A Most Incomprehensible Thing Quotes

“The prime advantage of defining the geometry of the pebble's surface in terms of general coordinates is that we can then proceed to define tensors that are true in any coordinate system, tensors that describe both the pebble's curvature (the Riemann curvature tensor) and physics (the field equations, for example).”
― Peter Collier, A Most Incomprehensible Thing: Notes Towards a Very Gentle Introduction to the Mathematics of Relativity

“My goal was to move beyond the popular expositions of relativity and get to grips with the underlying mathematics, the beating heart of the theory (to paraphrase Euclid, there is no royal road to relativity – you have to do the maths).”
― Peter Collier, A Most Incomprehensible Thing: Notes Towards a Very Gentle Introduction to the Mathematics of Relativity