in the United States in comparison to France (where he lives and works).

Peter Woit also discussed this interview a couple of weeks back.

After some discussion I’ve seen online, I was curious about the quantum mechanical notion of decoherence. Decoherence is an attempt by physicists why our quantum-mechanical world resembles the world of classical physics in our day-to-day lives.

So where did I turn? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, of course.