Ian Stewart's "Mathematical Recreations" column
John C. Baez
> As someone else pointed out, the difference is in degrees. Conway
>seems to be near the limit, but his results are usually good enough
>that he can get away with it. Personally, I think that the most
>offensive example of salesmanship is the name ``quarks''.
I don't see why "quarks" constitutes offensive salesmanship. Gell-Mann
borrowed the term from Finnegan's Wake, where Joyce says "three quarks
for Musther Mark." Quark is also a term for a kind of cheese, and this word
is used in German as slang for "nonsense" - though I don't know if
Gell-Mann knew this. In any event, Gell-Mann had postulated an SU(3)
symmetry for hadrons and realized that this could be "explained" by
thinking of them as composed of three things... about which nothing was
known except what emerged from the group theory. So he decided that a
"quark" would be a good term, since it appears in the context of a bunch
of nonsense and all we know (reading Joyce) is that there are three of
them.
ilan vardi
>In article <1993Jan15.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU> il...@leland.Stanford.EDU (ilan vardi) writes:
>
>I don't see why "quarks" constitutes offensive salesmanship. Gell-Mann
>borrowed the term from Finnegan's Wake, where Joyce says "three quarks
>for Musther Mark." Quark is also a term for a kind of cheese, and this word
The fact that these more or less important objects have a name that
rhymes with ``quirk'' has made these well known to most laymen, and
appear in many popularizations of science. It seems to me preferable
that such objects should become well known due to their intrinsic
importance or interest. What I find truly annoying in this case is the
conscious decision by the scientist to give them a catchy name that is
totally disjoint from their properties. The literary reference is
consistent with the pseudo intellectual affectations of the academic
community which finds its apotheosis in Finnegan's Wake, a pretentious
compilation of multilingual puns, ordinarily though of as one of the
lowest forms of humour, and obscure references that add nothing to the
book except to inform the reader of the author's recondite knowledge.
I would compare Finnegan's Wake to ``Principia Mathematica'', by
Russell and Whitehead: Unreadable and highly thought of by people who
have no clue what it's about.
Doug Merritt
> [regarding "quarks": ] What I find truly annoying in this case is the
>conscious decision by the scientist to give them a catchy name that is
>totally disjoint from their properties.
Ok, first off I don't know why you think "quark" is catchy. Most people
(lay and not) that I've talked to simply think it's *weird*.
Secondly, there is a very old tradition that gives the right to name
something to its discoverer/inventor. Sometimes there is an expectation
of following other rules (e.g. naming astronomical objects after oneself
is fair game but that's a no-no with mathematical theorems), it's true,
but I'm not aware of any unwritten traditions that were violated by
the name "quark".
>The literary reference is
>consistent with the pseudo intellectual affectations of the academic
>community which finds its apotheosis in Finnegan's Wake, a pretentious
>compilation of multilingual puns, ordinarily though of as one of the
>lowest forms of humour,
This is inaccurate in several respects. For one thing, Finnegan's Wake
has very few "multilingual puns". Mostly it has multilingual neologisms,
quite a different thing. They are not humour at all, in most cases.
Whether they are the "lowest form" of anything is presumably a matter
of taste. I don't care for a steady diet of them myself, I admit.
Secondly to call it "pretentious" implies that you are in a position
to judge, and yet, whether this is a good book or a bad book, it is
still considered one of the most challenging pieces of literature to
analyze. I'm happy to say that I don't care for the book; it's not to
my tastes, I have insufficient background in the 8 languages Joyce drew
from in creating the neologisms, etc. But neither do I feel competent
to judge it on an absolute scale, let alone call it "pretentious", and
I think it's more than a little hubristic to say such a thing.
I think it is far more interesting that Gell-Mann was (attempting?) to
read Finnegan's Wake in the first place, and found an interesting name
to borrow. It takes an adventurous spirit to tackle such a book, and
shows some indication that he has some appreciation for the humanities
as well as sciences. It further brings this fact to the attention of
everyone who ever hears where "quark" came from, which serves a nice
if incidental function of (a) helping to stir interest in literature in at
least some folks who might not not have had a previous interest, and
(b) in educating people that at least some scientists are in fact well
rounded enough to read literature.
But you're quick to condemn Gell-Man for being "pseudo-intellectual"
simply because he read a book you don't like. Give me a break.
>and obscure references that add nothing to the
>book except to inform the reader of the author's recondite knowledge.
>I would compare Finnegan's Wake to ``Principia Mathematica'', by
>Russell and Whitehead: Unreadable and highly thought of by people who
>have no clue what it's about.
The latter is true...it is unreadable, and praised for the wrong reasons
by many people. The former is not true. Principia Mathematica was
what I might call a noble failure, and one that has been highly
influential. It settled all of the (very considerable) remaining doubts
that traditional mathematics could indeed be done purely in terms of
logic. It was in fact historically influential in a number of ways.
Whitehead and Russel themselves called it a failure later, but (a)
they weren't just showing off their "recondite knowledge", they were
doing math in just about the hardest possible way for what was considered
an excellent purpose at the time, and (b) its big failure was simply
that its highest objective, to demonstrate the consistency of arithmetic,
is impossible...but no one knew that at the time. Indeed Go"dels work
was in no small way influenced by the fate of Principia Mathematica.
(To be more precise, the problem is that a finite proof of the consistency
of arithmetic cannot be expressed within arithmetic.)
I think you're much too fast passing harsh judgements against things you
know too little about. I don't care for the term "quark" nor either
Finnegan's Wake nor Principia Mathematica. But this is all just personal
taste. I support and applaud all three authors for working hard on what
they believed in with the best of intentions, and in all 3 cases, with
extremely influential results. You're just being a gadfly.
Doug
--
Doug Merritt do...@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow
John C. Baez
>The fact that these more or less important objects have a name that
>rhymes with ``quirk'' has made these well known to most laymen, and
>appear in many popularizations of science. It seems to me preferable
>that such objects should become well known due to their intrinsic
>importance or interest. What I find truly annoying in this case is the
>conscious decision by the scientist to give them a catchy name that is
>totally disjoint from their properties.
I suppose they could have been called "particles transforming according
to the defining (3-dimensional) representation of SU(3)", but this is a
bit tiring. Perhaps "trinions"? (Thank god not, since this word now
has a wholly different meaning in topology.) Feynman, of course, had
called them "partons" (of hybrid etymology, like "television" and
"automobile" - generally a bad omen).
>The literary reference is
>consistent with the pseudo intellectual affectations of the academic
>community which finds its apotheosis in Finnegan's Wake, a pretentious
>compilation of multilingual puns, ordinarily though of as one of the
>lowest forms of humour, and obscure references that add nothing to the
>book except to inform the reader of the author's recondite knowledge.
I could never read it either.
Matt McIrvin
[in response to an objection to the word "quark"]
>I suppose they could have been called "particles transforming according
>to the defining (3-dimensional) representation of SU(3)", but this is a
>bit tiring. Perhaps "trinions"? (Thank god not, since this word now
>has a wholly different meaning in topology.) Feynman, of course, had
>called them "partons" (of hybrid etymology, like "television" and
>"automobile" - generally a bad omen).
I wonder if Dolly Parton ever found out.
"Subhadron" or "prehadron" might have been acceptable names, or possibly
"chromon" if one retains the name "color" for the charge they carry.
(Someone once said to me that "color" is a very bad name because it
implies to laybeings that the things are really colored, but the point is
so easy to clear up, and color is such a nice metaphor for the property,
that I don't think that's quite valid.)
"Quark" has the advantage of being monosyllabic. No descriptive name
is going to be that short.
"Flavor" and the names of the flavors are also a little silly and
arbitrary, particularly "strange" and "charm", which differ from the
other names for more or less historical reasons. In this case it's hard
to think of anything better, since the properties in question correspond
to nothing in regular experience. Renaming those two quarks something like
"low" and "high" would follow the convention of the other four, but
would increase the possibility of confusion between families. (In the
movie "Roxanne," Darryl Hannah tells Steve Martin that the top quark is
the most common variety!)
I'm not sure whether the proliferation of whimsy in particle physics is
a good thing or not. I think it is preferable to just sticking somebody's
name on everything; that tends to make things very hard to remember.
It is also a somewhat refreshing change from the usual English-language
tradition (not at all universal) of giving everything Latin- or Greek-
derived names. But it also gives people the idea that we're not being
serious; most people who have heard of quarks probably think of them as
an extremely speculative musing of mad scientists, rather than a set of
(almost all) observed objects.
--
Matt McIrvin I read Usenet just for the tab damage!
==== ======= = ==== ====== ==== === === === =======
Lee Sawyer
>would increase the possibility of confusion between families. (In the
>movie "Roxanne," Darryl Hannah tells Steve Martin that the top quark is
>the most common variety!)
>
line ? (I know I did...)
>--
>Matt McIrvin I read Usenet just for the tab damage!
>==== ======= = ==== ====== ==== === === === =======
Actually I like the name quark. Now as we carefully analyze total
transverse energy plots from the current FNAL collider run, put in your
votes for a name for quark constituents, should they ever be found. One
of the front runners is "preon".
================
Lee Sawyer
Dept of Physics
Univ. of Texas
at Arlington
Benjamin Weiner
> ... Feynman, of course, had
>called them "partons" (of hybrid etymology, like "television" and
>"automobile" - generally a bad omen).
I just read somewhere that Gell-Mann became frustrated by Feynman's
insistence on calling them "partons" when it had long become obvious
quarks were the desired partons (I guess they started life as two
distinct theoretical entities), and Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's
particles as "put-ons."
By the way, "rishon" has already been suggested as a name for
(hypothetical) quark constituents. It's well-motivated in a sense,
because "rishon" means, I forget, something like "component" or
"primary" in Hebrew.
Joseph O'Rourke
bwe...@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>I just read somewhere that Gell-Mann became frustrated by Feynman's
>insistence on calling them "partons" when it had long become obvious
>quarks were the desired partons ([...]) and Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's
>particles as "put-ons."
This is in Gleick's biography of Feynman.
Matt Austern
> I just read somewhere that Gell-Mann became frustrated by Feynman's
> insistence on calling them "partons" when it had long become obvious
> quarks were the desired partons (I guess they started life as two
> distinct theoretical entities), and Gell-Mann referred to Feynman's
> particles as "put-ons."
Except that it's only partly true that quarks (i.e., the fundamental
representation of SU(3)) are the same as the partons (i.e., the point
experimentally observed point particles that are constituents of
hadrons).
The SU(3) transformations of hadrons---which, remember, is all that
Gell-Mann had in mind when he first started talking about quarks---can
be described solely in terms of the valance quarks. That is, if all
you're talking about is the group structure, then it's proper to say
that a baryon is made up of two quarks, and a meson is made up of a
quark and an antiquark.
In fact, hadrons are much more complicated than that picture would
suggest, which is one of the reasons why it still makes sense to make
a distinction between "quarks" and "partons".
--
Matthew Austern Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618 crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
aus...@lbl.bitnet faction, an army! If you don't have any
ma...@physics.berkeley.edu solutions, become a part of the problem!
SCOTT I CHASE
>But then there's the matter of the completely arbitrarily and frivolous names
>for the leptons: electron, muon, tauon. I suggest instead Moe, Larry, Curly.
Electron comes from the Greek word for amber, one of the substances which
was known early on to easily become charged with static electricity. Long
before the electron particle was discovered, such materials were called
"electric." We now call these substances "dielectrics." So when the
fundamental particle responsible for electric behavior was discovered, it
was natural to call them electrons.
Muon, as you know, is short for mu-meson, the result of an historical
misidentification of the muon as Yukawa's strong force carrier meson,
later discovered and called the pi-meson, later pion.
The Tau is named for it's distinct decay pattern, in the form of the
Greek letter Tau. This is a common source of particle names. The Psi
half of J-Psi was chosen for the same reason, as was the old Tau (of
the Tau-theta puzzle) now called the Kaon. The Xi, or Cascade, is
named after it's characteristic decay pattern as well,
There are other naming conventions as well. The Omega was literally
the "last" member of the original SU(3) flavor multiplets to be found.
This sss (three strange-quark) bound state clinched the quark model
as THE explanation of hadron spectroscopy.
The nomenclature we have arrived at today is not a "rational" system.
But there is nothing arbitrary or frivolous about it. It is deeply rooted
in the history of the field, and makes good sense when you know
the history and the physics.
-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase "It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SIC...@CSA2.LBL.GOV although I have no right to say so, having
been a single cell so long ago myself that I
have no memory at all of that stage of my
life." - Lewis Thomas
John C. Baez
account of quarks versus partons. One correspondent has suggested that
partons were named after Dolly Parton, but I am sure this is false. As
for:
>But then there's the matter of the completely arbitrarily and frivolous
>names for the leptons: electron, muon, tauon. I suggest instead Moe, Larry,
>Curly....
it seems to me that to please Ilan Vardi and make these lepton names
more precisely descriptive we should use the termsk Small, Medium and
Large. (This retroactively explains the famous remark "Who ordered
this!?" upon the discovery of the muon.)
Jim Carr
>>
>>I don't see why "quarks" constitutes offensive salesmanship. Gell-Mann
>>borrowed the term from Finnegan's Wake, where Joyce says "three quarks
>>for Musther Mark." Quark is also a term for a kind of cheese, and this word
>
>The fact that these more or less important objects have a name that
>rhymes with ``quirk'' has made these well known to most laymen, and
Say what? Gell-Mann does not even like the 'qwork' pronunciation since
he invented the sound 'qwaark' and went looking for a word to use
according to the stories I have heard. (Is this in _The Second Creation_
history? I do not recall.) The basic story I have heard is that he
first made up a name for these things he had come up with, and then
stumbled on Joyce and used it as a 'reference' for the word. For all
the reasons you mention in the text I quoted below, Joyce is perfect
for this use (since implying that one needs a reference of any kind
to justify a particle name is preposterousness at its best).
> .... What I find truly annoying in this case is the
>conscious decision by the scientist to give them a catchy name that is
>totally disjoint from their properties. The literary reference is
>consistent with the pseudo intellectual affectations of the academic
>community which finds its apotheosis in Finnegan's Wake, a pretentious
>compilation of multilingual puns, ordinarily though of as one of the
>lowest forms of humour, and obscure references that add nothing to the
>book except to inform the reader of the author's recondite knowledge.
You must forget what particle theory was like in the 60's. Before my
time, but the histories and ones colleagues make it very clear that
that part of the literature was 99 and 97/100s pure of any chance of
being correct. It was certainly hard to take any proposal seriously,
especially since the original quark hypothesis was really just a scheme
for bookkeeping that happened to point the way to a correct dynamical
model. Gell-Mann is certainly not alone:
Glashow named his hypothetical quantum number "charm", which is about as
connected to anything as up or down or strange, but was OK since no one
took it seriously. In April of 1974, a rapporteur said his talk on teh
subject was "certainly charming" and went on to discuss more important
matters -- and to eat his hat a year or so later.
Does pi or phi or f or Delta convey any more information than quark?
The J/psi was named after a person and a lab, but that says more about
personalities and history than its physical properties. If there was
logic in this, the J/psi might be called the phi_c, but no chance of that.
I think you just do not like Joyce.
--
J. A. Carr | "The New Frontier of which I
j...@gw.scri.fsu.edu | speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University B-186 | -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute | John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
Jim Carr
>
> ... The Psi
>half of J-Psi was chosen for the same reason
Scott, who sold you this one? It is true that the psi decay seen at SLAC
had 4 prongs, but the psi looks like a trident, and the discovery was made
a SPEAR. It was named after the laboratory.
Maurice V. Barnhill
>the "last" member of the original SU(3) flavor multiplets to be found.
>This sss (three strange-quark) bound state clinched the quark model
>as THE explanation of hadron spectroscopy.
>
with apologies to Scott, I must point out that the omega was universally
accepted as the final "proof" of the relevance of SU(3) for spectroscopy, not
of quarks. For a long time after the omega was discovered, many theorists,
including Gell-Mann himself, felt that the use of quarks was no more than a
simple way of doing SU(3) calculations.
Quarks became accepted as a result of the measurements of inelastic scattering
of electrons from nucleons and especially of the explanation of the J/psi as a
c c-bar bound state.
--
\ _____ / Maurice Barnhill, physicist and birdwatcher /\___/\
|_____| m...@brahms.udel.edu University of Delaware | O O |
/ \ FAF0...@udelvm.bitnet Newark, DE 19716 |___V___|
dra...@sscvx1.ssc.gov
>
> The SU(3) transformations of hadrons---which, remember, is all that
> Gell-Mann had in mind when he first started talking about quarks---can
> be described solely in terms of the valance quarks. That is, if all
> you're talking about is the group structure, then it's proper to say
> that a baryon is made up of two quarks, and a meson is made up of a
>
You of course meant three, or did you gauge one of them away? :-)
Paul Draper
University of Texas at Arlington
Mythink, not UTAthink, not SSCthink, not GOVthink.
Jim Carr
>
>>But then there's the matter of the completely arbitrarily and frivolous
>>names for the leptons: electron, muon, tauon. I suggest instead Moe, Larry,
>>Curly....
>
>it seems to me that to please Ilan Vardi and make these lepton names
>more precisely descriptive we should use the termsk Small, Medium and
>Large. (This retroactively explains the famous remark "Who ordered
>this!?" upon the discovery of the muon.)
Why not light, medium, and heavy?
Then we could use the greek adjective and call them
lept-lepton, meso-lepton, and bary-lepton
heh, heh. Just shows you the risk of being *too* descriptive. We now
have leptons (literally light particles) that are heavier than many
baryons (literally heavy particles), and who know what is in the middle?
Remember, muon is short for mu-meson, but a muon is not a meson in today's
system even though it is a middle (meso) weight particle. The original
descriptive nomenclature has been systematized and given a technical
meaning that does not quite match the non-technical meaning of the word.
This happens all the time in science, and one of the advantages of a
word like quark is that it does not suffer from the problems other words,
like mass and weight, bring to physics teaching.
Bruce Scott
> ... Quark is also a term for a kind of cheese, and this word
>is used in German as slang for "nonsense" - though I don't know if
>Gell-Mann knew this...
Quark is indeed a sort of cheese (actually, a cross between cheese
and yogurt as the stuff looks to me), and is the central ingredient of
cheesecake in Germany. The slang for nonsense in German is "Quatsch".
--
Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik odorless and transparent
bds at spl6n1.aug.ipp-garching.mpg.de -- W Gibson
SCOTT I CHASE
>In article <18JAN199...@csa1.lbl.gov> sic...@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>>
>>There are other naming conventions as well. The Omega was literally
>>the "last" member of the original SU(3) flavor multiplets to be found.
>>This sss (three strange-quark) bound state clinched the quark model
>>as THE explanation of hadron spectroscopy.
>>
>One of the difficulties of middle age is that you remember "history." So
>with apologies to Scott, I must point out that the omega was universally
>accepted as the final "proof" of the relevance of SU(3) for spectroscopy, not
>of quarks. For a long time after the omega was discovered, many theorists,
>including Gell-Mann himself, felt that the use of quarks was no more than a
>simple way of doing SU(3) calculations.
No apologies needed. I did mean to say exactly what you said. That's why
I distinguished between explaining hadron spectroscopy and explaining
dynamics. I suppose that I should have distinguished between quarks
as particles and quarks as SU(3) fundamental representations. The
identification of quarks with (some) partons came well after people realized
that there was some SU(3) business going on.
Matt McIrvin
>In article <1993Jan18...@sscvx1.ssc.gov>, dra...@sscvx1.ssc.gov writes...
>>But then there's the matter of the completely arbitrarily and frivolous names
>>for the leptons: electron, muon, tauon. I suggest instead Moe, Larry, Curly.
>The Tau is named for it's distinct decay pattern, in the form of the
>Greek letter Tau. This is a common source of particle names. The Psi
>half of J-Psi was chosen for the same reason,
Really? I thought it was because the trident shape of the letter psi
resembled the name of SPEAR, where the thing was discovered. Another
physics legend shattered....
>as was the old Tau (of
>the Tau-theta puzzle) now called the Kaon.
Aha! I thought James Gleick was in error when he referred to the tau
and theta as "strange particles" in the Feynman biography. Now the
business is much clearer-- he was referring to the old tau.
--
Matt McIrvin
Matt McIrvin
>it seems to me that to please Ilan Vardi and make these lepton names
>more precisely descriptive we should use the termsk Small, Medium and
>Large. (This retroactively explains the famous remark "Who ordered
>this!?" upon the discovery of the muon.)
It also occurs to me that if electroweak theory with two families
had turned out to be correct, we could have gotten along quite well
with Zweig's alternative name for the quarks, namely "aces." Instead
of flavors, we'd have suits: the Aces of Spades, Clubs, Hearts and
Diamonds. Of course, if this had been adopted and the top and bottom
had been discovered, there'd be a certain temptation to switch to
pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds,
and purple horseshoes. Though that might conflict with color charge...
--
Matt McIrvin
Gregory McColm
>In article <1993Jan16.0...@leland.Stanford.EDU> il...@leland.Stanford.EDU (ilan vardi) writes:
>> [regarding "quarks": ] What I find truly annoying in this case is the
>>conscious decision by the scientist to give them a catchy name that is
>>totally disjoint from their properties.
>
>Ok, first off I don't know why you think "quark" is catchy. Most people
>(lay and not) that I've talked to simply think it's *weird*.
>
>Secondly, there is a very old tradition that gives the right to name
>something to its discoverer/inventor. Sometimes there is an expectation
>of following other rules (e.g. naming astronomical objects after oneself
>is fair game but that's a no-no with mathematical theorems), it's true,
Not any more. In fact, not for a while---otherwise, St. George's
planet would be orbiting the sun. Both astronomy and biology
have committees of experts who approve the names. This becomes
apparent when some eccentric (like the late Dr. Leakey) gets in
a fight with them. But we needn't bow to them: when the
committees decided that the boa constrictor should be called
"constrictor constrictor", Will Cuppy, a reviewer for The New
Yorker, decided that it should not, saying "two can play that
game."
-----Greg McColm
PS: Let's keep the committees out of mathematics, shall we?
--
SHAMELESS AD: Math PhDs in Analysis, Discrete Math./Th. of Comp., Num. Anal.,
Prob., are invited to apply to the Math. Dept. of Univ. of S. Florida for
research/teaching positions that may be available: contact K. L. Pothoven at
math...@math.usf.edu. Deadline 2/1/93. USF is a politically correct employer.
Matthew P Wiener
In article <1993Jan21....@ariel.ec.usf.edu>, mccolm@darwin (Gregory McColm) writes:
>Not any more. In fact, not for a while---otherwise, St. George's
>planet would be orbiting the sun. Both astronomy and biology have
>committees of experts who approve the names. This becomes apparent
>when some eccentric (like the late Dr. Leakey) gets in a fight with
>them. But we needn't bow to them: when the committees decided that
>the boa constrictor should be called "constrictor constrictor", Will
>Cuppy, a reviewer for The New Yorker, decided that it should not,
>saying "two can play that game."
Just to clarify, it isn't a case of some nomenclature committee deciding
it's time to rename _Boa constrictor_ to something less euphonius, just
a realization that the agreed upon rules give some other name priority.
The committees are empowered to make exceptions, which they did with BC.
Why they haven't done this with Brontosaurus or Eohippus, I haven't the
foggiest.
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Paul C Leyland
Not any more. In fact, not for a while---otherwise, St. George's
planet would be orbiting the sun. Both astronomy and biology
have committees of experts who approve the names. This becomes
...
Funny, I hadn't heard that good old King George had been canonized.
(When Herschel discovered what is now known as Uranus, he called it
Georgium Sidus, after the reigning monarch.)
Paul
--
Paul Leyland <p...@oxford.ac.uk> | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
Oxford University Computing Service | the English way.
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK | The time is come, the song is over.
Tel: +44-865-273200 Fax: +44-865-273275 | Thought I'd something more to say.
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