PGLuca Porta Mana’s page

“If what we are discussing were a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best. But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself.”
G. Galilei
“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”
R. Feynman
“It is important for him who wants to discover not to confine himself to one chapter of science, but to keep in touch with various others.”
J. Hadamard

Intro

I am a researcher and student interested in all science, and especially in these fields:

  • general relativity \(\quad\pmb{G}=\smash{\frac{8\pi\kappa}{c^{4}}} \pmb{T}\)

  • quantum theory \(\quad\mathrm{P}(O_{i} \rvert M_{k} \land S_{j}) = \mathop{\rm tr}(\pmb{M}_{ik}\,\pmb{\rho}_{j})\)

  • the probability calculus, that is, Bayesian probability theory, including machine learning and statistics \(\quad\mathrm{P}(A \land B \rvert I) = \mathrm{P}(A \rvert B \land I)\; \mathrm{P}(B \rvert I)\)

  • continuum thermomechanics, including subfields such as fluid dynamics, thermostatics, and particle mechanics \(\quad\pmb{b} + \nabla\pmb{T} =0\)

  • differential, convex, affine geometry, and Peano spaces \(\quad\mathrm{d}\rho =0\)

  • formal logic and constructive (computable) analysis \(\quad\frac{I\;\vdash\; B \quad I\land B\; \vdash\; A}{I \;\vdash\; A \land B}\)

  • quantization of Julio Iglesias

  • history of science

  • (statistical mechanics – but that’s just an application of the probability calculus to continuum thermomechanics)

In each of the above fields I’ve done original research or given seminars or lectures. Feel free to take a look at my CV or the projects and contributions below.

Finding and rewriting physical laws is for me a great source of joy and awe. For this reason I’m not interested in algorithms or artificial intelligence that could find such laws for me. They are like algorithms that could look at the stars for me, or read a book for me, or eat for me, or go on holiday for me, or play a game for me. What’s the point?

Presently at HVL Western Norway University of Applied Sciences in Bergen. You can write to me at pglZZ@portamanaZZ.org, or on Matrix at pglpmZZ:matrix.sdf.org (remove all “ZZ” from these addresses, for anti-spam purposes)

There’s also a personal page (an exercise in self-indulgence).

Memos, lecture notes, talks

Here are some memos, lecture notes, talks.

Scientific research

Most works I authored and co-authored can be found for free at Open Science Framework. Some are also on arXiv, although I find arXiv’s screening policies increasingly shady. I strongly believe that all research papers should be free and that it’s ludicrous that we pay to read research we fund.

See also my GitHub, Orcid, Open Science Framework, Semantic Scholar pages.