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The Language of Creation

Why Physics Generates Mathematics

123 + 323 p.

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A philosophical essay on what contemporary mathematics and physics become when they are viewed as two methods of access to a single structure. Around three cases (mirror symmetry, the Langlands-gauge correspondence, renormalisation as Galois theory), and closing with a meditation on a page of Borges, the book argues that physics has been generating, for sixty years, the deepest mathematics — and that this is not an accident.

Act I — The Question
The miracle of Wigner · The reversal · Golden age, divorce, remarriage
Act II — The Fabric of the Real
The zoo of particles · The vibrating string · The world in eleven dimensions · The landscape and selection
Act III — The Convergences
The foundry of mirrors · Knots and manifolds · When Langlands meets gauge
Act IV — The Synthesis
Three philosophies of convergence · Why physics generates mathematics · The language of creation