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by eln1
1494 days ago
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Indeed, e.g. of Dirac: “I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation because this so-called ’good theory’ does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, ignoring them in an arbitrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves disregarding a quantity when it is small – not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!. ”
and Feynman: "The shell game that we play is technically called ’renormalization’. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It’s surprising that the theory still hasn’t been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate.”
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One good article that explains this shift (in the context of a debate in the philosophy of physics) is here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8890/.