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

The Social Construction of What?

The Social Construction of What? PDF Author: Ian Hacking
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674254279
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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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? Is it a person? An object? An idea? A theory? Each entails a different notion of social construction, Ian Hacking reminds us. His book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality. Especially troublesome in this dispute is the status of the natural sciences, and this is where Hacking finds some of his most telling cases, from the conflict between biological and social approaches to mental illness to vying accounts of current research in sedimentary geology. He looks at the issue of child abuse—very much a reality, though the idea of child abuse is a social product. He also cautiously examines the ways in which advanced research on new weapons influences not the content but the form of science. In conclusion, Hacking comments on the “culture wars” in anthropology, in particular a spat between leading ethnographers over Hawaii and Captain Cook. Written with generosity and gentle wit by one of our most distinguished philosophers of science, this wise book brings a much needed measure of clarity to current arguments about the nature of knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Quark Confinement And The Hadron Spectrum - Proceedings Of The International Conference

Quark Confinement And The Hadron Spectrum - Proceedings Of The International Conference PDF Author: Nora Serafina Brambilla
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814549924
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The 20-year-old problem of the confinement and the resulting spectrum of the bound states is central to quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Many approaches have been tried starting from different points of view: the potential theory, the Bethe-Salpeter equation, string and flux tube models, bag models, vacuum structure, current algebra, lattice theory, and numerical simulations. Phenomenological assumptions and first-principle theoretical results or indications have been combined. Many partial successes have been attained, but a unified and comprehensive treatment is still lacking.In recent years, new attention has been given to the problem, both in terms of theoretical developments and for the purpose of evaluating the spectrum and other properties of the particles. In particular, attention has been focussed on areas like numerical simulations, the derivation of the potential, the use of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, the connection between the potential and the chiral symmetry approach.This workshop was an opportunity for a synthesis and a comparison of the different points of view.