The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty

The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty PDF Author: Robert P. Crease
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245993
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
"A very fun way to learn about where quantum physics comes from and the strange, even astonishing places it has gone." —Peter Galison, Harvard University, author of Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps From multiverses and quantum leaps to Schrödinger’s cat and time travel, quantum mechanics has irreversibly shaped the popular imagination. Entertainers and writers from Lady Gaga to David Foster Wallace take advantage of its associations and nuances. In The Quantum Moment, philosopher Robert P. Crease and physicist Alfred Scharff Goldhaber recount the fascinating story of how the quantum jumped from physics into popular culture, with brief explorations of the underlying math and physics concepts and descriptions of the fiery disputes among figures including Einstein, Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr. Understanding and appreciating quantum imagery, its uses and abuses, is part of what it means to be an educated person in the twenty-first century. The Quantum Moment serves as an indispensable guide.

The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty

The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty PDF Author: Robert P. Crease
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245993
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A very fun way to learn about where quantum physics comes from and the strange, even astonishing places it has gone." —Peter Galison, Harvard University, author of Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps From multiverses and quantum leaps to Schrödinger’s cat and time travel, quantum mechanics has irreversibly shaped the popular imagination. Entertainers and writers from Lady Gaga to David Foster Wallace take advantage of its associations and nuances. In The Quantum Moment, philosopher Robert P. Crease and physicist Alfred Scharff Goldhaber recount the fascinating story of how the quantum jumped from physics into popular culture, with brief explorations of the underlying math and physics concepts and descriptions of the fiery disputes among figures including Einstein, Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr. Understanding and appreciating quantum imagery, its uses and abuses, is part of what it means to be an educated person in the twenty-first century. The Quantum Moment serves as an indispensable guide.

The Quantum Moment

The Quantum Moment PDF Author: Robert P Crease
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393067920
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The fascinating story of how quantum mechanics went mainstream. The discovery of the quantum—the idea, born in the early 1900s in a remote corner of physics, that energy comes in finite packets instead of infinitely divisible quantities—planted a rich set of metaphors in the popular imagination. Quantum imagery and language now bombard us like an endless stream of photons. Phrases such as multiverses, quantum leaps, alternate universes, the uncertainty principle, and Schrödinger's cat get reinvented continually in cartoons and movies, coffee mugs and T-shirts, and fiction and philosophy, reinterpreted by each new generation of artists and writers. Is a "quantum leap" big or small? How uncertain is the uncertainty principle? Is this barrage of quantum vocabulary pretentious and wacky, or a fundamental shift in the way we think? All the above, say Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber in this pathbreaking book. The authors—one a philosopher, the other a physicist—draw on their training and six years of co-teaching to dramatize the quantum’s rocky path from scientific theory to public understanding. Together, they and their students explored missteps and mistranslations, jokes and gibberish, of public discussion about the quantum. Their book explores the quantum’s manifestations in everything from art and sculpture to the prose of John Updike and David Foster Wallace. The authors reveal the quantum’s implications for knowledge, metaphor, intellectual exchange, and the contemporary world. Understanding and appreciating quantum language and imagery, and recognizing its misuse, is part of what it means to be an educated person today. The result is a celebration of language at the interface of physics and culture, perfect for anyone drawn to the infinite variety of ideas.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty PDF Author: David Lindley
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307389480
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
The gripping, entertaining, and vividly-told narrative of a radical discovery that sent shockwaves through the scientific community and forever changed the way we understand the world. Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg’s theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this “uncertainty” would have shocking implications. In a riveting and lively account, David Lindley captures this critical episode and explains one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, which has since transcended the boundaries of science and influenced everything from literary theory to television.

The Island of Knowledge

The Island of Knowledge PDF Author: Marcelo Gleiser
Publisher: Civitas Books
ISBN: 0465031714
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Why discovering the limits to science may be the most powerful discovery of allHow much can we know about the world? In this book, physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing, he reaches a provocative conclusion: science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know. Gleiser shows that by aband.

The Strange Story of the Quantum

The Strange Story of the Quantum PDF Author: Banesh Hoffmann
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486205185
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This timeless exploration of the work of the great physicists of the early 20th century employs analogies, examples, and imaginative insights rather than computations to explain the dramatic impact of quantum physics on classical theory. Topics include Pauli's exclusion principle, Schroedinger's wave equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and many other concepts. 1959 edition.

The Lighting of the Fire

The Lighting of the Fire PDF Author: Fr. Benigno P. Beltran
Publisher: Consystent Solutions
ISBN: 621950321X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The book contains deeply insightful, objectively-argued, clear and succinct and synthesized ideas in education, philosophy, theory and practice.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity PDF Author: Paul Halpern
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673646
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world. For millennia, scientists have puzzled over a simple question: Does the universe have a speed limit? If not, some effects could happen at the same instant as the actions that caused them -- and some effects, ludicrously, might even happen before their causes. By one hundred years ago, it seemed clear that the speed of light was the fastest possible speed. Causality was safe. And then quantum mechanics happened, introducing spooky connections that seemed to circumvent the law of cause and effect. Inspired by the new physics, psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli explored a concept called synchronicity, a weird phenomenon they thought could link events without causes. Synchronicity tells that sprawling tale of insight and creativity, and asks where these ideas -- some plain crazy, and others crazy powerful -- are taking the human story next.

Quantum International Relations

Quantum International Relations PDF Author: James Der Derian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197568203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The contributors to this volume are motivated by a common apprehension and a common hope. The apprehension was first voiced by Einstein, who lamented the inability of humanity, at the individual and social level, to keep up with the increased speed of technological change brought about by the quantum revolution. As quantum science and technology fast forward into the 21st century, the social sciences remain stuck in classical, 19th century ways of thinking. Can such a mechanistic model of the mind and society possibly help us manage the fully realized technological potential of the quantum? That's where the hope appears: that perhaps quantum is not just a physical science, but a human science too. In Quantum International Relations, James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt gather rising scholars and leading experts to make the case for quantum approaches to world politics. As a fundamental theory of reality and enabler of new technologies, quantum now touches everything, with the potential to revolutionize how we conduct diplomacy, wage war, and make wealth. Contributors present the core principles of quantum mechanics--entanglement, uncertainty, superposition, and the wave function--as significant catalysts and superior heuristics for an accelerating quantum future. Facing a reality which no longer corresponds to an outdated Newtonian worldview of states as billiard balls, individuals as rational actors or power as objective interest, Der Derian and Wendt issue an urgent call for a new human science of quantum International Relations. At the centenary of the first quantum thought experiment in the 1920s, this book offers a diversity of explorations, speculations and approaches for understanding geopolitics in the 21st century.

Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut

Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut PDF Author: Andrew Hicks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000092828
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Posthumanism in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Matter That Complains So re-examines the prevailing critical consensus that Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist writer. While more difficult elements of his work have often been the subject of scholarly attention, the tendency amongst critics writing on Vonnegut is to disavow them, or to subsume them within a liberal humanist framework. When Vonnegut’s work is read from a posthumanist perspective, however, the productive paradoxes of his work are more fully realised. Drawing on New Materialist, Eco-Critical and Systems Theory methodologies, this book highlights posthumanist themes in six of Vonnegut’s most famous novels, and emphasises the ways in which Vonnegut troubles human/non-human, natural/artificial, and material/discursive hierarchical binaries

Beyond Peaceful Coexistence; The Emergence Of Space, Time And Quantum

Beyond Peaceful Coexistence; The Emergence Of Space, Time And Quantum PDF Author: Ignazio Licata
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1783268336
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 741

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Book Description
'It may be that a real synthesis of quantum and relativity theories requires not just technical developments but radical conceptual renewal.'J S BellBeyond Peaceful Coexistence: The Emergence of Space, Time and Quantum brings together leading academics in mathematics and physics to address going beyond the 'peaceful coexistence' of space-time descriptions (local and continuous ones) and quantum events (discrete and non-commutative ones). Formidable challenges waiting beyond the Standard Model require a new semantic consistency within the theories in order to build new ways of understanding, working and relating to them. The original A. Shimony meaning of the peaceful coexistence (the collapse postulate and non-locality) appear to be just the tip of the iceberg in relation to more serious fundamental issues across physics as a whole.Chapters in this book present perspectives on emergent, discrete, geometrodynamic and topological approaches, as well as a new interpretative spectrum of quantum theories after Copenhagen, discrete time theories, time-less approaches and 'super-fluid' pictures of space-time.As well as stimulating further research among established theoretical physicists, the book can also be used in courses on the philosophy and mathematics of theoretical physics.