Book/Combinatorial Physics

Bastin, Ted; Kilmister, C. W. (1995). Combinatorial Physics. local page: World Scientific. ISBN 981-02-2212-2. 

Introduction and Summary of Chapters

The book is an essay in the foundations of physics; it presents a combinatorial approach; ideas of process fit with a combinatorial approach; quantum physics is naturally combinatorial and high energy physics is evidently concerned with process. Definition of 'combinatorial'; the history of the concept takes us back to the bifurcation in thinking at the time of Newton and Leibniz; combinatorial models and computing methods closely related.

Space

Theory-language defined to make explicit the dependence of modern physics on Newtonian concepts, and to make it possible to discuss limits to their validity; Leibniz' relational, as opposed to absolute, space discussed; the combinatorial aspect of the monads.

Complementarity and All That

Bohr's attemp to save the quantum theory by deducing the wave-particle duality, and thence the formal structure of the theory, from a more general principle (complementarity) examined: the view of complementarity as a philosophical gloss on a theory which stands up in its own right shown to misrepresent Bohr: Bohr's argument rejected -- leaving the quantum theory still incimprehensible.