Constructing Quarks

Constructing Quarks PDF Author: Andrew Pickering
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226667997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Widely regarded as a classic in its field, Constructing Quarks recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice. "A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist "An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today

Constructing Quarks

Constructing Quarks PDF Author: Andrew Pickering
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226667997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Get Book Here

Book Description
Widely regarded as a classic in its field, Constructing Quarks recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, Andrew Pickering suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice. "A prodigious piece of scholarship that I can heartily recommend."—Michael Riordan, New Scientist "An admirable history. . . . Detailed and so accurate."—Hugh N. Pendleton, Physics Today

Science as Practice and Culture

Science as Practice and Culture PDF Author: Andrew Pickering
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226668010
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice—the work of doing science—and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological sciences and mathematics, and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography.

The Social Construction of What?

The Social Construction of What? PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674812000
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Ian Hacking’s book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality—especially regarding the status of the natural sciences.

Strange Beauty

Strange Beauty PDF Author: George Johnson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307765458
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
With a New Afterword "Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."--Richard Feynman Acclaimed science writer George Johnson brings his formidable reporting skills to the first biography of Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant, irascible man who revolutionized modern particle physics with his models of the quark and the Eightfold Way. Born into a Jewish immigrant family on New York's East 14th Street, Gell-Mann's prodigious talent was evident from an early age--he entered Yale at 15, completed his Ph.D. at 21, and was soon identifying the structures of the world's smallest components and illuminating the elegant symmetries of the universe. Beautifully balanced in its portrayal of an extraordinary and difficult man, interpreting the concepts of advanced physics with scrupulous clarity and simplicity, Strange Beauty is a tour-de-force of both science writing and biography.

Science as It Could Have Been

Science as It Could Have Been PDF Author: Lena Soler
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822981157
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore whether components of human science are inevitable, or if we could have developed an alternative successful science based on essentially different notions, conceptions, and results. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors in philosophy, sociology, and history of science, this edited volume offers a comprehensive analysis of the contingency/inevitability problem and a lively and up-to-date portrait of current debates in science studies.

Unification and Supersymmetry

Unification and Supersymmetry PDF Author: Rabindra N. Mohapatra
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475719280
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The theoretical understanding of elementary particle interactions has under gone a revolutionary change during the past one and a half decades. The spontaneously broken gauge theories, which in the 1970s emerged as a prime candidate for the description of electro-weak (as weIl as strong) interactions, have been confirmed by the discovery of neutral weak currents as weIl as the w- and Z-bosons. We now have a field theory of electro-weak interactions at energy scales below 100 GeV-the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory. It is a renormalizable theory which enables us to do calculations without en countering unnecessary divergences. The burning question now is: Wh at lies ahead at the next level of unification? As we head into the era of supercolliders and ultrahigh energy machines to answer this question, many ap, pealing possi bilities exist: left-right symmetry, technicolor, compositeness, grand unifica ti on, supersymmetry, supergravity, Kaluza-Klein models, and most recently superstrings that even unify gravity along with other interactions. Experi ments will decide if any one or any combination of these is to be relevant in the description of physics at the higher energies. As an outcome of our con fidence in the possible scenerios for elementary particle physics, we have seen our understanding of the early uni verse improve significantly.

The Mangle of Practice

The Mangle of Practice PDF Author: Andrew Pickering
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226668258
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge. Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization.

Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos

Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030917113X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Advances made by physicists in understanding matter, space, and time and by astronomers in understanding the universe as a whole have closely intertwined the question being asked about the universe at its two extremesâ€"the very large and the very small. This report identifies 11 key questions that have a good chance to be answered in the next decade. It urges that a new research strategy be created that brings to bear the techniques of both astronomy and sub-atomic physics in a cross-disciplinary way to address these questions. The report presents seven recommendations to facilitate the necessary research and development coordination. These recommendations identify key priorities for future scientific projects critical for realizing these scientific opportunities.

Pions to Quarks

Pions to Quarks PDF Author: Laurie M. Brown
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521309840
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description
The historical studies and analyses provided in the volume are unique in their scope and level of detail.

Calabi-Yau Manifolds

Calabi-Yau Manifolds PDF Author: Tristan Hbsch
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981021927X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
Calabi-Yau spaces are complex spaces with a vanishing first Chern class, or equivalently, with trivial canonical bundle (canonical class). They are used to construct possibly realistic (super)string models and are thus being studied vigorously in the recent physics literature.In the main part of the Book, collected and reviewed are relevant results on (1) several major techniques of constructing such spaces and (2) computation of physically relevant quantities such as massless field spectra and their Yukawa interactions. Issues of (3) stringy corrections and (4) moduli space and its geometry are still in the stage of rapid and continuing development, whence there is more emphasis on open problems here. Also is included a preliminary discussion of the conjectured universal moduli space and related open problems. Finally, several detailed models and sample computations are included throughout the Book to exemplify the techniques and the general discussion.The Book also contains a Lexicon (28 pages) of 150 assorted terms, key-words and main results and theorems, well suited for a handy reference. Although cross-referenced with the main part of the Book, the Lexicon can also be used independently.The level of mathematics is guided and developed between that of the popular Physics Reports of Eguchi, Gilkey and Hanson and the book Superstrings (Vol. 2) by Green, Schwarz and Witten on one end and Principles of Algebraic Geometry of Griffiths and Harris on the other.This is the first systematic exposition in book form of the material on Calabi-Yau spaces, related mathematics and the physics application, otherwise scattered through research articles in journals and conference proceedings.