A TANGIBLE HOLD ON IDEAS

"Most of our life is spent dealing with ideas that are abstract and cannot be embodied; they can only be held in the mind ... The tools of our trade are also intangible. We have nothing material to clutch or discard, no object that would absorb or reflect our emotions. Theoretical physics is largely a private affair, a life lived out in the mind,"

thinks Sara, wistfully.

It is true that we theorists seldom have a tangible hold on something that represents our intellectual passion, and so the t...