Re: corrupting the youth

[paul o johnson <pojhome@SWBELL.NET>]

Who was Clifford, and why didn't he invent his miraculous algebra in the
early 40s so I could have benefited from it in college?

poj

----- Original Message -----
From: "John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: corrupting the youth
> We face a definite problem, namely the lack of
> introductory pedagogical material on Clifford Algebra.
> But IMHO, that is evidence of novelty not of any deep
> flaw.
>
> Practically everything you've ever heard of can be
> rediscovered as some subalgebra of some Clifford
> Algebra.  That means I don't need to separately learn
> about vectors, spinors, complex numbers, quaternions,
> pauli algebra, dirac algebra, etc. etc. etc. -- I just
> learn Clifford Algebra and get all that stuff for free.
>
> If you already know all that stuff, maybe you don't
> have much to gain from Clifford Algebra ... but it
> would be absurd to assume that the youth already know
> all that.  And in any case it doesn't detract from the
> simplicity and elegance and power of the Clifford Algebra.