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Samuel Beckett's Guide to Particles and Antiparticles — Ribbonfarm

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I was 12 years old when I first encountered this quote by Samuel Beckett: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” That quote…

I was 12 years old when I first encountered this quote by Samuel Beckett: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” That quote impressed me quite a bit at the time. It appeared to my young self to be simultaneously profound, important, and impossible to understand. Now, nineteen years later, I’m still not sure I understand what Beckett meant by that short sentence. But I nonetheless find that its dark Zen has worked itself into me indelibly. The Beckett quote comes to mind in particular as I sit down to write again about quantum field theory (QFT). QFT, to…

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