How did Wilson's renormalization group change physics?
Before my work, critical phenomena were a mess of empirical laws and ad hoc theories. The renormalization group provided a systematic method to calculate scaling exponents and understand universality. It showed that the details of a system—like the exact form of interactions—don't matter near a critical point; only the symmetry and dimensionality do. This changed how we think about field theory too. In particle physics, it explained why quantum electrodynamics works at low energies despite infinities: the coupling constants run with scale. The Wilsonian approach, where you integrate out high-momentum modes, became the standard way to think about effective field theories. It's a beautiful example of scaling—you don't need to solve everything; just find the fixed point and the relevant operators.
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