From: Thomas McCabe (pphysics141@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 12 2007 - 17:33:48 MST
I meant "without slogging through the hundreds of pages of math" that
you would find in any course or textbook on the subject. If that was
the requirement for science-literacy, none of us could be literate
over any significant range of subjects, due to the huge volume of
specialized material required for each of them.
- Tom
On Nov 12, 2007 6:20 PM, Jeff L Jones <jeff@spoonless.net> wrote:
> Not unless you have very low standards for "decent". It's certainly
> not possible to understand it "better than Stephen Hawking does"
> without thoroughly understanding tensors and differential geometry (or
> something of equivalent complexity) which was the original question.
> I would say that, for the most part, unless you understand tensors,
> the best you can get is a superficial understanding where you can
> repeat certain facts about it, but don't actually know why they're
> true.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2007 2:07 PM, Thomas McCabe <pphysics141@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's quite possible to get a decent understanding of GR without
> > knowing all the tensor math. Without the detailed math, you can't
> > really do complex calculations, but you can at least understand how
> > the theory works.
> >
> > - Tom
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:00 MDT