Show notes
I'm back, baby. I've been away traveling for podcasts and am excited to bring you new ones with Michael Levin, William Hahn, Robin Hanson, and Emily Riehl, coming up shortly. They're already recorded. I've been recovering from a terrible flu but pushed through it to bring you today's episode with Urs Schreiber. This one is quite mind-blowing. It's quite hairy mathematics, something called higher category theory, and how using this math (which examines the structure of structure) allows one manner of finding "something" from "nothing." Here, "nothing" means the empty set, and "something" is defined as fermions and even 11D supergravity. It's the first time this material has been presented in this manner. Enjoy.NOTE: Link to technical details are here from Urs Schreiber: https://ncatlab.org/schreiber/show/Peri+PantheoriasAs a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toeJoin My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.comListen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOEBecome a YouTube Member (Early Access Videos):https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/joinLinks Mentioned:- nLab website: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage- Paper on category theory: https://people.math.osu.edu/cogdell.1/6112-Eilenberg&MacLane-www.pdf- “Higher Topos Theory for Physics” (Urs’s talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD20W6vxMI4- “Higher Topos Theory for Physics” (Urs’s paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.11026 - Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4- Feynman’s thesis: https://faculty.washington.edu/seattle/physics541/2012-path-integrals/thesis.pdf- Differential cohomology in a cohesive ∞-topos (Urs’s paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.7930 - M-Theory from the Superpoint (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.01774- Character Map in Non-Abelian Cohomology, The: Twisted, Differential, and Generalized (textbook): https://amzn.to/4bFuz7H - TOE’s String Theory Iceberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PdPnQuwjYTimestamps:00:00 Introduction01:27 The Creation of nLab04:36 Philosophy Meets Physics07:55 The Role of Mathematical Language09:32 Emergence from Nothing16:25 Towards a Theory of Everything22:21 The Problem with Modern Physics25:31 Diving into Category Theory35:30 Understanding Adjunctions41:46 The Significance of Duality52:54 Exploring Toposes1:14:20 The UNEDA Lemma and Generalized Spaces1:16:37 Charts in Physics1:20:55 Introduction to Infinitesimal Disks1:23:56 The Emergence of Supergeometry1:27:33 Transitioning to Gauge Theories1:28:11 Exploring Singularities in Physics1:32:50 The Role of Superformal Spaces1:36:44 Functors and Their Implications1:40:51 From Nothing to Emergent Structures1:43:04 Hegel's Influence on Modern Physics1:54:07 Discovering Higher-Dimensional Structures1:56:30 The Path to 11-Dimensional Supergravity1:57:21 Universal Central Extensions2:03:21 The Journey to M-Theory2:11:19 Globalizing the Structure of Supergravity2:15:36 Understanding Global Charges in Physics2:23:31 Dirac's Insights into Gauge Potentials2:30:21 The Quest for Non-Perturbative Physics2:39:04 ConclusionSupport TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurtDiscord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs#science #theoreticalphysics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
